I don’t know of any EAs or philosophers with a nonzero pure time preference, but it’s pretty common to believe that creating new lives is morally neutral. Someone who believes this might plausibly be a short-termist. I have a few friends who are short-termist for that reason.
Yeah, the two things are orthogonal as far as I can see. The person-affecting view is perfectly with consistent with either a zero or a nonzero pure time preference.
Okay, so you could hold the person-affecting view and be indifferent to creating new lives, but also have zero pure time preference in that you don’t value future lives any less because they’re in the future.
So this is really getting at creating new lives vs how to treat them given that they already exist.
I don’t know of any EAs or philosophers with a nonzero pure time preference, but it’s pretty common to believe that creating new lives is morally neutral. Someone who believes this might plausibly be a short-termist. I have a few friends who are short-termist for that reason.
Hmm, is it consistent to have zero pure time preference and be indifferent to creating new lives?
Yeah, the two things are orthogonal as far as I can see. The person-affecting view is perfectly with consistent with either a zero or a nonzero pure time preference.
Okay, so you could hold the person-affecting view and be indifferent to creating new lives, but also have zero pure time preference in that you don’t value future lives any less because they’re in the future.
So this is really getting at creating new lives vs how to treat them given that they already exist.