I don’t buy that what a neutral life is like is an important question.
I listened to a few minutes of the timestamp you linked but unless I missed something, Will is talking about his interest in finding out what proportion of people have lives above and below zero, not what a neutral life is like.
Consider a life which, on bringing it into existence, neither increases nor decreases social welfare because it is perfectly neutral in quality. What is such a life like?
This is a hugely important question. For Effective Altruists, the answer has implications for the value of the far future and the relative importance of saving lives versus reducing suffering.
I don’t see any tight connections between the value of finding out more about neutral lives and what implications that might have for efforts to reduce existential risk or other longtermist efforts. It’s more related to the important question of saving lives vs reducing suffering, but I don’t see any clear implications here either. If you spell out what connections you see I might be more convinced.
Even those not looking to improve the world should be interested—the answer also has implications for the ethics of having children and even whether or not you were wronged by being brought into existence. Despite this, the question has been given surprisingly little attention in both EA and non-EA circles.
It seems to me that the ethics of having children and the question of antinatalism are swamped by many considerations besides what a neutral life is like. Again, if you spell out the connections you see here I might be more interested.
Thanks this is useful pushback. I didn’t want to go into this detail in the blog post to stop it being too long, but perhaps a separate post could go into this as it is important!
My main response is that understanding the neutral level might be useful to determine how many people currently do / will live above/below the neutral level. For example this paper sets a critical (neutral) level in terms of per capita yearly consumption and then uses this level to judge if global social welfare is increasing, by understanding if additional people have been/are living positive or negative lives. If the critical level is too high, additional lives are negative and we may want to reduce suffering rather than save lives (from a shorttermist perspective).
Similarly, understanding the critical level can help us understand if future additional people are likely to live positive or negative lives, by comparing what we expect their lives to be to this critical level. If future beings are likely to be near/at/below the neutral level, we may find that improving the future conditional on it existing (e.g. reducing s-risk) is far more promising than ensuring the future does exist (e.g. reducing extinction risk). Some writers, like David Benatar, argue that the neutral level is likely to be very “high” (compared to what we naturally think it is) - if he’s right approaches to reducing extinction risk may be misguided.
Otherwise, understanding the neutral level may actually be directly relevant with regards to the repugnant conclusion in population ethics. Essentially some have argued that if a neutral level is much better than we might naturally think, the repugnant conclusion loses its repugnance. I won’t go into that in too much more detail now but this is a relevant book that covers this question.
I would note that even if understanding the neutral level isn’t important to understanding how many people currently do / will live above/below the neutral level, I’d hope my post is still useful as pretty much everything I’m saying is still relevant to that latter consideration. For example, the experience sampling approach, asking people if their lives are good, observing how many people commit suicide, and thinking who we would happily create can all in theory be used to understand how many people are above/below neutral (although I specify in my post which I think would be the most promising approach).
I don’t buy that what a neutral life is like is an important question.
I listened to a few minutes of the timestamp you linked but unless I missed something, Will is talking about his interest in finding out what proportion of people have lives above and below zero, not what a neutral life is like.
I don’t see any tight connections between the value of finding out more about neutral lives and what implications that might have for efforts to reduce existential risk or other longtermist efforts. It’s more related to the important question of saving lives vs reducing suffering, but I don’t see any clear implications here either. If you spell out what connections you see I might be more convinced.
It seems to me that the ethics of having children and the question of antinatalism are swamped by many considerations besides what a neutral life is like. Again, if you spell out the connections you see here I might be more interested.
I hope this is useful feedback!
Thanks this is useful pushback. I didn’t want to go into this detail in the blog post to stop it being too long, but perhaps a separate post could go into this as it is important!
My main response is that understanding the neutral level might be useful to determine how many people currently do / will live above/below the neutral level. For example this paper sets a critical (neutral) level in terms of per capita yearly consumption and then uses this level to judge if global social welfare is increasing, by understanding if additional people have been/are living positive or negative lives. If the critical level is too high, additional lives are negative and we may want to reduce suffering rather than save lives (from a shorttermist perspective).
Similarly, understanding the critical level can help us understand if future additional people are likely to live positive or negative lives, by comparing what we expect their lives to be to this critical level. If future beings are likely to be near/at/below the neutral level, we may find that improving the future conditional on it existing (e.g. reducing s-risk) is far more promising than ensuring the future does exist (e.g. reducing extinction risk). Some writers, like David Benatar, argue that the neutral level is likely to be very “high” (compared to what we naturally think it is) - if he’s right approaches to reducing extinction risk may be misguided.
Otherwise, understanding the neutral level may actually be directly relevant with regards to the repugnant conclusion in population ethics. Essentially some have argued that if a neutral level is much better than we might naturally think, the repugnant conclusion loses its repugnance. I won’t go into that in too much more detail now but this is a relevant book that covers this question.
I would note that even if understanding the neutral level isn’t important to understanding how many people currently do / will live above/below the neutral level, I’d hope my post is still useful as pretty much everything I’m saying is still relevant to that latter consideration. For example, the experience sampling approach, asking people if their lives are good, observing how many people commit suicide, and thinking who we would happily create can all in theory be used to understand how many people are above/below neutral (although I specify in my post which I think would be the most promising approach).