Good points, thanks :) I agree with everything here.
One view on how we impact the future is asking how would we want to construct it assuming we had direct control over it. I think that this view lends more to the points you make and where population ethics feels to me much murkier.
However, there are some things that we might be able to put some credence on that we’d expect future people to value. For example, I think that it’s more likely than not that future people would value their own welfare. So while it’s not an argument for preventing x-risk (as that runs into the same population ethics problems), it is still an argument for other types of possible longtermist interventions and definitely points at where (a potentially enormous amount of) value lies. Say, I expect working on moral circle expansion to be very important from this perspective (although, I’m not sure about how interventions there are actually promising).
Regarding quasi-aesthetic desires, I agree and think that this is very important to understand further. Personally, I’m confused as to whether I should value these kinds of desires (even at the expense of something based on welfarism), or whether I should think of these as a bias to overcome. As you say, I also guess that this might be behind some of the reasons for differing stances on cause prioritization.
Good points, thanks :) I agree with everything here.
One view on how we impact the future is asking how would we want to construct it assuming we had direct control over it. I think that this view lends more to the points you make and where population ethics feels to me much murkier.
However, there are some things that we might be able to put some credence on that we’d expect future people to value. For example, I think that it’s more likely than not that future people would value their own welfare. So while it’s not an argument for preventing x-risk (as that runs into the same population ethics problems), it is still an argument for other types of possible longtermist interventions and definitely points at where (a potentially enormous amount of) value lies. Say, I expect working on moral circle expansion to be very important from this perspective (although, I’m not sure about how interventions there are actually promising).
Regarding quasi-aesthetic desires, I agree and think that this is very important to understand further. Personally, I’m confused as to whether I should value these kinds of desires (even at the expense of something based on welfarism), or whether I should think of these as a bias to overcome. As you say, I also guess that this might be behind some of the reasons for differing stances on cause prioritization.