Vasco Grilo🔸 comments on GiveWell may have made 1 billion dollars of harmful grants, and Ambitious Impact incubated 8 harmful organisations via increasing factory-farming?

[Vasco Grilo🔸]

Hi Isaac.

Do you not worry about moral uncertainty?

I fully endorse expected total hedonistic utilitarianism (ETHU) in principle. However, I think it is often good to think about the implications of other moral theories as heuristics to follow ETHU well in practice.

Unless you’re certain about consequentialism, surely you should put some weight on avoiding killing even if it maximises impartial welfare?

I think saving human lives increases the number of beings killed via increasing the number of farmed and wild animals killed.

[Isaac Dunn]

Thanks Vasco! :)

I agree that thinking about other moral theories is useful for working out what utilitarianism would actually recommend.

That’s an interesting point re increasing the total amount of killing, I hadn’t considered that! But I was actually picking up on your comment which seemed to say something more general—that you wouldn’t intrinsically take into account whether an option involved (you) killing people, you’d just look at the consequences (and killing can lead to worse consequences, including in indirect ways, of course). But it sounds like maybe your response to that is you’re not worried about moral uncertainty /​ you’re sure about utilitarianism /​ you don’t have any reason to avoid killing people, other than the (normally very significant) utilitarian reasons not to kill?

[Vasco Grilo🔸]

But it sounds like maybe your response to that is you’re not worried about moral uncertainty /​ you’re sure about utilitarianism /​ you don’t have any reason to avoid killing people, other than the (normally very significant) utilitarian reasons not to kill?

Yes.