Thanks for writing this up; this is important to think about.
Standard person-affecting view says that it is not wrong to cause someone to exist whose life is net positive, so A is not worse than B
GiveWell’s data on deaths prevented is entirely based on children under age 5. I don’t think we have good information on children’s subjective experience, and I’m not totally willing to assume that their lives are particularly enjoyable. Being a newborn in particular seems pretty unpleasant to me, and I could easily believe that the experience of living to age 1 month and then developing a fatal case of malaria is net negative. But given that happiness by age seems generally U-shaped, perhaps it’s reasonable to assume that being a toddler is pretty fun.
That’s an important point. It still doesn’t resolve the problems with the GiveWell view though:
A couple of commenters have proposed that a child’s life may be net negative on balance when she dies of malaria at a young age. This still does not avoid the problem with the GiveWell view where the difference between the child’s existence and nonexistence exactly equals the value of the additional life-years she would have if she didn’t get malaria. And, more significantly, this does not resolve the additional problems with the GiveWell view described in the next section.
Thanks for writing this up; this is important to think about.
GiveWell’s data on deaths prevented is entirely based on children under age 5. I don’t think we have good information on children’s subjective experience, and I’m not totally willing to assume that their lives are particularly enjoyable. Being a newborn in particular seems pretty unpleasant to me, and I could easily believe that the experience of living to age 1 month and then developing a fatal case of malaria is net negative. But given that happiness by age seems generally U-shaped, perhaps it’s reasonable to assume that being a toddler is pretty fun.
That’s an important point. It still doesn’t resolve the problems with the GiveWell view though: