The post above explores how under the utilitarian hedonistic moral framework, the meat-eater problem may result in GiveWell grants or AIM charities to be net-negative. The post seems to argue that one expected value grounds, one should let children die of malaria because they could end up eating chicken, for example.
I find this argument morally repugnant and want to highlight it. Using some of the words I have used in a reply:
A clear-thinking EA should strongly oppose âends justify the meansâ reasoning.
First, naive calculations that justify some harmful action because it has good consequences are, in practice, almost never correct.
Second, plausibly it is wrong to do harm even when doing so will bring about the best outcome.
Finally, let me say the post itself seems to pit animal welfare against global poverty causes, which I found divisive and probably counterproductive.
I downvoted this post because it is not representative of the values I believe EA should strive for. It may have been sufficient to show disagreement, but if someone goes for the first time into the forum and sees the post with many upvotes, their impression will be negative and may not become engaged with the community. If a reporter reads the forum and reads this, they will negatively cover both EA and animal welfare. And if someone was considering taking the 10% pledge or changing their career to support either animal welfare or global health and read this, they will be less likely to do so.
I am sorry, but I will strongly oppose âends justify the meansâ argument put forward by this post.
Vasco has come to a certain conclusion on what the best action is, given a potential trade-off between the impact of global health initiatives and animal welfare.
I think it is reasonable to disagree but I think it is bad for the norms of the forum and unnecessarily combative for us to describe moral views we disagree with as âmorally repugnantâ. I think this is particularly unfair if we do not elaborate on why we either:
a) think this trade-off does not exist, or is very small.
or
b) disagree.
For example, global health advocates could similarly argue that EA pits direct cash transfers against interventions like anti-malaria bednets, which is divisive and counterproductive, and that EA forum posts doing this will create a negative impression of EA on reporters and potential 10% pledgers.
In my view, discussing difficult, morally uncomfortable trade-offs between prioritising different, important causes is a key role of the EA forumâwhether within cause areas (should we let children die of cancer to prioritise tackling malaria /â should we let cows be abused to prioritise reducing battery cage farming of hens), or across cause areas. We should discuss these questions openly rather than avoiding them to help us make better moral decisions.
I think it would also be bad if we stopped discussing these questions openly for fear of criticism from reportersâthis would bias EA towards preserving the worldâs moral status quo enforced by the media.
Also, traditionally, criticism of âends justifies the meansâ reasoning tends to object to arguments which encourage us to actively break deontological rules (like laws) to pursue some aggregate increase in utility, rather than arguments to prioritise one approach to improving utility over the other (which causes harm by omission rather than active harm), egâprioritising animal welfare over global health, or vice-versa. With a more expansive use of the term, critics could reject GiveWell style charity comparison as âends justifies the means reasoningâ which argues one should let some children die of tetanus to save other children from malaria.
For example, global health advocates could similarly argue that EA pits direct cash transfers against interventions like anti-malaria bednets, which is divisive and counterproductive, and that EA forum posts doing this will create a negative impression of EA on reporters and potential 10% pledgers.
There is a difference between what the post does and what you mention. The post is not saying that you should prioritize animal welfare vs global health (which I would find quite reasonable and totally acceptable). I would find that useful and constructive. Instead, the post claims you should simply not donate the money if considering antimalarial nets. Or in other words, that you should let children die because of the chicken they may have eaten.
Also, traditionally, criticism of âends justifies the meansâ reasoning tends to object to arguments which encourage us to actively break deontological rules (like laws) to pursue some aggregate increase in utility, rather than arguments to prioritise one approach to improving utility over the other (which causes harm by omission rather than active harm), egâprioritising animal welfare over global health, or vice-versa.
In fact, the deontological rule he is breaking seems clear to me: that innocent children should die because their statistical reference class says they will do something bad. And yes, they are still innocent. To me, any moral theory that dictates that innocent children should die is probably breaking apart at that point. Instead he bites the bullet and assumes that the means (preventing suffering) justifies the ends (letting innocent children die). I am sorry to say that I find that morally repugnant.
Also, let me say: I have no issue with discussing the implications of a given moral theory, even if they look terrible. But I think this should be a means to test and set limits to your moral theory, not a way to justify this sort of opinion. Let me reemphasize that my quarrel has nothing to do with cause prioritization or cost-effectiveness. Instead, I have a strong sense that innocent children should not be let die. If my moral theory disagrees with the strong ethical sense, it is the strong ethical sense that should guide the moral theory, and not the other way around.
