Putting aside any debate over the relative values you’ve assigned here, I think you might be making a error by the way that you try to translate relative moral harms into a dollar value, using the cost of extending a person’s life through donation to GiveWell’s charities.
To give an absurd example, the ‘harm’ caused if I were to punch a stranger in the face (assuming that I hurt them, but don’t otherwise cause any permanent damage) is a fraction of the harm caused if I were to take a year off that person’s life (which you have said can be valued at $100). Let’s say it’s at most 1/10th as bad as to punch someone in the face than to prematurely end their life.
However, even if I were to get more than $10 of enjoyment out of punching that person, I don’t think it’s right that I’m morally permitted to do so.
One reason is that although, at the margin, the cheapest available method for extending human lives by a year is $100, I don’t think that necessarily reflects the true value of a year of human life for these purposes. The price is likely to be a product of market inefficiencies (noting, for example, that in the developed world, people regularly spending many times that amount in order to extend life by a year). Also, I would certainly pay more than $100 to extend my life by year, and no doubt so would the person who is being punched. It just happens that GiveWell have identified some unusually efficient programs for extending human life. Those programs do not reflect the market price, at equilibrium, for a year of human life.
I’d like to put more thought into this, but I’m presently convinced you’re making a mistake with this move.
Secondly, I think that it’s wrong to come to the conclusion that something is not a ‘serious’ moral wrong, just because the harm caused is a fraction of the harm caused by ending a human life. Perhaps ending a human life prematurely is very high on the moral spectrum, such that something 1/100th as bad, as still quite a bad thing from a moral and utilitarian perspective.
Anyway, it’s a good debate to be having, even if I don’t reach the same conclusions you do.
(P.S. First post on EA forums, so apologies if I’m getting any etiquitte wrong or rehashing ideas that have previously been debated and resolved).
I completely agree, and I too was troubled by this analysis. For me, the bottom line is: The fact that something is of little-to-no cost, does not mean that its moral value is also little.
Furthermore, in cases like reducing animal suffering, one can both avoid being harmful himself (i.e. become vegan) AND donate to relevant charities, rather than OR.
I think this is a very interesting point which I hadn’t thought of before. To add to it, let’s assume the “how much animals matter” values from the original post were chosen in a way more favorable to animals such that veganism seems to make economic moral sense, so we come to the conclusion “it’s probably an effective intervention for an EA to go vegan”.
Now assume some charity finds a super-effective intervention that cuts the cost of saving a human life to 10% its previous best value. Following the original argument, that would basically mean at this point going vegan is not recommended anymore because it may now be much less effective than the one thing we’re semi-arbitrarily comparing it to.
It seems rather counter-intuitive that thousands of hypothetical rational EAs would now start eating meat again, simply because a charity found a cheaper way to save humans.
But then again, I can’t get rid of the feeling that this whole counter-argument too is arbitrary and constructed, and that it wouldn’t convince me if I were of the opposite opinion, but rather seem like a kind of logic puzzle where you have to find the error of thought. Maybe despite being counter-intuitive, the absurd sounding conclusion would still be the correct one in some sense.
I have an intuition that this is more of the disagreement between you and vegans (as opposed to having different moral weights). My guess is that one could literally prevent three chicken-years for less than $500/year?[1] And also that some vegans’ personal happiness is more affected by not eating chickens than donating $500.
If that’s true, then the reason vegans are vegan instead of donating is because they view it as “morality” as opposed to “axiology”.
This accords with my intuition: having someone tell me they care about nonhuman animals while eating a chicken sandwich rubs me in a way that having someone tell me they care about the developing world while wearing $100 shoes does not.
Putting aside any debate over the relative values you’ve assigned here, I think you might be making a error by the way that you try to translate relative moral harms into a dollar value, using the cost of extending a person’s life through donation to GiveWell’s charities.
To give an absurd example, the ‘harm’ caused if I were to punch a stranger in the face (assuming that I hurt them, but don’t otherwise cause any permanent damage) is a fraction of the harm caused if I were to take a year off that person’s life (which you have said can be valued at $100). Let’s say it’s at most 1/10th as bad as to punch someone in the face than to prematurely end their life.
However, even if I were to get more than $10 of enjoyment out of punching that person, I don’t think it’s right that I’m morally permitted to do so.
One reason is that although, at the margin, the cheapest available method for extending human lives by a year is $100, I don’t think that necessarily reflects the true value of a year of human life for these purposes. The price is likely to be a product of market inefficiencies (noting, for example, that in the developed world, people regularly spending many times that amount in order to extend life by a year). Also, I would certainly pay more than $100 to extend my life by year, and no doubt so would the person who is being punched. It just happens that GiveWell have identified some unusually efficient programs for extending human life. Those programs do not reflect the market price, at equilibrium, for a year of human life.
I’d like to put more thought into this, but I’m presently convinced you’re making a mistake with this move.
Secondly, I think that it’s wrong to come to the conclusion that something is not a ‘serious’ moral wrong, just because the harm caused is a fraction of the harm caused by ending a human life. Perhaps ending a human life prematurely is very high on the moral spectrum, such that something 1/100th as bad, as still quite a bad thing from a moral and utilitarian perspective.
Anyway, it’s a good debate to be having, even if I don’t reach the same conclusions you do.
(P.S. First post on EA forums, so apologies if I’m getting any etiquitte wrong or rehashing ideas that have previously been debated and resolved).
I completely agree, and I too was troubled by this analysis. For me, the bottom line is:
The fact that something is of little-to-no cost, does not mean that its moral value is also little.
Furthermore, in cases like reducing animal suffering, one can both avoid being harmful himself (i.e. become vegan) AND donate to relevant charities, rather than OR.
I think this is a very interesting point which I hadn’t thought of before. To add to it, let’s assume the “how much animals matter” values from the original post were chosen in a way more favorable to animals such that veganism seems to make economic moral sense, so we come to the conclusion “it’s probably an effective intervention for an EA to go vegan”.
Now assume some charity finds a super-effective intervention that cuts the cost of saving a human life to 10% its previous best value. Following the original argument, that would basically mean at this point going vegan is not recommended anymore because it may now be much less effective than the one thing we’re semi-arbitrarily comparing it to.
It seems rather counter-intuitive that thousands of hypothetical rational EAs would now start eating meat again, simply because a charity found a cheaper way to save humans.
But then again, I can’t get rid of the feeling that this whole counter-argument too is arbitrary and constructed, and that it wouldn’t convince me if I were of the opposite opinion, but rather seem like a kind of logic puzzle where you have to find the error of thought. Maybe despite being counter-intuitive, the absurd sounding conclusion would still be the correct one in some sense.
I don’t think you would be morally permitted to either, because I think https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/28/contra-askell-on-moral-offsets/ is right and you can offset axiology, but not morality.
I have an intuition that this is more of the disagreement between you and vegans (as opposed to having different moral weights). My guess is that one could literally prevent three chicken-years for less than $500/year?[1] And also that some vegans’ personal happiness is more affected by not eating chickens than donating $500.
If that’s true, then the reason vegans are vegan instead of donating is because they view it as “morality” as opposed to “axiology”.
This accords with my intuition: having someone tell me they care about nonhuman animals while eating a chicken sandwich rubs me in a way that having someone tell me they care about the developing world while wearing $100 shoes does not.
As one heuristic: Beyond meat is $4.59 for 9 ounces. So it would cost $424 to replace all 52.9 pounds Peter says the average American eats in a year.