Thanks so much for all of your effort and engagement, Bruce! This has been extremely helpful. Iâll include an âupdatesâ edit with the following:
On the lack of clarity: Link to my reply to Julia which is a more accurate summary of what I was trying to say, including the far-better-specified main claim of âeffects on population sizes of neartermist interventions may be underrated in cause prioritisation.â
On the definition of voluntary: Be clear that the defunding intervention wouldnât satisfy some reasonable definitions of voluntary, and link to the comment thread discussing that.
With your permission, crediting you as a particularly helpful person for realizing these updates.
the pushback by commentors is in part because of object-level disagreements...the case for abortion reduction in this post is weakened by the disclaimer and idea that this post is about voluntary abortion reduction (i.e. if your personal views in 3 and 4a leads to a position that abortion is wrong on consequentialist grounds irrespective of whether this is voluntary, then it would be more accurate to state this clearly...neither 3 nor 4 as written actually exclude non-voluntary abortion reduction, (if anything, they may be interpreted that nonvoluntary abortion reduction is justified or preferable, due to the âlives savedâ as a result)
When I passed around drafts of this post, the overwhelming feedback I received was that people would be completely unreceptive to and unwilling to engage with even the slightest suggestion of involuntary abortion reduction. The impression I received from the feedback was that in publishing this post, I would be like a hardcore vegan entering a KFC with a megaphone.
Thereâs a Venn diagram of policies regarding animal suffering endorsed by hardcore vegans versus by KFC patrons. The shared part of the Venn diagram includes policies like convincing people to voluntarily go vegan, and on the edge of the shared part, there might be the proposal of suspending subsidies for KFC because thereâs a chance that animal suffering actually matters. The hardcore vegan tries to identify some aspect of the shared part of the Venn diagram to restrict their speech and the ensuing conversationâs scope to, so that the KFC patrons will actually take seriously and engage with what they have to say. They settle on âvoluntary animal suffering reduction,â and make that the headline of their speech.
Then patrons point out that suspending subsidies for KFC could cause some KFCs to shut down, so people who live in communities where those KFCs shut down wonât be able to access their sweet, sweet fried chicken. Therefore, the patrons argue, the hardcore veganâs proposal constitutes involuntary animal suffering reduction, because those people didnât voluntarily choose to go vegan. Now the hardcore vegan is in a bind, because on the one hand, suspending KFC subsidies seems to them like obviously the morally right thing to do. On the other hand, theyâre the one who chose to restrict the conversation to âvoluntary animal suffering reduction,â and thereâs a reasonable argument that suspending KFC subsidies would indeed constitute involuntary animal suffering reduction. So they can either drop the âvoluntaryâ part, and be socially ostracized and have everything they have to say duly ignored, or they can enter the semantic debate about which definitions of âvoluntaryâ their proposed intervention might fall under.
The hardcore vegan, having been passionate about animal suffering for years, chooses the latter, in spite of it being pretty motivated reasoning in retrospect. Bruce, a kindly and patient KFC patron, pulls the vegan aside and convinces them that their reasoning was motivated, and here we are.
clearly the extent to which you believe nonvoluntary abortion reduction is morally preferable (and why), and the extent to which readers agree with this line of reasoning are relevant considerations when taking into account your recommendations
There are quite a few pro-choice people who believe that abortion is morally wrong, but that the government should not ban it. Is it that hard to believe that, given an action many people think is morally wrong but should not be banned, other people with different views on the role of government might say that since it is morally wrong it should be banned? In fact, isnât the person who says âThis is murder, so letâs not do itâ a whole lot more honest than the person who says âThis is murder, but I think we should continue to permit it anywayâ?
I can only speak for myself, but while I would have disagreed with you even more if youâd lead with advocacy for involuntary abortion reduction, Iâd have been more supportive of your efforts in making that argument.
In the future, you might consider dealing with this challenge by making a sock puppet account. That way, you can air your views without risking social blowback. If the conversation turns out better than you expect, you can open up about your identity if you choose.
I understand your hesitancy. However, I find it frustrating when I intuit that my debate partner is making the argument they think I might accept rather than the one they actually believe. Time and energy I put into arguing against them is wastedâI donât know what your true cruxes are, and not even you truly hold the beliefs youâre putting forth in your OP.
