I thought you might like to know that, after a few days’ thought and discussion, this reminder of my population ethics concerns has made me switch my donations from AMF to SCI; I originally favoured this over life-saving interventions for population ethics reasons back in 2010, six years ago. (My concerns are slightly broader ones about the difficulty of knowing how and why deaths are bad—without doubting that they are—but I don’t have time to go into them any time soon.)
This is sad from my point of view, because increasing the human population plausibly prevents lots of bug suffering, while increasing quality of life does not (at least not as clearly; the sign of impact of quality-of-life improvements on bug suffering is more ambiguous).
This stuff is genuinely tricky, and I’m deeply aware of that! Does deworming increase population though? My guess is it might even decrease it. Remember that my concerns are slightly different than Michael’s, and focused on the general difficulty of knowing how and why deaths are bad, making me want to prioritise easing suffering (and increasing welfare).
I thought you might like to know that, after a few days’ thought and discussion, this reminder of my population ethics concerns has made me switch my donations from AMF to SCI; I originally favoured this over life-saving interventions for population ethics reasons back in 2010, six years ago. (My concerns are slightly broader ones about the difficulty of knowing how and why deaths are bad—without doubting that they are—but I don’t have time to go into them any time soon.)
This is sad from my point of view, because increasing the human population plausibly prevents lots of bug suffering, while increasing quality of life does not (at least not as clearly; the sign of impact of quality-of-life improvements on bug suffering is more ambiguous).
This stuff is genuinely tricky, and I’m deeply aware of that! Does deworming increase population though? My guess is it might even decrease it. Remember that my concerns are slightly different than Michael’s, and focused on the general difficulty of knowing how and why deaths are bad, making me want to prioritise easing suffering (and increasing welfare).