So, it may be true that some x-risk-oriented interventions can help us all avoid a premature death due to a global catastrophe; maybe they can help ensure that many future people come into existence. But how strong is any individualās claim to your help to avoid an x-risk or to come into existence? Even if future people matter as much as present people (i.e., even if we assume that totalism is true), the answer is: Not strong at all, as you should discount it by the expected size of the benefit and you donāt aggregate benefits across persons. Since any given future person only has an infinitesimally small chance of coming into existence, they have an infinitesimally weak claim to aid.
Thereās a Parfit thought experiment:
I go camping and leave a bunch of broken glass bottles in the woods. I realize that someone may step on this glass and hurt themselves, so perhaps I should bury it. I do not bury it. As it turns out, 20 years pass before someone is hurt. In 20 years, a young child steps on the glass and cuts their foot badly.
It seems like the contractualist principle above would say that thereās no moral value to burying the glass shard, because for any given individual, the probability that theyāll be the one to step on the glass shard is very low[1]. Is that right?
I think you can sidestep issues with population ethics here by just restricting this to people already alive today (so replace āyoung childā in the Parfit example with āadultā I guess). Though maybe the pop ethics issues are the crux?
Thanks for your question, Eli. The contractualist can say that it would be callous, uncaring, indecent, or invoke any number of other virtue theoretic notions to explain why you shouldnāt leave broken glass bottles in the woods. What they canāt say is that, in some situation where (a) thereās a tradeoff between some present personās weighty interests and the 20-years-from-now young childās interests and (b) addressing the present personās weighty interests requires leaving the broken glass bottles, the 20-years-from-now young child could reasonably reject a principle that exposed them to risk instead of the present personās. Upshot: they can condemn the action in any realistic scenario.
Thereās a Parfit thought experiment:
I go camping and leave a bunch of broken glass bottles in the woods. I realize that someone may step on this glass and hurt themselves, so perhaps I should bury it. I do not bury it. As it turns out, 20 years pass before someone is hurt. In 20 years, a young child steps on the glass and cuts their foot badly.
It seems like the contractualist principle above would say that thereās no moral value to burying the glass shard, because for any given individual, the probability that theyāll be the one to step on the glass shard is very low[1]. Is that right?
I think you can sidestep issues with population ethics here by just restricting this to people already alive today (so replace āyoung childā in the Parfit example with āadultā I guess). Though maybe the pop ethics issues are the crux?
Thanks for your question, Eli. The contractualist can say that it would be callous, uncaring, indecent, or invoke any number of other virtue theoretic notions to explain why you shouldnāt leave broken glass bottles in the woods. What they canāt say is that, in some situation where (a) thereās a tradeoff between some present personās weighty interests and the 20-years-from-now young childās interests and (b) addressing the present personās weighty interests requires leaving the broken glass bottles, the 20-years-from-now young child could reasonably reject a principle that exposed them to risk instead of the present personās. Upshot: they can condemn the action in any realistic scenario.