Thanks for your advice, and for all of your value-adding comments! I genuinely apologize for making you feel that way. In hindsight, itâs much easier to see where and how oneâs structural choices can damage the conversation, and I regret those choices all the more because of that.
On making a sock puppet account, I was always taught that âif itâs worth saying in public, you should be willing to attach your name to it.â Perhaps that belief was too simplistic, but itâs why I chose to write this under my true identity.
I do truly hold the beliefs Iâm putting forth. As in the KFC analogy, I chose to focus on voluntary interventions because the feedback I received was that anything else would land on deaf ears. However, I do believe that voluntary interventions, especially broadly agreeable policies which help parents, would be a great thing to do.
Regarding crux(es), I hold total and non-person-affecting views in population ethics, and I think a child will live a life of positive value in expectation. Ignoring replaceability, I donât see the moral distinction between preventing an abortion and adding a future person who will live a life of positive value (in expectation). So even if x-risks are much more important, or animal welfare considerations completely dominate, etc, it still seems to me that preventing an abortion (ignoring replaceability) is as good as saving a human life today. Given the scale of abortion, it seems to me that if none of the abortions occurring today occurred, even with replaceability, that would still be as good as saving millions of lives, which I think dominates concerns of personal autonomy.
Iâll add this, now that youâve confirmed your views RE: voluntary vs nonvoluntary abortion reduction (mainly referring to âthat would still be as good as saving millions of lives, which I think dominates concerns of personal autonomyâ)
Taking your analogy from this comment, which you use to argue against family planning despite âthe aims we wantâwomenâs health + autonomyâ
As an analogy, many Ethiopians suffer from malnutrition. Letâs say well-meaning EAs sponsored an âEA steakhouseâ in Ethiopia, as steak can provide crucial nutrients to people in extreme poverty. There seem to be other interventions, including GAINâs Salt Iodization program, which also target malnutrition, without the possible serious negative externality of animal suffering. In that case, I think we should temporarily suspend our support for the steakhouse while we evaluate the relevant moral considerations. In the meanwhile, Ethiopians can still eat steak at non-EA steakhouses if theyâd like (as other well-meaning altruists have sponsored steakhouses of their own), or acquire steak through other meansâwe wouldnât be reducing their ability to voluntarily eat steak if they so choose. Our goalâcombating malnutritionâremains the same, but we choose the intervention to accomplish that goal without the possible negative externality.
If I apply this same logic to your goal of increasing population size, you could plausibly say that interventions that empower women who want to have more children or reduce barriers that they face are equivalent to GAINâs salt iodisation programme, and interventions that reduce the ability for women who donât want children to have abortions are equivalent to the steakhouse? If so, shouldnât you choose the intervention to accomplish the goal of increasing population size that didnât have the negative externality?
Iâm not actually endorsing using this argument generally for all cause prioritisation considerations, but just pointing out that if youâre happy to use this analogy to argue against family planning, it seems like it could now be also used to argue against interventions that reduce access to abortion, if your goal is to âincrease future humansâ? So am curious about the inconsistency there and what other considerations youâre taking into account.
And I guess this makes me update towards your your goal of pushing against abortion being higher than I previously had in mind. May be misinterpreting you though!
My aim is to increase the amount of happy future people. Reducing abortion is one way to do that, but Iâve been clear in a few comments that I would endorse other interventions over reducing abortions:
âoptimizing for increasing the amount of children that families want and are able to happily have is probably better than voluntary abortion reduction as a means of increasing the amount of near-term future peopleâ (source)
âI think voluntary abortion reduction is just one of many ways to increase the amount of near-term future people. The postâs âIn Our Personal Livesâ section includes the suggestions you gave and more, which I agree are arguably more effective than voluntary abortion reduction in accomplishing that goal.â (source)
You werenât able to see this, but I also agree-voted the following comments by others:
âthe best solution here is incentivizing people to voluntarily have more childrenâe.g. child tax credits, maternity/âpaternity leave, etcâ (source)
âIâd be tentatively more comfortable with measures taken to facilitate increasing the number of wanted pregnancies, including legalizing paid surrogacy services and subsidizing childcare and adoption of older children.â (source)
Everything I wrote about prioritizing other causes over voluntary abortion reduction goes double for involuntary abortion reduction, because of personal autonomy concerns. So yes, I endorse applying the same argument here in favor of prioritizing EA intervention without a negative externality regarding personal autonomy. I donât think thereâs an inconsistency here, because Iâve made it clear that I would prioritize âinterventions that empower women who want to have more children or reduce barriers that they face.â
On the definition of voluntary: Be clear that the defunding intervention wouldnât satisfy some reasonable definitions of voluntary, and link to the comment thread discussing that.
minor, and I donât have anything against you linking the thread, but presumably if you just clearly summarise your definition and usage of voluntary that will spare readers from trying to figure it out by going through that thread.
