Vasco’s post isn’t a clear example of naive utilitarianism in this sense because he isn’t recommending any action that is clearly highly conventionally immoral and norm-breaking. The only action he is recommending, if any, is not donating to global health charities.
While it would be unfair to compare Vasco’s possible recommendation to a recommendation for “conventionally highly immoral and norm-breaking actions like stealing and murder,” conceding that exclusion doesn’t really help me that much. There’s still a wide scope of action in which one could act on a principle what looks something like young children’s lives as a class are likely net-negative and so we should generally avoid saving those lives unless it would be rights-violating to do so. [1]
For example, I could vote against costless consumer-safety laws because they are lifesaving, or vote against hospitals having to provide unfunded lifesaving charity care to those who are unable to pay for that care (EMTALA in the US). There are other reasons one might conceivably vote against such legislation (e.g., heavy libertarian ideology, or awareness of the rather significant costs of EMTALA).
But if I’m going to apply the reasoning of Vasco’s post when evaluating lifesaving global health charities, I’m going to need a good reason not to apply it to strangers drowning in a pond or votes on legislation. And I’m not thrilled with the candidate arguments that I can come up with to confine the post’s logic to the narrow grounds of charitable donations (even though I accept the reasons for not extending them to murder, theft, etc.). Without a convincing way to cabin the post to charitable donations, I think most of us are not willing to consider biting the bullet and (e.g.) voting to repeal lifesaving legislation even though having more people die of exploding toasters and emergency-room refusals would presumably lead to fewer factory-farmed animals.
I went with rights-violating with a nod to this post (the top result for naive utilitarianism on Google), and because I wanted to minimize strong effect of partiality commonly associated with conventional morality.
Yeah, I think this is probably right. My point isn’t that there is nothing troubling or potentially dangerous about Vasco’s reasoning-that’s clearly not true-but just that people should be careful in how they describe it, and not claim it rests on more controversial starting premises than it actually does. (I.e. in particular that it doesn’t have hedonism or consequentialism as a starting premise; obviously it does make some controversial assumptions.)
Thanks, Jason. Assuming the best voting option has benefits relative to not voting equivalent to increasing the consumption of 1 person by 4 % for 1 year, that half of the population votes, which extrapolated to all voters would imply consumption growing 2 pp (= 0.04*0.5) faster for 1 year, and that each consumption doubling for 1 year is as good as averting 0.5 DALYs, the best voting option would be worth averting 0.02 DALYs (= 0.04*0.5). I estimate cage-free campaigns have a cost-effectiveness of 4.59 DALY/$, in which case donating just 0.00436 $ (= 0.02/4.59) to such campaigns would be as good as casting the best vote. For a net income of 20 $/h, that would be 0.785 s (= 0.00436/20*60^2). Voting would take way more time than this, so it would be better for people caring about animal welfare to skip voting to work (on directly helping animals, or earning to give), or have a good time to make them more productive in their work later.
While it would be unfair to compare Vasco’s possible recommendation to a recommendation for “conventionally highly immoral and norm-breaking actions like stealing and murder,” conceding that exclusion doesn’t really help me that much. There’s still a wide scope of action in which one could act on a principle what looks something like young children’s lives as a class are likely net-negative and so we should generally avoid saving those lives unless it would be rights-violating to do so. [1]
For example, I could vote against costless consumer-safety laws because they are lifesaving, or vote against hospitals having to provide unfunded lifesaving charity care to those who are unable to pay for that care (EMTALA in the US). There are other reasons one might conceivably vote against such legislation (e.g., heavy libertarian ideology, or awareness of the rather significant costs of EMTALA).
But if I’m going to apply the reasoning of Vasco’s post when evaluating lifesaving global health charities, I’m going to need a good reason not to apply it to strangers drowning in a pond or votes on legislation. And I’m not thrilled with the candidate arguments that I can come up with to confine the post’s logic to the narrow grounds of charitable donations (even though I accept the reasons for not extending them to murder, theft, etc.). Without a convincing way to cabin the post to charitable donations, I think most of us are not willing to consider biting the bullet and (e.g.) voting to repeal lifesaving legislation even though having more people die of exploding toasters and emergency-room refusals would presumably lead to fewer factory-farmed animals.
I went with rights-violating with a nod to this post (the top result for naive utilitarianism on Google), and because I wanted to minimize strong effect of partiality commonly associated with conventional morality.
Yeah, I think this is probably right. My point isn’t that there is nothing troubling or potentially dangerous about Vasco’s reasoning-that’s clearly not true-but just that people should be careful in how they describe it, and not claim it rests on more controversial starting premises than it actually does. (I.e. in particular that it doesn’t have hedonism or consequentialism as a starting premise; obviously it does make some controversial assumptions.)
Thanks, Jason. Assuming the best voting option has benefits relative to not voting equivalent to increasing the consumption of 1 person by 4 % for 1 year, that half of the population votes, which extrapolated to all voters would imply consumption growing 2 pp (= 0.04*0.5) faster for 1 year, and that each consumption doubling for 1 year is as good as averting 0.5 DALYs, the best voting option would be worth averting 0.02 DALYs (= 0.04*0.5). I estimate cage-free campaigns have a cost-effectiveness of 4.59 DALY/$, in which case donating just 0.00436 $ (= 0.02/4.59) to such campaigns would be as good as casting the best vote. For a net income of 20 $/h, that would be 0.785 s (= 0.00436/20*60^2). Voting would take way more time than this, so it would be better for people caring about animal welfare to skip voting to work (on directly helping animals, or earning to give), or have a good time to make them more productive in their work later.