To me, any moral theory that dictates that innocent children should die is probably breaking apart at that point. Instead he bites the bullet and assumes that the means (preventing suffering) justifies the ends (letting innocent children die). I am sorry to say that I find that morally repugnant. [...] Instead, I have a strong sense that innocent children should not be let die. If my moral theory disagrees with the strong ethical sense, it is the strong ethical sense that should guide the moral theory, and not the other way around.
Hmm, but we are all letting children die all the time from not donating. I am donating just 15% of my income; I could certainly donate 20-30% and save additional lives that way. I think my failing to donate 20-30% is morally imperfect, but I wouldnât call it repugnant. What is it that makes âI wonât donate to save lives because I think it creates a lot of animal sufferingâ repugnant but âI wonât donate to save lives because I prefer to have more income for myselfâ not?
What is it that makes âI wonât donate to save lives because I think it creates a lot of animal sufferingâ repugnant but âI wonât donate to save lives because I prefer to have more income for myselfâ not?
I think actively advocating for others to not save childrenâs lives is a step beyond a mere decision not to donate. I read it this way:
Action: Write EA Forum post criticizing lifesaving as net-negative activity.
Implied Theory of Impact: Readers decide not to donate to GiveWell et al. --> Fewer lives get saved --> Less meat gets eaten --> Fewer animals suffer.
If Iâm reading the theory of impact correctly, innocent children dying is a key part of the intended mechanism of action (MoA) -- not a side effect (as it is with âprefer to have more income for myselfâ).
There are obviously some cruxes hereâincluding whether there is a moral difference between actively advocating for others not to hand out bednets vs. passively choosing to donate elsewhere /â spend on oneself, and whether there is a moral difference between a bad thing being part of the intended MoA vs. a side effect. I would answer yes to both, but I have lower consequentialist representation in my moral parliament than many people here.
Even if one would answer no to both cruxes, I submit that âno endorsing MoAs that involve the death of innocent peopleâ is an important set of side rails for the EA movement. I think advocacy that saving the lives of children is net-negative is outside of those rails. For those who might not agree, Iâm curious where they would put the rails (or whether they disagree with the idea that there should be rails).
Thanks, that is a useful distinction. Although I would guess Vasco would prefer to frame the theory of impact as âfind out whether donating to GiveWell is net positive â help people make donation choices that promote welfare betterâ or something like that. I buy @Richard Y Chappellđ¸âs take that it is really bad to discourage others from effective giving (at least when itâs done carelessly/ânegligently), but imo Vasco was not setting out to discourage effective giving, or it doesnât seem like that to me. He isâIâm guessingâcooperatively seeking to help effective givers and others make choices that better promote welfare, which they are presumably interested in doing.
There are obviously some cruxes hereâincluding whether there is a moral difference between actively advocating for others not to hand out bednets vs. passively choosing to donate elsewhere /â spend on oneself, and whether there is a moral difference between a bad thing being part of the intended MoA vs. a side effect. I would answer yes to both, but I have lower consequentialist representation in my moral parliament than many people here.
Yes, I personally lean towards thinking the act-omission difference doesnât matter (except maybe as a useful heuristic sometimes).
As for whether the harm to humans is incidental-but-necessary or part-of-the-mechanism-and-necessary, Iâm not sure what difference it makes if the outcomes are identical? Maybe the difference is that, when the harm to humans is part-of-the-mechanism-and-necessary, you may suspect that itâs indicative of a bad moral attitude. But I think the attitude behind âI wonât donate to save lives because I think it creates a lot of animal sufferingâ is clearly better (since it is concerned with promoting welfare) than the attitude behind âI wonât donate to save lives because I prefer to have more income for myselfâ (which is not).
Even if one would answer no to both cruxes, I submit that âno endorsing MoAs that involve the death of innocent peopleâ is an important set of side rails for the EA movement. I think advocacy that saving the lives of children is net-negative is outside of those rails. For those who might not agree, Iâm curious where they would put the rails (or whether they disagree with the idea that there should be rails).
I do not think it is good to create taboos around this question. Like, does that mean we shouldnât post anything that can be construed as concluding that itâs net harmful to donate to GiveWell charities? If so, that would make it much harder to criticise GiveWell and find out what the truth is. What if donating to GiveWell charities really is harmful? Shouldnât we want to know and find out?
