So that makes me wonder if our disapproval of the present case reflects a kind of speciesism—either our own, or the anticipated speciesism of a wider audience for whom this sort of reasoning would provide a PR problem?
Trolley problems are sufficiently abstract—and presented in the context of an extraordinary set of circumstances—that they are less likely to trigger some of the concerns (psychological or otherwise) triggered by the present case. In contrast, lifesaving activity is pretty common—it’s hard to estimate how many times the median person would have died if most people would not engage in lifesaving action, but I imagine it is relatively significant.
If I am in mortal danger, I want other people to save my life (and the lives of my wife and child). I do not want other people deciding whether I get medical assistance against a deadly infectious disease based on their personal assessment of whether saving my life would be net-positive for the world. That’s true whether the assessment would be based on assumptions about people like me at a population level, or about my personal value-add / value-subtract in the decider’s eyes. If I have that expectation of other people, but don’t honor the resulting implied social contract in return, that would seem rather hypocritical of me. And if I’m going to honor the deal with fellow Americans (mostly white), and not honor it with young children in Africa, that makes me rather uncomfortable too for presumably obvious reasons.
We sometimes talk about demandingness in EA—a theory under which I would need to encourage people not to save myself, my wife, and my son if they concluded our reference class (upper-middle class Americans, likely) was net negative for the world is simply too demanding for me and likely for 99.9% of the population too.
Finally, I’m skeptical that human civilization could meaningfully thrive if everyone applied this kind of logic when analyzing whether to engage in lifesaving activities throughout their lives. (I don’t see how it make sense if limited to charitable endeavors.) Especially if the group whose existence was calculated as negative is as large as people who eat meat! In contrast, I don’t have any concerns about societies and cultures functioning adequately depending on how people answer trolley-like problems.
So I think those kinds of considerations might well explain why the reaction is different here than the reaction to an academic problem.
Trolley problems are sufficiently abstract—and presented in the context of an extraordinary set of circumstances—that they are less likely to trigger some of the concerns (psychological or otherwise) triggered by the present case. In contrast, lifesaving activity is pretty common—it’s hard to estimate how many times the median person would have died if most people would not engage in lifesaving action, but I imagine it is relatively significant.
If I am in mortal danger, I want other people to save my life (and the lives of my wife and child). I do not want other people deciding whether I get medical assistance against a deadly infectious disease based on their personal assessment of whether saving my life would be net-positive for the world. That’s true whether the assessment would be based on assumptions about people like me at a population level, or about my personal value-add / value-subtract in the decider’s eyes. If I have that expectation of other people, but don’t honor the resulting implied social contract in return, that would seem rather hypocritical of me. And if I’m going to honor the deal with fellow Americans (mostly white), and not honor it with young children in Africa, that makes me rather uncomfortable too for presumably obvious reasons.
We sometimes talk about demandingness in EA—a theory under which I would need to encourage people not to save myself, my wife, and my son if they concluded our reference class (upper-middle class Americans, likely) was net negative for the world is simply too demanding for me and likely for 99.9% of the population too.
Finally, I’m skeptical that human civilization could meaningfully thrive if everyone applied this kind of logic when analyzing whether to engage in lifesaving activities throughout their lives. (I don’t see how it make sense if limited to charitable endeavors.) Especially if the group whose existence was calculated as negative is as large as people who eat meat! In contrast, I don’t have any concerns about societies and cultures functioning adequately depending on how people answer trolley-like problems.
So I think those kinds of considerations might well explain why the reaction is different here than the reaction to an academic problem.