Executive summary: Curran argues that longtermism conflicts with plausible deontic skepticism about aggregation from both ex-ante and ex-post perspectives, as long-term interventions like catastrophic risk mitigation generate weak complaints from future individuals compared to short-term interventions.
Key points:
The Late Train thought experiment illustrates the problematic conclusion that aggregating small harms can outweigh a large harm, which can be remedied by anti-aggregative moral theories.
Ex-ante anti-aggregationism finds long-term interventions generate weaker complaints than short-term interventions as they change individuals’ prospects less significantly.
Ex-post anti-aggregationism only justifies long-term interventions reasonably expected to save lives in reality, excluding catastrophic risk mitigation.
Skeptics of aggregation should be similarly skeptical of longtermism, while the paper may cast doubt on anti-aggregative theories for insufficiently valuing long-term interventions.
The conflict between intuitions in Late Train and the importance of long-term interventions suggests there may not be a moral theory that can consistently accommodate both.
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Executive summary: Curran argues that longtermism conflicts with plausible deontic skepticism about aggregation from both ex-ante and ex-post perspectives, as long-term interventions like catastrophic risk mitigation generate weak complaints from future individuals compared to short-term interventions.
Key points:
The Late Train thought experiment illustrates the problematic conclusion that aggregating small harms can outweigh a large harm, which can be remedied by anti-aggregative moral theories.
Ex-ante anti-aggregationism finds long-term interventions generate weaker complaints than short-term interventions as they change individuals’ prospects less significantly.
Ex-post anti-aggregationism only justifies long-term interventions reasonably expected to save lives in reality, excluding catastrophic risk mitigation.
Skeptics of aggregation should be similarly skeptical of longtermism, while the paper may cast doubt on anti-aggregative theories for insufficiently valuing long-term interventions.
The conflict between intuitions in Late Train and the importance of long-term interventions suggests there may not be a moral theory that can consistently accommodate both.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.