Happy to defer to you RE: acknowledgement, I donât feel strongly either way.
I appreciate the kindly and patient statement! I donât think the KFC analogy is great[1] but Iâll run with itâclearly if the vegan is choosing to âsettle on voluntary animal suffering reduction,â, then the vegan only gets benefits of doing this to the extent that the proposed interventions are actually voluntary.
While I think much of my pushback would have not existed if you had either bit the bullet and justified claims around involuntary abortion (if these are your true views), or if you were clearer about your use of voluntary, there are clearly many more considerations than just this one point I raised, and I think the feedback you were given seems reasonable! And I donât have a strong sense of whether the EA forum is a place where people would actually incur costs like âsocially ostracized and have everything they have to say duly ignoredâ. But I do think this could be an important consideration and I donât want to suggest that I think you should ignore this feedback. Iâm largely speaking for myself when I push back on the usage of voluntary, and Iâm not suggesting that you should prefer biting the bullet over say, focussing only on the subset of voluntary (by my definition) abortion reduction.
Itâs also worth considering the reasons for the feedback RE: predicted pushbackâis the expected pushback because the audience is tribal and unwilling to consider anything that isnât coming from its ingroup? Is there a significant value difference? Is it a legitimate criticism?
RE: motivated reasoningâjust to clarify, my intention personally wasnât to convince you that your reasoning was motivated, only to suggest that it could be perceived as such.
RE: Scottâs quote you linked: my guess is that the majority of people who are pro-choice do so not because they think â[abortion] is murder, but I think we should continue to permit it anywayâ, but because either 1) they donât believe abortion is morally equivalent to murder or 2) even in cases where it is morally equivalent to murder, preserving the foetusâs life doesnât trump other considerations (such as preserving the motherâs life, e.g. in a perimortem caesarean).
A better analogy might be going to a subset of very poor coastal West African fishermen who are highly dependent on fish for their food /â income, and telling them that itâs morally wrong to eat fish. Comparing pregnant women seeking abortions to people having KFC seems like it doesnât really capture the tradeoffs going on here.
Done on both of the concerns you raised. RE: acknowledgement, I believe people who update others should be celebrated :)
Agreed that the West African fishermen analogy would have been better than the KFC.
is the expected pushback because the audience is tribal and unwilling to consider anything that isnât coming from its ingroup?
As far as tribalism goes, EAs and rationalists are miles better than every other group Iâve ever come across, but that doesnât mean weâre not immune to it, especially with deeply divisive issues such as this postâs subject.
RE: Scottâs quote, most pro-choice people donât think that way, but Iâve met many anecdotally who do. Like you said, they more commonly consider abortion to not be equivalent to murder, with the violinist analogy as a backup in case it were equivalent.
Thanks so much for all of your effort and engagement, Bruce! This has been extremely helpful. Iâll include an âupdatesâ edit with the following:
On the lack of clarity: Link to my reply to Julia which is a more accurate summary of what I was trying to say, including the far-better-specified main claim of âeffects on population sizes of neartermist interventions may be underrated in cause prioritisation.â
On the definition of voluntary: Be clear that the defunding intervention wouldnât satisfy some reasonable definitions of voluntary, and link to the comment thread discussing that.
With your permission, crediting you as a particularly helpful person for realizing these updates.
When I passed around drafts of this post, the overwhelming feedback I received was that people would be completely unreceptive to and unwilling to engage with even the slightest suggestion of involuntary abortion reduction. The impression I received from the feedback was that in publishing this post, I would be like a hardcore vegan entering a KFC with a megaphone.
Thereâs a Venn diagram of policies regarding animal suffering endorsed by hardcore vegans versus by KFC patrons. The shared part of the Venn diagram includes policies like convincing people to voluntarily go vegan, and on the edge of the shared part, there might be the proposal of suspending subsidies for KFC because thereâs a chance that animal suffering actually matters. The hardcore vegan tries to identify some aspect of the shared part of the Venn diagram to restrict their speech and the ensuing conversationâs scope to, so that the KFC patrons will actually take seriously and engage with what they have to say. They settle on âvoluntary animal suffering reduction,â and make that the headline of their speech.
