abortion is morally wrong is a direct logical extension of a longtermist view that highly values maximizing the number of people on assumption that the average existing persons life will have positive value
I’m a bit confused by this statement. Is a world where people don’t have access to abortion likely to have more aggregate well-being in the very long run? Naively, it feels like the opposite to me
To be clear I don’t think it’s worth discussing abortion at length, especially considering bruce’s comment. But I really don’t think the number of people currently existing says much about well-being in the very long run (arguably negatively correlated). And even if you wanted to increase near-term population, reducing access to abortion is a very bad way to that, with lots of negative knock-on effects.
What I was saying is that, for the type of longtermism that assumes that the average persons life will be of positive value, and that it is morally good to maximize the total number of people to maximize total happiness, and assumes that allowing a life to come into existence is as good as saving a life, abortion seems to be morally bad, unless you argue that abortion being banned will have enough of a negative effect to outweigh all the lives that would not have existed if it were banned (which I think one could definitely argue). I say type of longtermism because there are definitely different approaches to longtermism and these assumptions are not representative of all, and I disagree with many of the assumptions here. I particularly disagree that total value or wellbeing, as opposed to aggregate as you mention in your comment, is a meaningful metric, but I realize there are different views on that.
For total-view longtermism, I think the most important things are ~civilization is on a good trajectory, people are prudent/careful with powerful new technology, the world is lower conflict, investments are made to improve resilience to large catastrophes, etc. Restricting abortion seems kinda bad for several of those things, and positive for none. So it seems like total-view longtermism, even ignoring all other reasons to think this, says abortion-restriction is bad.
I guess part of this is a belief that in the long-run, the number of morally-valuable lives & total wellbeing (e.g. in a 10 million years) is very uncorrelated or anti-correlated with near-term world population. (though I also think restricting abortion is one of the worst ways to go about increasing near-term population, even for those who do think near-term & very-long-term are pretty positively correlated)
I don’t think near-term population is helpful for long-term population or wellbeing, e.g. in >10,000 years from now. More likely negative effect than positive effect imo, especially if the mechanism of trying to increase near-term population is to restrict abortion (this is not a random sample of lives!)
I also think it seems bad for general civilization trajectory (partially norm-damaging, but mostly just direct effects on women & children), probably bad for ability to make investments in resilience & be careful with powerful new technology. These seem like the most important effects from a longtermist perspective, so I think abortion-restriction is bad from a total-longtermist perspective.
Understandable! Would you still say, though, that abortion is intrinsically morally bad? (As in the above, that doesn’t at all mean you have to endorse involuntary methods of reducing it.)
No, though maybe you’re using the word “intrinsically” differently? For the (majority) consequentialist part of my moral portfolio: The main intrinsic bad is suffering, and wellbeing (somewhat broader) is intrinsically good.
I think any argument about creating people/etc is instrumental—will they or won’t they increase wellbeing? They can both potentially contain suffering/wellbeing themselves, and affect the world in ways that affect wellbeing/suffering now & in the future. This includes effects before they are born (e.g. on women’s lives). TBH given your above arguments, I’m confused about the focus on abortion—it seems like you should be just as opposed to people choosing not to have children, and focus on encouraging/supporting people having kids.
For now, I think the ~main thing that matters is from a total-view longtermist perspective is making it through “the technological precipice”, where risks of permanent loss of sentient life/our values is somewhat likely, so other total-view longtermist arguments flow through effects on this + influencing for good trajectory arguably. Since abortion access seems good for civilization trajectory (women can have children when the want, don’t have their lives & health derailed, etc), more women involved in the development of powerful technology probably makes these fields more cautious/less rash, fewer ‘unwanted children’ [probably worse life outcomes], etc. Then abortion access seems good.
Maybe related: in general when maximizing, I think it’s probably best to finding the most important 1-3 things, then focus on those things. (e.g. for temp of my house, focus on temp of thermostat + temp of outside + insulation quality, ignore body heat & similar small things)
Thanks for this detail! Yeah, I agree that encouraging/supporting people having kids is a more effective approach, and that other things matter more from a total longtermist perspective. (In particular, if human extinction does occur in the near term, then factory farming plausibly outweighs everything good we’ve ever done. Either way, we have much to catch up on.)
To be more precise on the question, do you think that with all else equal, choosing to have a child is better than choosing to abort, assuming that the child will live a net good life (in expectation)? (This is what I was trying to capture with the word “intrinsic”—without accounting for concerns of norms, opportunity costs, other interventions dominating, etc i.e. as a unitary yes-or-no decision.)
Your advice on optimization is definitely correct, and I have many regrets about the framing of this post, some of which I enumerate here.
I’m a bit confused by this statement. Is a world where people don’t have access to abortion likely to have more aggregate well-being in the very long run? Naively, it feels like the opposite to me
To be clear I don’t think it’s worth discussing abortion at length, especially considering bruce’s comment. But I really don’t think the number of people currently existing says much about well-being in the very long run (arguably negatively correlated). And even if you wanted to increase near-term population, reducing access to abortion is a very bad way to that, with lots of negative knock-on effects.
