The argument is not that Cleopatra’s action is the beginning of a causal chain. In fact, the present and the future need not be linked causally at all for Parfit’s argument to make sense.
Instead, what he employs is a “reductio ad absurdum”—he takes the non-longtermist position to an extreme where it has counterintuitive implications.
If discounting WAS true, then any of Cleopatra’s actions (even something insignificant as eating dessert) would’ve mattered so much more than anything that happens today (including curing cancer). This seems counterintuitive to most of us. Therefore, something is wrong with this kind of discounting.
Re Cleopatra:
The argument is not that Cleopatra’s action is the beginning of a causal chain. In fact, the present and the future need not be linked causally at all for Parfit’s argument to make sense.
Instead, what he employs is a “reductio ad absurdum”—he takes the non-longtermist position to an extreme where it has counterintuitive implications.
If discounting WAS true, then any of Cleopatra’s actions (even something insignificant as eating dessert) would’ve mattered so much more than anything that happens today (including curing cancer). This seems counterintuitive to most of us. Therefore, something is wrong with this kind of discounting.