I wonder if the Greater Burden Principle over ex ante interests tells you not to do broad exploratory research into interventions and causes or even much or any research at all, because any such research is very unlikely to benefit any particular individual. Instead, you should just pick from one of the interventions you already know rather than spread the ex ante benefits more thinly by investigating more options. Any time you expand the set of interventions under consideration, those who’d benefit ex ante in the original set lose substantially ex ante in the expanded set because they’re now less likely to be targeted at all, while those added only stand to gain a little ex ante, because whatever intervention is chosen is unlikely to help them.
To make it even more concrete, consider helping A with 100% probability. Now, you consider the possibilities of helping B or C, and you’re very unsure now about which of A, B or C you’ll help after you investigate further, so now assign each a 1⁄3 chance of being helped. A loses a ~67% chance of being helped, which is larger than the ~33% chance each of B and C gain. So, you shouldn’t even start to consider helping B and C instead of A.
However, if you did it one at a time, i.e. first consider B, going from 100% A to 50% A and 50% B, this would be permissible. And then going from 50% A and 50% B to 33% to each of A, B and C is also permissible (and required, because C gains 33% compared to the loss of 17% to each of A and B).
Is this a strawman? Or maybe contractualists make more space for deliberation by recognizing other reasons, like you suggest.
I wonder if the Greater Burden Principle over ex ante interests tells you not to do broad exploratory research into interventions and causes or even much or any research at all, because any such research is very unlikely to benefit any particular individual. Instead, you should just pick from one of the interventions you already know rather than spread the ex ante benefits more thinly by investigating more options. Any time you expand the set of interventions under consideration, those who’d benefit ex ante in the original set lose substantially ex ante in the expanded set because they’re now less likely to be targeted at all, while those added only stand to gain a little ex ante, because whatever intervention is chosen is unlikely to help them.
To make it even more concrete, consider helping A with 100% probability. Now, you consider the possibilities of helping B or C, and you’re very unsure now about which of A, B or C you’ll help after you investigate further, so now assign each a 1⁄3 chance of being helped. A loses a ~67% chance of being helped, which is larger than the ~33% chance each of B and C gain. So, you shouldn’t even start to consider helping B and C instead of A.
However, if you did it one at a time, i.e. first consider B, going from 100% A to 50% A and 50% B, this would be permissible. And then going from 50% A and 50% B to 33% to each of A, B and C is also permissible (and required, because C gains 33% compared to the loss of 17% to each of A and B).
Is this a strawman? Or maybe contractualists make more space for deliberation by recognizing other reasons, like you suggest.