I think I share your concern. I don’t know to what extent people are discounting people in the far future for epistemic reasons (“do we really know that those lives will be saved 500 years from now?”) and to what extent it’s for moral reasons (“I just think that people who haven’t been born yet and are in no way linked to me or my grandchildren shouldn’t be given much moral value compared to people who are alive today”).
Interestingly this point didn’t come up in the so-called qual research that I mentioned in another comment, but perhaps with more discussion with more people it might have.
I think I share your concern. I don’t know to what extent people are discounting people in the far future for epistemic reasons (“do we really know that those lives will be saved 500 years from now?”) and to what extent it’s for moral reasons (“I just think that people who haven’t been born yet and are in no way linked to me or my grandchildren shouldn’t be given much moral value compared to people who are alive today”).
Interestingly this point didn’t come up in the so-called qual research that I mentioned in another comment, but perhaps with more discussion with more people it might have.