I think AMF still looks like the best charity if you (a) are highly skeptical of interventions with relatively weak evidence and (b) adopt a “common sense” view of population ethics (which looks something like the time-relative interest account). But I do think these assumptions are both pretty unreasonable, and therefore their conjunction is even more unreasonable.
If you strongly discount interventions based on strength of evidence, that defeats life extension and deworming. I don’t think it makes sense to care so much about strength of evidence that you prefer malaria to deworming, but it’s possible to consistently prefer AMF.
I really, really don’t think anyone should adopt the “common sense” view of population ethics (although obviously most people do in fact adopt it), because it’s self-contradictory. If you do adopt the time-relative interest view, to avoid internal contradiction, you have to do something really weird like reject independence of irrelevant alternatives[1] or reject the transitivity of moral preferences[2]. I haven’t explored these possibilities, but they probably have strong implications about which charities you should donate to, and it seems likely that AMF would not look best under them.
[1] Independence of irrelevant alternatives: If you have options A and B and you prefer A to B, then it is also the case that when you have options A, B, and C, you prefer A to B.
[2] Transitivity: If you prefer A to B and you prefer B to C, then you prefer A to C.
FWIW, I doubt very many people will realise they supported AMF because they were implictly deprivationists and will not support radical life extension instead. The point of my investigation was, any view you take, AMF doesn’t appear to be a winner.
I guess someone could say “I’m a deprivationist but still support AMF because I’m risk-averse with my altruism” but I’d want them to have at least considered expected value of life extension in their calculations.
Well I discuss related issues here, but I’m not the first person to notice. Population ethicists have raised these issues many times before. I don’t have any good references on hand because I learned about these issues from classes and discussions, not from reading papers; but here are some search results to get you started.
“A person-affecting or person-based view (also called person-affecting restriction[1]) in population ethics captures the intuition that an act can only be bad if it is bad for someone.[2] Similarly something can be good only if it is good for someone. Therefore, according to standard person-affecting views, there is no moral obligation to create people nor moral good in creating people because nonexistence means “there is never a person who could have benefited from being created”. ”
the points about [1] and [2] are points about person-affecting views, rather than necessarily anything to do with the time-relative interest account.
The time-relative interest view is a type of person-affecting view, so if PAV breaks transitivity or independence of irrelevant alternatives then so does TRIV.
I think AMF still looks like the best charity if you (a) are highly skeptical of interventions with relatively weak evidence and (b) adopt a “common sense” view of population ethics (which looks something like the time-relative interest account). But I do think these assumptions are both pretty unreasonable, and therefore their conjunction is even more unreasonable.
If you strongly discount interventions based on strength of evidence, that defeats life extension and deworming. I don’t think it makes sense to care so much about strength of evidence that you prefer malaria to deworming, but it’s possible to consistently prefer AMF.
I really, really don’t think anyone should adopt the “common sense” view of population ethics (although obviously most people do in fact adopt it), because it’s self-contradictory. If you do adopt the time-relative interest view, to avoid internal contradiction, you have to do something really weird like reject independence of irrelevant alternatives[1] or reject the transitivity of moral preferences[2]. I haven’t explored these possibilities, but they probably have strong implications about which charities you should donate to, and it seems likely that AMF would not look best under them.
[1] Independence of irrelevant alternatives: If you have options A and B and you prefer A to B, then it is also the case that when you have options A, B, and C, you prefer A to B.
[2] Transitivity: If you prefer A to B and you prefer B to C, then you prefer A to C.
FWIW, I doubt very many people will realise they supported AMF because they were implictly deprivationists and will not support radical life extension instead. The point of my investigation was, any view you take, AMF doesn’t appear to be a winner.
I guess someone could say “I’m a deprivationist but still support AMF because I’m risk-averse with my altruism” but I’d want them to have at least considered expected value of life extension in their calculations.
Can you give examples of time-relative interest account breaking [1] and [2], or a citation? I’m relatively ignorant of the maths here.
Well I discuss related issues here, but I’m not the first person to notice. Population ethicists have raised these issues many times before. I don’t have any good references on hand because I learned about these issues from classes and discussions, not from reading papers; but here are some search results to get you started.
Edit: clarification
I think this is mixing up two issues issues. The time-relative interest account is really about the value of life at various ages.
It’s one way someone with person-affecting intuitions might account for the badness of death. Deprivationist is an alternative.
From wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person-affecting_view):
“A person-affecting or person-based view (also called person-affecting restriction[1]) in population ethics captures the intuition that an act can only be bad if it is bad for someone.[2] Similarly something can be good only if it is good for someone. Therefore, according to standard person-affecting views, there is no moral obligation to create people nor moral good in creating people because nonexistence means “there is never a person who could have benefited from being created”. ”
the points about [1] and [2] are points about person-affecting views, rather than necessarily anything to do with the time-relative interest account.
The time-relative interest view is a type of person-affecting view, so if PAV breaks transitivity or independence of irrelevant alternatives then so does TRIV.