I do not think it is good to create taboos around this question. Like, does that mean we shouldnât post anything that can be construed as concluding that itâs net harmful to donate to GiveWell charities? If so, that would make it much harder to criticise GiveWell and find out what the truth is. What if donating to GiveWell charities really is harmful? Shouldnât we want to know and find out?
The taboo would be around advocacy of the view that âit is better for the world for innocent group X of people not to exist.â Here, innocent group X would be under-5s in developing countries who are/âwould be saved by GiveWell interventions. That certain criticisms of GiveWell couldnât be made without breaking the taboo would be a collateral effect rather than the intent, but itâs very hard to avoid over-inclusiveness in a taboo.
There have been social movements that assert that âit is better for the world for innocent group X of people not to existâ and encourage people to make legal, non-violent decisions premised on that belief. But I think the base rate of those social movements going well is low (and it may be ~zero). Based on that history and experience, I would need to see a very compelling argument to convince me that going down that path was a good idea here. I donât see that here; in particular, I think advocacy of the reader donating a share of their charitable budget to animal-welfare orgs to offset any potential negative AW effects of the lifesaving work they fund is considerably less problematic.
Relatedly, I also donât see things going well for EA if it is seen as acceptable for each of us to post our list of group X and encourage others to not pull members of group X out of a drowning pond even if we could do so costlessly or nearly so. Out of respect for Forum norms, Iâm not going to speculate on who other readersâ Group Xs might include, but I can think of several off the top of my head for whom one could make a plausible net-negative argument, all of whom would be less morally objectionable to include on the list than toddlers....
To clarify, I think Iâm ok with having a taboo on advocacy against âit is better for the world for innocent group X of people not to existâ, since that seems like the kind of naive utilitarianism we should definitely avoid. Iâm just against a taboo on asking or trying to better understand whether âit is better for the world for innocent group X of people not to existâ is true or not. I donât think Vasco was engaging in advocacy, my impression was that he was trying to do the latter, while expressing a lot of uncertainty.
Iâd say that itâs a (putative) instance of adversarial ethics rather than âends justify the meansâ reasoning (in the usual sense of violating deontic constraints).
Sometimes that seems OK. Like, it seems reasonable to refrain from rescuing the large man in my status-quo-reversal of the Trolley Bridge case. (And to urge others to likewise refrain, for the sake of the five who would die if anyone acted to save the one.) So that makes me wonder if our disapproval of the present case reflects a kind of speciesismâeither our own, or the anticipated speciesism of a wider audience for whom this sort of reasoning would provide a PR problem?
OTOH, I think the meat-eater problem is misguided anyway, so another possibility is just that mistakenly urging against saving innocent peopleâs lives is especially bad. I guess I do think the moral risk here is sufficient to be extra wary about how one expresses concerns like the meat-eater problem. Like Jason, I think itâs much better to encourage AW offsets than to discourage GHD life-saving.
(Offsetting the potential downsides from helping others seems like a nice general solution to the problem of adversarial ethics, even if it isnât strictly optimal.)
So that makes me wonder if our disapproval of the present case reflects a kind of speciesismâeither 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 abstractâand presented in the context of an extraordinary set of circumstancesâthat they are less likely to trigger some of the concerns (psychological or otherwise) triggered by the present case. In contrast, lifesaving activity is pretty commonâitâs 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. Thatâs true whether the assessment would be based on assumptions about people like me at a population level, or about my personal value-add /â value-subtract in the deciderâs eyes. If I have that expectation of other people, but donât honor the resulting implied social contract in return, that would seem rather hypocritical of me. And if Iâm 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 EAâa 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, Iâm 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 donât 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 donât 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.
I agree with most except perhaps the framing of the following paragraph.
Sometimes that seems OK. Like, it seems reasonable to refrain from rescuing the large man in my status-quo-reversal of the Trolley Bridge case. (And to urge others to likewise refrain, for the sake of the five who would die if anyone acted to save the one.) So that makes me wonder if our disapproval of the present case reflects a kind of speciesismâeither our own, or the anticipated speciesism of a wider audience for whom this sort of reasoning would provide a PR problem?
