Thanks for this. I’m not very familiar with the context, but let me see if I understand. (In a first for me, I’m not sure whether to ask you to cite more scripture or add more formal argument.) Let’s assume a Christian god, and call a rational consequence-counting believer an Optimising Christian.
Your overall point is that there are (or might be) two disjoint ethics, one for us and one for God, and that ours has a smaller scope, falling short of long-termism, for obvious reasons. Is this an orthodox view?
1. “The Bible says not to worry, since you can trust God to make things right. Planning is not worrying though. This puts a cap on the intensity of our longterm concern.”
2. “Humans are obviously not as good at longtermism as God, so we can leave it to Him.”
3. “Classical theism: at least parts of the future are fixed, and God promised us no (more) existential catastrophes. (Via flooding.)”
4. “Optimising Christians don’t need to bring (maximally many) people into existence: it’s supererogatory.” But large parts of Christianity take population increase very seriously as an obligation (based on e.g. Genesis 1:28 or Psalm 127). Do you know of doctrine that Christian universalism stops at present people?
5. “Optimising Christians only need to ‘satisfice’ their fellows, raising them out of subsistence. Positive consequentialism is for God.” This idea has a similar structure to negative utilitarianism, a moral system with an unusual number of philosophical difficulties. Why do bliss or happiness have no / insufficient moral weight? And, theologically: does orthodoxy say we don’t need to make others (very) happy?
If I understand you, in your points (1) through (4) you appeal to a notion of God’s agency outside of human action or natural laws. (So miracles only?) But a better theology of causation wouldn’t rely on miracles, instead viewing the whole causal history of the universe as constituting God’s agency. That interpretation, which at least doesn’t contradict physics, would keep optimising Christians on the hook for x-risk.
Many of your points are appropriately hedged—e.g. “it might also be God’s job”—but this makes it difficult to read off actions from the claims. (You also appeal to a qualitative kind of Bayesian belief updating, e.g. “significant but not conclusive reason”.) Are you familiar with the parliamentary model of ethics? It helps us act even while holding nuanced/confused views—e.g. for the causation question I raised above, each agent could place their own subjective probabilities on occasionalism, fatalism, hands-off theology and so on, and then work out what the decision should be. This kind of analysis could move your post from food-for-thought into a tool for moving through ancient debates and imponderables.
And really sorry for replying only now—I somehow missed this and only saw it now.
--- On population increase: yes, many Christians work towards population increase but it’s equally true that many Christians don’t. An interesting side remark is that the influential passage Genesis 1,28 on which pro-natalism is often based calls for *filling* the earth. Arguably, humanity can claim to have unlocked this achievement. We can tick it off our To-Do-List. (Also, in terms of background information, my view that determining the optimal population size might be God’s task rather than a human task started with this blogpost: https://greenfutureethics.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/god-as-a-solution-for-population-paradoxes)
--- On miracles: One thing is that I find it a bit hard to exclude miracles from classical theism. But even if we exclude them (or understand them to be compatible with natural laws) and even if we understand God to act within the causal history of the universe, one thing we surely can’t exclude in classical theism is that God acts in addition to human agency (including acts which might be surprising). To the extent that this is true, Christian concern with x-risks should continue to be somewhat mitigated relative to the atheist’s concern?
--- And thanks for the helpful observation that the blogpost unhelpfully avoids clear upshots (and thus also avoids responsibility for actions that might follow from it). The thing is: I find it genuinely extremely hard to think about the right approach to long-termism from a Christian perspective and this actually was *merely* a start. The parliamentary model etc would indeed be needed to derive actionable conclusions. (And, just to say, I do agree with many EAs that the far future should definitely receive more consideration than it typically does).
Thanks for this. I’m not very familiar with the context, but let me see if I understand. (In a first for me, I’m not sure whether to ask you to cite more scripture or add more formal argument.) Let’s assume a Christian god, and call a rational consequence-counting believer an Optimising Christian.
Your overall point is that there are (or might be) two disjoint ethics, one for us and one for God, and that ours has a smaller scope, falling short of long-termism, for obvious reasons. Is this an orthodox view?
1. “The Bible says not to worry, since you can trust God to make things right. Planning is not worrying though. This puts a cap on the intensity of our longterm concern.”
2. “Humans are obviously not as good at longtermism as God, so we can leave it to Him.”
3. “Classical theism: at least parts of the future are fixed, and God promised us no (more) existential catastrophes. (Via flooding.)”
4. “Optimising Christians don’t need to bring (maximally many) people into existence: it’s supererogatory.” But large parts of Christianity take population increase very seriously as an obligation (based on e.g. Genesis 1:28 or Psalm 127). Do you know of doctrine that Christian universalism stops at present people?
5. “Optimising Christians only need to ‘satisfice’ their fellows, raising them out of subsistence. Positive consequentialism is for God.” This idea has a similar structure to negative utilitarianism, a moral system with an unusual number of philosophical difficulties. Why do bliss or happiness have no / insufficient moral weight? And, theologically: does orthodoxy say we don’t need to make others (very) happy?
If I understand you, in your points (1) through (4) you appeal to a notion of God’s agency outside of human action or natural laws. (So miracles only?) But a better theology of causation wouldn’t rely on miracles, instead viewing the whole causal history of the universe as constituting God’s agency. That interpretation, which at least doesn’t contradict physics, would keep optimising Christians on the hook for x-risk.
Many of your points are appropriately hedged—e.g. “it might also be God’s job”—but this makes it difficult to read off actions from the claims. (You also appeal to a qualitative kind of Bayesian belief updating, e.g. “significant but not conclusive reason”.) Are you familiar with the parliamentary model of ethics? It helps us act even while holding nuanced/confused views—e.g. for the causation question I raised above, each agent could place their own subjective probabilities on occasionalism, fatalism, hands-off theology and so on, and then work out what the decision should be. This kind of analysis could move your post from food-for-thought into a tool for moving through ancient debates and imponderables.
Thanks for this! Very interesting.
And really sorry for replying only now—I somehow missed this and only saw it now.
--- On population increase: yes, many Christians work towards population increase but it’s equally true that many Christians don’t. An interesting side remark is that the influential passage Genesis 1,28 on which pro-natalism is often based calls for *filling* the earth. Arguably, humanity can claim to have unlocked this achievement. We can tick it off our To-Do-List. (Also, in terms of background information, my view that determining the optimal population size might be God’s task rather than a human task started with this blogpost: https://greenfutureethics.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/god-as-a-solution-for-population-paradoxes)
--- On miracles: One thing is that I find it a bit hard to exclude miracles from classical theism. But even if we exclude them (or understand them to be compatible with natural laws) and even if we understand God to act within the causal history of the universe, one thing we surely can’t exclude in classical theism is that God acts in addition to human agency (including acts which might be surprising). To the extent that this is true, Christian concern with x-risks should continue to be somewhat mitigated relative to the atheist’s concern?
--- And thanks for the helpful observation that the blogpost unhelpfully avoids clear upshots (and thus also avoids responsibility for actions that might follow from it). The thing is: I find it genuinely extremely hard to think about the right approach to long-termism from a Christian perspective and this actually was *merely* a start. The parliamentary model etc would indeed be needed to derive actionable conclusions. (And, just to say, I do agree with many EAs that the far future should definitely receive more consideration than it typically does).