I agree with everything you’ve said here.
What I was saying is that, for the type of longtermism that assumes that the average persons life will be of positive value, and that it is morally good to maximize the total number of people to maximize total happiness, and assumes that allowing a life to come into existence is as good as saving a life, abortion seems to be morally bad, unless you argue that abortion being banned will have enough of a negative effect to outweigh all the lives that would not have existed if it were banned (which I think one could definitely argue). I say type of longtermism because there are definitely different approaches to longtermism and these assumptions are not representative of all, and I disagree with many of the assumptions here. I particularly disagree that total value or wellbeing, as opposed to aggregate as you mention in your comment, is a meaningful metric, but I realize there are different views on that.
I guess I did mean aggregate in the ‘total’ well-being sense. I just feel pretty far from neutral about creating people who will live wonderful lives, and also pretty strongly disagree with the belief that restricting abortion will create more total well-being in the long run (or short tbh).
For total-view longtermism, I think the most important things are ~civilization is on a good trajectory, people are prudent/careful with powerful new technology, the world is lower conflict, investments are made to improve resilience to large catastrophes, etc. Restricting abortion seems kinda bad for several of those things, and positive for none. So it seems like total-view longtermism, even ignoring all other reasons to think this, says abortion-restriction is bad.
I guess part of this is a belief that in the long-run, the number of morally-valuable lives & total wellbeing (e.g. in a 10 million years) is very uncorrelated or anti-correlated with near-term world population. (though I also think restricting abortion is one of the worst ways to go about increasing near-term population, even for those who do think near-term & very-long-term are pretty positively correlated)
One could hypothetically believe that abortion is morally wrong, but that intervening to involuntarily reduce it is either:
Bad on net, because it damages the norm of personal autonomy, or
Insufficiently good on net, because there are better ways to increase the near-term population than by reducing abortion access
So rejecting the implications you outlined don’t necessarily mean rejecting the idea that abortion is intrinsically morally wrong.
I don’t think near-term population is helpful for long-term population or wellbeing, e.g. in >10,000 years from now. More likely negative effect than positive effect imo, especially if the mechanism of trying to increase near-term population is to restrict abortion (this is not a random sample of lives!)
I also think it seems bad for general civilization trajectory (partially norm-damaging, but mostly just direct effects on women & children), probably bad for ability to make investments in resilience & be careful with powerful new technology. These seem like the most important effects from a longtermist perspective, so I think abortion-restriction is bad from a total-longtermist perspective.
Understandable! Would you still say, though, that abortion is intrinsically morally bad? (As in the above, that doesn’t at all mean you have to endorse involuntary methods of reducing it.)
No, though maybe you’re using the word “intrinsically” differently? For the (majority) consequentialist part of my moral portfolio: The main intrinsic bad is suffering, and wellbeing (somewhat broader) is intrinsically good.
I think any argument about creating people/etc is instrumental—will they or won’t they increase wellbeing? They can both potentially contain suffering/wellbeing themselves, and affect the world in ways that affect wellbeing/suffering now & in the future. This includes effects before they are born (e.g. on women’s lives). TBH given your above arguments, I’m confused about the focus on abortion—it seems like you should be just as opposed to people choosing not to have children, and focus on encouraging/supporting people having kids.
For now, I think the ~main thing that matters is from a total-view longtermist perspective is making it through “the technological precipice”, where risks of permanent loss of sentient life/our values is somewhat likely, so other total-view longtermist arguments flow through effects on this + influencing for good trajectory arguably. Since abortion access seems good for civilization trajectory (women can have children when the want, don’t have their lives & health derailed, etc), more women involved in the development of powerful technology probably makes these fields more cautious/less rash, fewer ‘unwanted children’ [probably worse life outcomes], etc. Then abortion access seems good.
Maybe related: in general when maximizing, I think it’s probably best to finding the most important 1-3 things, then focus on those things. (e.g. for temp of my house, focus on temp of thermostat + temp of outside + insulation quality, ignore body heat & similar small things)
Thanks for this detail! Yeah, I agree that encouraging/supporting people having kids is a more effective approach, and that other things matter more from a total longtermist perspective. (In particular, if human extinction does occur in the near term, then factory farming plausibly outweighs everything good we’ve ever done. Either way, we have much to catch up on.)
To be more precise on the question, do you think that with all else equal, choosing to have a child is better than choosing to abort, assuming that the child will live a net good life (in expectation)? (This is what I was trying to capture with the word “intrinsic”—without accounting for concerns of norms, opportunity costs, other interventions dominating, etc i.e. as a unitary yes-or-no decision.)
Your advice on optimization is definitely correct, and I have many regrets about the framing of this post, some of which I enumerate here.