In my opinion the key difference is that here the bad outcome (eg animal suffering but any other, really), may happen because of decisions taken by the people you are saving. So, in a sense it is not an externally imposed mechanism. The key insight to me is that the children always have the chance to prevent the suffering that follows, people can reason and become convinced, as I was, that this suffering is important and should be prevented. Consequently, I feel strongly against letting innocent people die in these situations. So overall I do not think this has to do with speciesism or cause prioritisation.
Incidentally, this repeats with many cultural themes in films and books, that people can change their minds, and that they should be given the chance to. Similarly, it is a common theme that you should not kill innocent people to prevent some bad thing from happening (think Thanos and overpopulation, Herod convicting Jesus to die to prevent greater wrongdoingsâŚ). Clearly these are not strong ethical arguments, but I think they contain a grain of truth; and one should probably have a very strong bias against (taboo level) endorsing (not discussing) conclusions that justifies letting innocent people die.
Just wanted to copy MacAskillâs comment here so people donât have to click through:
Though I was deeply troubled by the poor meater problem for some time, Iâve come to the conclusion that it isnât that bad (for utilitariansâI think itâs much worse for non-consequentialists, though Iâm not sure).
The basic idea is as follows. If I save the life of someone in the developing world, almost all the benefit I produce is through compounding effects: I speed up technological progress by a tiny margin, giving us a little bit more time at the end of civilisation, when there are far more people. This benefit dwarfs the benefit to the individual whose life Iâve saved (as Bostrom argues in the first half of Astronomical Waste). Now, I also increase the amount of animal suffering, because the person whose life Iâve saved consumes meat, and I speed up development of the country, which means that the country starts factory farming sooner. However, we should expect (or, at least, I expect) factory farming to disappear within the next few centuries, as cheaper and tastier meat substitutes are developed. So the increase in animal suffering doesnât compound in the same way: whereas the benefits of saving a life continue until the humanity race (or its descendants) dies out, the harm of increasing meat consumption ends only after a few centuries (when we move beyond farming).
So letâs say the benefit to the person from having their live saved is N. The magnitude of the harm from increasing factory farming might be a bit more than N: maybe â10N. But the benefit from speeding up technological progress is vastly greater than that: 1000N, or something. So itâs still a good thing to save someoneâs life in the developing world. (Though of course, if you take the arguments about x-risk seriously, then alleviating global poverty is dwarfed by existential risk mitigation).
This is informative, I strongly upvoted. A few comments though:
I find it ok to entertain the idea of what is the expected value of doing X or Y as a function of their consequences, be it longtermism or animal welfare.
I would find it very morally unappealing to refuse to save lives on the grounds of convicting people of actions they have not committed yet. Eg, if a child is drowning before you, I think it would be wrong in my opinion to let her drown because he might cause animal suffering. A person can make decisions and I would find it wrong to let her die because of what her statistical group does.
As I commented there: I donât think this is the kind of âends justify the meansâ reasoning that MacAskill is objecting to. Vasco isnât arguing that we should break the law. Heâs just doing a fairly standard EA cause prioritization analysis. Arguing that people should not donate to global health doesnât even contradict common-sense morality because as we see from the world around us, common-sense morality holds that itâs perfectly permissible to let hundreds or thousands of children die of preventable diseases. Utilitarians and other consequentialists are the ones who hold âweirdâ views here, because we reject the act/âomission distinction in the first place.
(For my part, I try to donate in such a way that Iâm net-positive from the perspective of someone like Vasco as well as global health advocates.)
Arguing that people should not donate to global health doesnât even contradict common-sense morality because as we see from the world around us, common-sense morality holds that itâs perfectly permissible to let hundreds or thousands of children die of preventable diseases.
I think I disagree with this. Instead, I think most people find it hard to do what they believe because of social norms. But I think it would be hard to find a significant percentage of people who believe that âletting innocent children die because of what they could doâ.
Utilitarians and other consequentialists are the ones who hold âweirdâ views here, because we reject the act/âomission distinction in the first place.
Probably you are somewhat right here, but I believe âletting innocent children dieâ is even a weirder opinion to have.
Contra Vasco Grilo on GiveWell may have made 1 billion dollars of harmful grants, and Ambitious Impact incubated 8 harmful organisations via increasing factory-farming?
The post above explores how under the utilitarian hedonistic moral framework, the meat-eater problem may result in GiveWell grants or AIM charities to be net-negative. The post seems to argue that one expected value grounds, one should let children die of malaria because they could end up eating chicken, for example.
