I think averageists may actually also care about the long term future a lot, and it may still have a MPL if they don’t hold (rapid) diminish returns to utility WITHIN lives (ie it is possible for the average life to be a lot worse or a lot better than today). Indeed, given (potentially) plausible views on interspecies welfare comparisons, and how bad the lvies of lots of non-humans seem today, this just does seem to be true.
Now, its not clear they shouldn’t be at least a little more sympathetic to us converging on the ‘right’ world (since it seems easier), but it doesn’t seem like they get out of much of the argument either
Nice point. I shouldn’t have picked averageism as the most extreme version of this view. It would have been more apt to pick a “capped” model where the value on additional utility (or utility of a specific type) becomes zero after enough of it has been achieved.
I think averageists may actually also care about the long term future a lot, and it may still have a MPL if they don’t hold (rapid) diminish returns to utility WITHIN lives (ie it is possible for the average life to be a lot worse or a lot better than today). Indeed, given (potentially) plausible views on interspecies welfare comparisons, and how bad the lvies of lots of non-humans seem today, this just does seem to be true. Now, its not clear they shouldn’t be at least a little more sympathetic to us converging on the ‘right’ world (since it seems easier), but it doesn’t seem like they get out of much of the argument either
Nice point. I shouldn’t have picked averageism as the most extreme version of this view. It would have been more apt to pick a “capped” model where the value on additional utility (or utility of a specific type) becomes zero after enough of it has been achieved.
Ye, I might be wrong, but something like Larry Temkin’s model might work best here (been a while since I read it so may be getting it wrong)