Then patrons point out that suspending subsidies for KFC could cause some KFCs to shut down, so people who live in communities where those KFCs shut down wonât be able to access their sweet, sweet fried chicken. Therefore, the patrons argue, the hardcore veganâs proposal constitutes involuntary animal suffering reduction, because those people didnât voluntarily choose to go vegan. Now the hardcore vegan is in a bind, because on the one hand, suspending KFC subsidies seems to them like obviously the morally right thing to do. On the other hand, theyâre the one who chose to restrict the conversation to âvoluntary animal suffering reduction,â and thereâs a reasonable argument that suspending KFC subsidies would indeed constitute involuntary animal suffering reduction. So they can either drop the âvoluntaryâ part, and be socially ostracized and have everything they have to say duly ignored, or they can enter the semantic debate about which definitions of âvoluntaryâ their proposed intervention might fall under.
The hardcore vegan, having been passionate about animal suffering for years, chooses the latter, in spite of it being pretty motivated reasoning in retrospect. Bruce, a kindly and patient KFC patron, pulls the vegan aside and convinces them that their reasoning was motivated, and here we are.
Iâll just drop a relevant quote from Scott Alexanderâs âFetal Attraction: Abortion and the Principle of Charityâ and leave it at that:
I can only speak for myself, but while I would have disagreed with you even more if youâd lead with advocacy for involuntary abortion reduction, Iâd have been more supportive of your efforts in making that argument.
In the future, you might consider dealing with this challenge by making a sock puppet account. That way, you can air your views without risking social blowback. If the conversation turns out better than you expect, you can open up about your identity if you choose.
I understand your hesitancy. However, I find it frustrating when I intuit that my debate partner is making the argument they think I might accept rather than the one they actually believe. Time and energy I put into arguing against them is wastedâI donât know what your true cruxes are, and not even you truly hold the beliefs youâre putting forth in your OP.
Thanks for your advice, and for all of your value-adding comments! I genuinely apologize for making you feel that way. In hindsight, itâs much easier to see where and how oneâs structural choices can damage the conversation, and I regret those choices all the more because of that.
On making a sock puppet account, I was always taught that âif itâs worth saying in public, you should be willing to attach your name to it.â Perhaps that belief was too simplistic, but itâs why I chose to write this under my true identity.
I do truly hold the beliefs Iâm putting forth. As in the KFC analogy, I chose to focus on voluntary interventions because the feedback I received was that anything else would land on deaf ears. However, I do believe that voluntary interventions, especially broadly agreeable policies which help parents, would be a great thing to do.
Regarding crux(es), I hold total and non-person-affecting views in population ethics, and I think a child will live a life of positive value in expectation. Ignoring replaceability, I donât see the moral distinction between preventing an abortion and adding a future person who will live a life of positive value (in expectation). So even if x-risks are much more important, or animal welfare considerations completely dominate, etc, it still seems to me that preventing an abortion (ignoring replaceability) is as good as saving a human life today. Given the scale of abortion, it seems to me that if none of the abortions occurring today occurred, even with replaceability, that would still be as good as saving millions of lives, which I think dominates concerns of personal autonomy.
Iâll add this, now that youâve confirmed your views RE: voluntary vs nonvoluntary abortion reduction (mainly referring to âthat would still be as good as saving millions of lives, which I think dominates concerns of personal autonomyâ)
Taking your analogy from this comment, which you use to argue against family planning despite âthe aims we wantâwomenâs health + autonomyâ
If I apply this same logic to your goal of increasing population size, you could plausibly say that interventions that empower women who want to have more children or reduce barriers that they face are equivalent to GAINâs salt iodisation programme, and interventions that reduce the ability for women who donât want children to have abortions are equivalent to the steakhouse? If so, shouldnât you choose the intervention to accomplish the goal of increasing population size that didnât have the negative externality?
Iâm not actually endorsing using this argument generally for all cause prioritisation considerations, but just pointing out that if youâre happy to use this analogy to argue against family planning, it seems like it could now be also used to argue against interventions that reduce access to abortion, if your goal is to âincrease future humansâ? So am curious about the inconsistency there and what other considerations youâre taking into account.
