I buy that individuals should try to pick āpoliciesā and psychologically commit themselves to them, rather than only evaluate actions one at a time. I think this totally makes sense for seatbelts and helmets. However, Iām not sure it requires evaluating actions collectively at a fundamental normative level rather than practically, especially across individuals. I think we can defend wearing seatbelts and helmets with Nicolausian discounting without supporting longtermism or x-risk work to most individuals, even if the marginal x-risk opportunity were similar to the average or best already funded.
In particular, I know that if I donāt wear my seatbelt this time in a car by some logic that is not very circumstance-specific, I could use similar logic in the future to keep talking myself out of wearing a seatbelt, and those risks would accumulate into a larger risk that could be above the discount threshold. So I should stop myself now to minimize that risk. I should consider the effects of my reasoning and decision now on my own future decisions.
However, I donāt have nearly as much potential influence over humanityās x-risk strategy (causally or acausally) and the probability of an existential catastrophe. The typical individual has hardly any potential influence.
Also, separately, how would you decide who or what is included in the collective? Should we include the very agents creating the problems for us?
Re: seatbelts, I donāt think you need to invoke effects on future reasoning. If Iām understanding correctly, youāre imagining a situation where, after each one-mile drive with no seatbelt, you say to yourself something like āwell, Iāve driven all these other miles with no seatbelt, so thereās no reason to wear a seatbelt for this next mile.ā The previous decisions then somehow make you even less likely to wear a seatbelt in the future. But even totally absent this effect, where you use the exact same reasoning every time independent of all past and future decisions, if the one-mile risk is below your threshold youāll never wear a seatbelt. This is a pretty general problem that doesnāt really depend on the particulars of the person or situation (applies to anything where a big important thing can be decomposed into many small unimportant things), so Iām not sure an appeal to practical reasoning will suffice.
Re: the collective, Iāll tentatively suggest something like āthe set of people taking the same action as me, maybe up to differences in magnitude.ā If I think that donating a million dollars to Charity X would have a non-negligible impact on the world, I guess it shouldnāt matter if I personally donate a million all at once, if I donate a million in many ten-dollar increments, or if I know that 99,999 other people will all also donate ten dollars and I donate the final ten. But I agree that this is still underspecified.
Great post, thanks for writing!
I buy that individuals should try to pick āpoliciesā and psychologically commit themselves to them, rather than only evaluate actions one at a time. I think this totally makes sense for seatbelts and helmets. However, Iām not sure it requires evaluating actions collectively at a fundamental normative level rather than practically, especially across individuals. I think we can defend wearing seatbelts and helmets with Nicolausian discounting without supporting longtermism or x-risk work to most individuals, even if the marginal x-risk opportunity were similar to the average or best already funded.
In particular, I know that if I donāt wear my seatbelt this time in a car by some logic that is not very circumstance-specific, I could use similar logic in the future to keep talking myself out of wearing a seatbelt, and those risks would accumulate into a larger risk that could be above the discount threshold. So I should stop myself now to minimize that risk. I should consider the effects of my reasoning and decision now on my own future decisions.
However, I donāt have nearly as much potential influence over humanityās x-risk strategy (causally or acausally) and the probability of an existential catastrophe. The typical individual has hardly any potential influence.
Also, separately, how would you decide who or what is included in the collective? Should we include the very agents creating the problems for us?
Thanks for reading!
Re: seatbelts, I donāt think you need to invoke effects on future reasoning. If Iām understanding correctly, youāre imagining a situation where, after each one-mile drive with no seatbelt, you say to yourself something like āwell, Iāve driven all these other miles with no seatbelt, so thereās no reason to wear a seatbelt for this next mile.ā The previous decisions then somehow make you even less likely to wear a seatbelt in the future. But even totally absent this effect, where you use the exact same reasoning every time independent of all past and future decisions, if the one-mile risk is below your threshold youāll never wear a seatbelt. This is a pretty general problem that doesnāt really depend on the particulars of the person or situation (applies to anything where a big important thing can be decomposed into many small unimportant things), so Iām not sure an appeal to practical reasoning will suffice.
Re: the collective, Iāll tentatively suggest something like āthe set of people taking the same action as me, maybe up to differences in magnitude.ā If I think that donating a million dollars to Charity X would have a non-negligible impact on the world, I guess it shouldnāt matter if I personally donate a million all at once, if I donate a million in many ten-dollar increments, or if I know that 99,999 other people will all also donate ten dollars and I donate the final ten. But I agree that this is still underspecified.