In world 1 Alice is born. She sleeps under bednets and lives and proceeds to have children of her own 15-45 years after her birth. Alice’s children make some more children, and they make some more, and more… And by the time our universe dies or the Earth is destroyed or humans are no more or humans stop having children, a million of people with Alice’s genes have lived.
In world 2 Alice is born. She doesn’t get a bednet and dies from malaria at age 4. Some (0-15) years after Alice’s birth her parents create more children. On average they create 1 more child. That child, too, has children on their own, but it happens later than it would happen for Alice – about 10 years later. Because of that there will be only 500000 people with this little kid’s genes. Total population of humans throughout the future will be smaller. Therefore less utilons (assuming total utilitarianism and some other ethical systems).
How come these researches don’t calculate stuff like this? I wish they did. It seems extremely important even though I haven’t figured out what population ethics I prefer.
I am not claiming that AMF is actually better than everything else. I am just making an objection, and hopefullt someone will research different charities’ impact on populations size and happiness from now till the end of time.
I’m not an expert on population dynamics but I’m fairly certain it doesn’t work like this. The rate of population growth is going to be affected by the existing population numbers at some point, either because the area becomes resource-constrained and people start dying in higher numbers of starvation etc, or parents who are educated and have access to contraception see that opportunity for their potential children is more limited and they choose to have fewer of them.
Imagine two worlds:
In world 1 Alice is born. She sleeps under bednets and lives and proceeds to have children of her own 15-45 years after her birth. Alice’s children make some more children, and they make some more, and more… And by the time our universe dies or the Earth is destroyed or humans are no more or humans stop having children, a million of people with Alice’s genes have lived.
In world 2 Alice is born. She doesn’t get a bednet and dies from malaria at age 4. Some (0-15) years after Alice’s birth her parents create more children. On average they create 1 more child. That child, too, has children on their own, but it happens later than it would happen for Alice – about 10 years later. Because of that there will be only 500000 people with this little kid’s genes. Total population of humans throughout the future will be smaller. Therefore less utilons (assuming total utilitarianism and some other ethical systems).
How come these researches don’t calculate stuff like this? I wish they did. It seems extremely important even though I haven’t figured out what population ethics I prefer.
I am not claiming that AMF is actually better than everything else. I am just making an objection, and hopefullt someone will research different charities’ impact on populations size and happiness from now till the end of time.
I’m not an expert on population dynamics but I’m fairly certain it doesn’t work like this. The rate of population growth is going to be affected by the existing population numbers at some point, either because the area becomes resource-constrained and people start dying in higher numbers of starvation etc, or parents who are educated and have access to contraception see that opportunity for their potential children is more limited and they choose to have fewer of them.
Some researchers do consider this sort of thing, such as Bostrom: http://www.nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste.html
As I argued though, if you care about total utils over in this impersonal sense, you should probably support x-risk, not AMF.