Food for Thought 9: The Asymmetry

Food for Thought is a series of events, where we discuss philosophical and practical questions of EA in small groups over food and drinks: We are exploring effective altruism one bite at a time. EA newcomers are welcome; studying the suggested material is encouraged but not required, please RSVP.

Topic

This time we want to discuss the difference between making people happy and making happy people: the Procreation Asymmetry. We will start us off by exploring our moral intuition about this topic with thought experiments before we dive into our usual discussion.

Suggested reading

We recommend the article Critique of MacAskill’s “Is It Good to Make Happy People?” Even though it is called “critique” we think it will be interesting no matter on which side you stand in the debate. For those of you that want to do a deep dive on the topic we recommend the paper The Asymmetry, Uncertainty, and the Long Term by the Global Priorities Institute.

Where/​How/​What

We are going to meet at Atopia. It is easy to reach via Ringbahn (Prenzlauer Allee), M10 (Prenzlauer Allee/​Danziger Staße) or M2 (Fröbelstraße).

What to bring

  1. Some change to buy a drink—they don’t accept card payment at Atopia.