I find this argument morally repugnant and want to highlight it. Using some of the words I have used in a reply:
Let me quote William MacAskill comments on âWhat We Owe the Futureâ and his reflections on FTX (https://ââforum.effectivealtruism.org/ââposts/ââWdeiPrwgqW2wHAxgT/ââa-personal-statement-on-ftx):
Finally, let me say the post itself seems to pit animal welfare against global poverty causes, which I found divisive and probably counterproductive.
I downvoted this post because it is not representative of the values I believe EA should strive for. It may have been sufficient to show disagreement, but if someone goes for the first time into the forum and sees the post with many upvotes, their impression will be negative and may not become engaged with the community. If a reporter reads the forum and reads this, they will negatively cover both EA and animal welfare. And if someone was considering taking the 10% pledge or changing their career to support either animal welfare or global health and read this, they will be less likely to do so.
I am sorry, but I will strongly oppose âends justify the meansâ argument put forward by this post.
Vasco has come to a certain conclusion on what the best action is, given a potential trade-off between the impact of global health initiatives and animal welfare.
I think it is reasonable to disagree but I think it is bad for the norms of the forum and unnecessarily combative for us to describe moral views we disagree with as âmorally repugnantâ. I think this is particularly unfair if we do not elaborate on why we either:
a) think this trade-off does not exist, or is very small.
or
b) disagree.
For example, global health advocates could similarly argue that EA pits direct cash transfers against interventions like anti-malaria bednets, which is divisive and counterproductive, and that EA forum posts doing this will create a negative impression of EA on reporters and potential 10% pledgers.
In my view, discussing difficult, morally uncomfortable trade-offs between prioritising different, important causes is a key role of the EA forumâwhether within cause areas (should we let children die of cancer to prioritise tackling malaria /â should we let cows be abused to prioritise reducing battery cage farming of hens), or across cause areas. We should discuss these questions openly rather than avoiding them to help us make better moral decisions.
I think it would also be bad if we stopped discussing these questions openly for fear of criticism from reportersâthis would bias EA towards preserving the worldâs moral status quo enforced by the media.
Also, traditionally, criticism of âends justifies the meansâ reasoning tends to object to arguments which encourage us to actively break deontological rules (like laws) to pursue some aggregate increase in utility, rather than arguments to prioritise one approach to improving utility over the other (which causes harm by omission rather than active harm), egâprioritising animal welfare over global health, or vice-versa. With a more expansive use of the term, critics could reject GiveWell style charity comparison as âends justifies the means reasoningâ which argues one should let some children die of tetanus to save other children from malaria.
Hi there,
Let me try to explain myself a bit.
There is a difference between what the post does and what you mention. The post is not saying that you should prioritize animal welfare vs global health (which I would find quite reasonable and totally acceptable). I would find that useful and constructive. Instead, the post claims you should simply not donate the money if considering antimalarial nets. Or in other words, that you should let children die because of the chicken they may have eaten.
In fact, the deontological rule he is breaking seems clear to me: that innocent children should die because their statistical reference class says they will do something bad. And yes, they are still innocent. To me, any moral theory that dictates that innocent children should die is probably breaking apart at that point. Instead he bites the bullet and assumes that the means (preventing suffering) justifies the ends (letting innocent children die). I am sorry to say that I find that morally repugnant.
Also, let me say: I have no issue with discussing the implications of a given moral theory, even if they look terrible. But I think this should be a means to test and set limits to your moral theory, not a way to justify this sort of opinion. Let me reemphasize that my quarrel has nothing to do with cause prioritization or cost-effectiveness. Instead, I have a strong sense that innocent children should not be let die. If my moral theory disagrees with the strong ethical sense, it is the strong ethical sense that should guide the moral theory, and not the other way around.
Hmm, but we are all letting children die all the time from not donating. I am donating just 15% of my income; I could certainly donate 20-30% and save additional lives that way. I think my failing to donate 20-30% is morally imperfect, but I wouldnât call it repugnant. What is it that makes âI wonât donate to save lives because I think it creates a lot of animal sufferingâ repugnant but âI wonât donate to save lives because I prefer to have more income for myselfâ not?
I think actively advocating for others to not save childrenâs lives is a step beyond a mere decision not to donate. I read it this way:
Action: Write EA Forum post criticizing lifesaving as net-negative activity.
Implied Theory of Impact: Readers decide not to donate to GiveWell et al. --> Fewer lives get saved --> Less meat gets eaten --> Fewer animals suffer.