And I guess this makes me update towards your your goal of pushing against abortion being higher than I previously had in mind. May be misinterpreting you though!
My aim is to increase the amount of happy future people. Reducing abortion is one way to do that, but Iâve been clear in a few comments that I would endorse other interventions over reducing abortions:
âoptimizing for increasing the amount of children that families want and are able to happily have is probably better than voluntary abortion reduction as a means of increasing the amount of near-term future peopleâ (source)
âI think voluntary abortion reduction is just one of many ways to increase the amount of near-term future people. The postâs âIn Our Personal Livesâ section includes the suggestions you gave and more, which I agree are arguably more effective than voluntary abortion reduction in accomplishing that goal.â (source)
You werenât able to see this, but I also agree-voted the following comments by others:
âthe best solution here is incentivizing people to voluntarily have more childrenâe.g. child tax credits, maternity/âpaternity leave, etcâ (source)
âIâd be tentatively more comfortable with measures taken to facilitate increasing the number of wanted pregnancies, including legalizing paid surrogacy services and subsidizing childcare and adoption of older children.â (source)
Everything I wrote about prioritizing other causes over voluntary abortion reduction goes double for involuntary abortion reduction, because of personal autonomy concerns. So yes, I endorse applying the same argument here in favor of prioritizing EA intervention without a negative externality regarding personal autonomy. I donât think thereâs an inconsistency here, because Iâve made it clear that I would prioritize âinterventions that empower women who want to have more children or reduce barriers that they face.â
minor, and I donât have anything against you linking the thread, but presumably if you just clearly summarise your definition and usage of voluntary that will spare readers from trying to figure it out by going through that thread.
Happy to defer to you RE: acknowledgement, I donât feel strongly either way.
I appreciate the kindly and patient statement! I donât think the KFC analogy is great[1] but Iâll run with itâclearly if the vegan is choosing to âsettle on voluntary animal suffering reduction,â, then the vegan only gets benefits of doing this to the extent that the proposed interventions are actually voluntary.
While I think much of my pushback would have not existed if you had either bit the bullet and justified claims around involuntary abortion (if these are your true views), or if you were clearer about your use of voluntary, there are clearly many more considerations than just this one point I raised, and I think the feedback you were given seems reasonable! And I donât have a strong sense of whether the EA forum is a place where people would actually incur costs like âsocially ostracized and have everything they have to say duly ignoredâ. But I do think this could be an important consideration and I donât want to suggest that I think you should ignore this feedback. Iâm largely speaking for myself when I push back on the usage of voluntary, and Iâm not suggesting that you should prefer biting the bullet over say, focussing only on the subset of voluntary (by my definition) abortion reduction.
Itâs also worth considering the reasons for the feedback RE: predicted pushbackâis the expected pushback because the audience is tribal and unwilling to consider anything that isnât coming from its ingroup? Is there a significant value difference? Is it a legitimate criticism?
RE: motivated reasoningâjust to clarify, my intention personally wasnât to convince you that your reasoning was motivated, only to suggest that it could be perceived as such.
RE: Scottâs quote you linked: my guess is that the majority of people who are pro-choice do so not because they think â[abortion] is murder, but I think we should continue to permit it anywayâ, but because either 1) they donât believe abortion is morally equivalent to murder or 2) even in cases where it is morally equivalent to murder, preserving the foetusâs life doesnât trump other considerations (such as preserving the motherâs life, e.g. in a perimortem caesarean).
A better analogy might be going to a subset of very poor coastal West African fishermen who are highly dependent on fish for their food /â income, and telling them that itâs morally wrong to eat fish. Comparing pregnant women seeking abortions to people having KFC seems like it doesnât really capture the tradeoffs going on here.
Done on both of the concerns you raised. RE: acknowledgement, I believe people who update others should be celebrated :)
Agreed that the West African fishermen analogy would have been better than the KFC.
As far as tribalism goes, EAs and rationalists are miles better than every other group Iâve ever come across, but that doesnât mean weâre not immune to it, especially with deeply divisive issues such as this postâs subject.
RE: Scottâs quote, most pro-choice people donât think that way, but Iâve met many anecdotally who do. Like you said, they more commonly consider abortion to not be equivalent to murder, with the violinist analogy as a backup in case it were equivalent.