The calculators are intentionally silent on the welfare side, on the thought that in practice it’s much easier to treat as a mostly independent question. That’s not to say it actually is independent, and ideally I would like the output to include more information about what the pathways to either extinction or an interstellar state, so that people can do some further function on the output. I do think it’s reasonable, even on a totalising view, to prioritise improving future welfare conditional on it existing and largely ignoring the question of whether it will—but that’s not a question the calculators can help with except inasmuch as you condition on the pathway.
Even if they gave pathways, they would be agnostic on whose welfare qualified. Personally I’m interested in maximising total valence (I have an old essay still waiting for its conclusion on the subject), so every sentient being’s mental state ‘counts’, but you could use these with a different perspective in mind. Primarily empirical questions about e.g. the duration of factory farming, and animal suffering in terraformed systems seem like they’d need their own research projects.
Hey Corentin,
The calculators are intentionally silent on the welfare side, on the thought that in practice it’s much easier to treat as a mostly independent question. That’s not to say it actually is independent, and ideally I would like the output to include more information about what the pathways to either extinction or an interstellar state, so that people can do some further function on the output. I do think it’s reasonable, even on a totalising view, to prioritise improving future welfare conditional on it existing and largely ignoring the question of whether it will—but that’s not a question the calculators can help with except inasmuch as you condition on the pathway.
Even if they gave pathways, they would be agnostic on whose welfare qualified. Personally I’m interested in maximising total valence (I have an old essay still waiting for its conclusion on the subject), so every sentient being’s mental state ‘counts’, but you could use these with a different perspective in mind. Primarily empirical questions about e.g. the duration of factory farming, and animal suffering in terraformed systems seem like they’d need their own research projects.