If Iâm reading the theory of impact correctly, innocent children dying is a key part of the intended mechanism of action (MoA) -- not a side effect (as it is with âprefer to have more income for myselfâ).
There are obviously some cruxes hereâincluding whether there is a moral difference between actively advocating for others not to hand out bednets vs. passively choosing to donate elsewhere /â spend on oneself, and whether there is a moral difference between a bad thing being part of the intended MoA vs. a side effect. I would answer yes to both, but I have lower consequentialist representation in my moral parliament than many people here.
Even if one would answer no to both cruxes, I submit that âno endorsing MoAs that involve the death of innocent peopleâ is an important set of side rails for the EA movement. I think advocacy that saving the lives of children is net-negative is outside of those rails. For those who might not agree, Iâm curious where they would put the rails (or whether they disagree with the idea that there should be rails).
Thanks, that is a useful distinction. Although I would guess Vasco would prefer to frame the theory of impact as âfind out whether donating to GiveWell is net positive â help people make donation choices that promote welfare betterâ or something like that. I buy @Richard Y Chappellđ¸âs take that it is really bad to discourage others from effective giving (at least when itâs done carelessly/ânegligently), but imo Vasco was not setting out to discourage effective giving, or it doesnât seem like that to me. He isâIâm guessingâcooperatively seeking to help effective givers and others make choices that better promote welfare, which they are presumably interested in doing.
Yes, I personally lean towards thinking the act-omission difference doesnât matter (except maybe as a useful heuristic sometimes).
As for whether the harm to humans is incidental-but-necessary or part-of-the-mechanism-and-necessary, Iâm not sure what difference it makes if the outcomes are identical? Maybe the difference is that, when the harm to humans is part-of-the-mechanism-and-necessary, you may suspect that itâs indicative of a bad moral attitude. But I think the attitude behind âI wonât donate to save lives because I think it creates a lot of animal sufferingâ is clearly better (since it is concerned with promoting welfare) than the attitude behind âI wonât donate to save lives because I prefer to have more income for myselfâ (which is not).
I do not think it is good to create taboos around this question. Like, does that mean we shouldnât post anything that can be construed as concluding that itâs net harmful to donate to GiveWell charities? If so, that would make it much harder to criticise GiveWell and find out what the truth is. What if donating to GiveWell charities really is harmful? Shouldnât we want to know and find out?
The taboo would be around advocacy of the view that âit is better for the world for innocent group X of people not to exist.â Here, innocent group X would be under-5s in developing countries who are/âwould be saved by GiveWell interventions. That certain criticisms of GiveWell couldnât be made without breaking the taboo would be a collateral effect rather than the intent, but itâs very hard to avoid over-inclusiveness in a taboo.
There have been social movements that assert that âit is better for the world for innocent group X of people not to existâ and encourage people to make legal, non-violent decisions premised on that belief. But I think the base rate of those social movements going well is low (and it may be ~zero). Based on that history and experience, I would need to see a very compelling argument to convince me that going down that path was a good idea here. I donât see that here; in particular, I think advocacy of the reader donating a share of their charitable budget to animal-welfare orgs to offset any potential negative AW effects of the lifesaving work they fund is considerably less problematic.
Relatedly, I also donât see things going well for EA if it is seen as acceptable for each of us to post our list of group X and encourage others to not pull members of group X out of a drowning pond even if we could do so costlessly or nearly so. Out of respect for Forum norms, Iâm not going to speculate on who other readersâ Group Xs might include, but I can think of several off the top of my head for whom one could make a plausible net-negative argument, all of whom would be less morally objectionable to include on the list than toddlers....
To clarify, I think Iâm ok with having a taboo on advocacy against âit is better for the world for innocent group X of people not to existâ, since that seems like the kind of naive utilitarianism we should definitely avoid. Iâm just against a taboo on asking or trying to better understand whether âit is better for the world for innocent group X of people not to existâ is true or not. I donât think Vasco was engaging in advocacy, my impression was that he was trying to do the latter, while expressing a lot of uncertainty.
Iâd say that itâs a (putative) instance of adversarial ethics rather than âends justify the meansâ reasoning (in the usual sense of violating deontic constraints).
