I don’t see how longtermism solves this. It doesn’t cancel the argument according to which you should believe, e.g., what matters most is conscious sub-people you might have in your brain. It just adds “in the long-term” to it.
What makes you believe reducing x-risks (or whatever longtermist project) does more good than harm, considering all sub-people in the long-term? (or atoms, or beneficiaries of acausal trade, or whatever.)
My preferred solution to the crazy-town problem fwiw: modeling our uncertain beliefs with imprecise probabilities. I find this well-motivated anyway, but this happens to break at least the craziest Pascalian wagers, assuming plausible imprecise credences (see DiGiovanni 2024).
this happens to break at least the craziest Pascalian wagers, assuming plausible imprecise credences (see DiGiovanni 2024).
FWIW, since writing that post, I’ve come to think it’s still pretty dang intuitively strange if taking the Pascalian wager is permissible on consequentialist grounds, even if not obligatory. Which is what maximality implies. I think you need something like bracketing in particular to avoid that conclusion, if you don’t go with (IMO really ad hoc) bounded value functions or small-probability discounting.
(This section of the bracketing post is appropos.)
I don’t see how longtermism solves this. It doesn’t cancel the argument according to which you should believe, e.g., what matters most is conscious sub-people you might have in your brain. It just adds “in the long-term” to it.
What makes you believe reducing x-risks (or whatever longtermist project) does more good than harm, considering all sub-people in the long-term? (or atoms, or beneficiaries of acausal trade, or whatever.)
My preferred solution to the crazy-town problem fwiw: modeling our uncertain beliefs with imprecise probabilities. I find this well-motivated anyway, but this happens to break at least the craziest Pascalian wagers, assuming plausible imprecise credences (see DiGiovanni 2024).
FWIW, since writing that post, I’ve come to think it’s still pretty dang intuitively strange if taking the Pascalian wager is permissible on consequentialist grounds, even if not obligatory. Which is what maximality implies. I think you need something like bracketing in particular to avoid that conclusion, if you don’t go with (IMO really ad hoc) bounded value functions or small-probability discounting.
(This section of the bracketing post is appropos.)