This argument is based on an obligation to take any action that helps others more than it hurts us, but this is too strong. There are many opportunities to help others with varying costs to ourselves and we should prioritize them by the ratio of self-cost to other-benefit.
You have:
abortion: expected QALYs are −23.138
adoption: expected QALYs are −0.247
I would put the expected QALY impact of abortion as smaller and of carrying the baby to term as larger, but even taking your numbers as they are pregnancy is not as efficient as other options. The ratio here is 93 to 1. Lets look at some other options:
Donating a kidney is not as bad as pregnancy in terms of cost to yourself, so let’s say −0.1 QALY. Receiving a kidney gets someone about 10 years, and the ability of an altruistic person to enable a chain of donations means maybe this comes to 30 years on average, so say 30 QALYs. This gives a ratio of 300 to 1.
Giving additional money to AMF or SCI is somewhat better than 1 QALY per $100. The impact on a relatively well off first worlder of giving $100 is far less than 1 QALY, and would continue to be until getting down to extremely low levels of spending. The ratio here is at least 1k to 1.
For the level of sacrifice involved in bringing an undesired child to term someone could have much more positive impact in other ways.
Good point. The advantage of AMF/​SCI might be lower, though, considering the income and quality-of-life difference between poor and rich countries. Having a baby yourself is similar to having an extra poor-country birth and then increasing that person’s income to rich-country levels (10-100x), although someone with a given income might be less happy in a rich country if they care about their relative wealth.
I agree with you, conditional on the person actually going on to donate a kidney, or donating a lot to AMF. Most people don’t however—if they abort the fetus, they won’t make a compensating kidney donation. So it seems like the right comparison for them.
Obviously if utilitarianism etc. are false this argument doesn’t work.
This argument is based on an obligation to take any action that helps others more than it hurts us, but this is too strong. There are many opportunities to help others with varying costs to ourselves and we should prioritize them by the ratio of self-cost to other-benefit.
You have:
I would put the expected QALY impact of abortion as smaller and of carrying the baby to term as larger, but even taking your numbers as they are pregnancy is not as efficient as other options. The ratio here is 93 to 1. Lets look at some other options:
Donating a kidney is not as bad as pregnancy in terms of cost to yourself, so let’s say −0.1 QALY. Receiving a kidney gets someone about 10 years, and the ability of an altruistic person to enable a chain of donations means maybe this comes to 30 years on average, so say 30 QALYs. This gives a ratio of 300 to 1.
Giving additional money to AMF or SCI is somewhat better than 1 QALY per $100. The impact on a relatively well off first worlder of giving $100 is far less than 1 QALY, and would continue to be until getting down to extremely low levels of spending. The ratio here is at least 1k to 1.
For the level of sacrifice involved in bringing an undesired child to term someone could have much more positive impact in other ways.
Good point. The advantage of AMF/​SCI might be lower, though, considering the income and quality-of-life difference between poor and rich countries. Having a baby yourself is similar to having an extra poor-country birth and then increasing that person’s income to rich-country levels (10-100x), although someone with a given income might be less happy in a rich country if they care about their relative wealth.
I agree with you, conditional on the person actually going on to donate a kidney, or donating a lot to AMF. Most people don’t however—if they abort the fetus, they won’t make a compensating kidney donation. So it seems like the right comparison for them.
Obviously if utilitarianism etc. are false this argument doesn’t work.