Sometimes that seems OK. Like, it seems reasonable to refrain from rescuing the large man in my status-quo-reversal of the Trolley Bridge case. (And to urge others to likewise refrain, for the sake of the five who would die if anyone acted to save the one.) So that makes me wonder if our disapproval of the present case reflects a kind of speciesismâeither our own, or the anticipated speciesism of a wider audience for whom this sort of reasoning would provide a PR problem?
OTOH, I think the meat-eater problem is misguided anyway, so another possibility is just that mistakenly urging against saving innocent peopleâs lives is especially bad. I guess I do think the moral risk here is sufficient to be extra wary about how one expresses concerns like the meat-eater problem. Like Jason, I think itâs much better to encourage AW offsets than to discourage GHD life-saving.
(Offsetting the potential downsides from helping others seems like a nice general solution to the problem of adversarial ethics, even if it isnât strictly optimal.)
Trolley problems are sufficiently abstractâand presented in the context of an extraordinary set of circumstancesâthat they are less likely to trigger some of the concerns (psychological or otherwise) triggered by the present case. In contrast, lifesaving activity is pretty commonâitâs 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. Thatâs true whether the assessment would be based on assumptions about people like me at a population level, or about my personal value-add /â value-subtract in the deciderâs eyes. If I have that expectation of other people, but donât honor the resulting implied social contract in return, that would seem rather hypocritical of me. And if Iâm 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 EAâa 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, Iâm 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 donât 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 donât 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.
I agree with most except perhaps the framing of the following paragraph.
In my opinion the key difference is that here the bad outcome (eg animal suffering but any other, really), may happen because of decisions taken by the people you are saving. So, in a sense it is not an externally imposed mechanism. The key insight to me is that the children always have the chance to prevent the suffering that follows, people can reason and become convinced, as I was, that this suffering is important and should be prevented. Consequently, I feel strongly against letting innocent people die in these situations. So overall I do not think this has to do with speciesism or cause prioritisation.
Incidentally, this repeats with many cultural themes in films and books, that people can change their minds, and that they should be given the chance to. Similarly, it is a common theme that you should not kill innocent people to prevent some bad thing from happening (think Thanos and overpopulation, Herod convicting Jesus to die to prevent greater wrongdoingsâŚ). Clearly these are not strong ethical arguments, but I think they contain a grain of truth; and one should probably have a very strong bias against (taboo level) endorsing (not discussing) conclusions that justifies letting innocent people die.
You may be interested to read some of MacAskillâs older writing on the subject https://ââwww.lesswrong.com/ââposts/ââFCiMtrsM8mcmBtfTR/ââ?commentId=9abk4EJXMtj72pcQu
Just wanted to copy MacAskillâs comment here so people donât have to click through:
Thanks MHR!
This is informative, I strongly upvoted. A few comments though:
I find it ok to entertain the idea of what is the expected value of doing X or Y as a function of their consequences, be it longtermism or animal welfare.
I would find it very morally unappealing to refuse to save lives on the grounds of convicting people of actions they have not committed yet. Eg, if a child is drowning before you, I think it would be wrong in my opinion to let her drown because he might cause animal suffering. A person can make decisions and I would find it wrong to let her die because of what her statistical group does.
As I commented there: I donât think this is the kind of âends justify the meansâ reasoning that MacAskill is objecting to. Vasco isnât arguing that we should break the law. Heâs just doing a fairly standard EA cause prioritization analysis. Arguing that people should not donate to global health doesnât even contradict common-sense morality because as we see from the world around us, common-sense morality holds that itâs perfectly permissible to let hundreds or thousands of children die of preventable diseases. Utilitarians and other consequentialists are the ones who hold âweirdâ views here, because we reject the act/âomission distinction in the first place.
(For my part, I try to donate in such a way that Iâm net-positive from the perspective of someone like Vasco as well as global health advocates.)
Hi @Jbentham,
Thanks for the answer. See https://ââforum.effectivealtruism.org/ââposts/ââK8GJWQDZ9xYBbypD4/ââpabloamc-s-quick-takes?commentId=XCtGWDyNANvHDMbPj for some of the points. Specifically, the problem I have with the post is not about cause prioritization or cost-effectiveness.
I think I disagree with this. Instead, I think most people find it hard to do what they believe because of social norms. But I think it would be hard to find a significant percentage of people who believe that âletting innocent children die because of what they could doâ.
Probably you are somewhat right here, but I believe âletting innocent children dieâ is even a weirder opinion to have.