I worry about this line of reasoning because it’s ends-justify-the-means thinking.
Let’s say billions of people were being tortured right now, and some longtermists wrote about how this isn’t even a feather in the scales compared to the cosmic endowment. These longtermists would be accused of callously gambling billions of years on suffering on a theoretical idea. I can just imagine The Guardian’s articles about how SBF’s naive utilitarianism is alive and well in EA.
The difference between the scenario for animals and the scenario for humans is that the former is socially acceptable but the latter is not. There isn’t a difference in the actual badness.
Separately, to engage with the utilitarian merits of your argument, my main skepticism is an unwillingness to go all-in on ideas which remain theoretical when the stakes are billions of years of torture. (For example, let’s say we ignore factory farming, and then there’s a still unknown consideration which prevents us or anyone else from accessing the cosmic endowment. That scares me.) Also, though I’m not a negative utilitarian, I think I take arguments for suffering-focused views more seriously than you might.
I worry about this line of reasoning because it’s ends-justify-the-means thinking.
Let’s say billions of people were being tortured right now, and some longtermists wrote about how this isn’t even a feather in the scales compared to the cosmic endowment. These longtermists would be accused of callously gambling billions of years on suffering on a theoretical idea. I can just imagine The Guardian’s articles about how SBF’s naive utilitarianism is alive and well in EA.
The difference between the scenario for animals and the scenario for humans is that the former is socially acceptable but the latter is not. There isn’t a difference in the actual badness.
Separately, to engage with the utilitarian merits of your argument, my main skepticism is an unwillingness to go all-in on ideas which remain theoretical when the stakes are billions of years of torture. (For example, let’s say we ignore factory farming, and then there’s a still unknown consideration which prevents us or anyone else from accessing the cosmic endowment. That scares me.) Also, though I’m not a negative utilitarian, I think I take arguments for suffering-focused views more seriously than you might.