First, it’s unclear how many EAs are totalists or long-termists. I suppose this post is addressed at those who support global poverty and development, which is (from surveys) the majority of EAs. To support global poverty and development you could—this is not an exhaustive list - (a) be a person-affector or (b) be a totalist who is sceptical about the effectiveness of far-future stuff or (c) be a long-termist who think near-term interventions have strong long-term impacts, such that they are cost-competitive with X-risk.
Second, on why I’m sympathetic to person-affecting view, the short answer is because I find the following two concepts highly plausible.
First, the person-affecting restriction: an outcome can only be better or worse if it is better or worse for someone. (Parfit, Reasons and Persons attributes such a view to Narveson, explaining “On [Narveson’s] view, it is not good that people exist because their lives contain happiness. Rather, happiness is good because it is good for people”)
Second, non-comparativism about existence: non-existence is neither better than, worse than, or equally good as, existence for someone. Why believe this? For the personal betterness relation to hold (i.e. for an outcome to be better for someone) the person needs to exist in both of those outcomes. If the person only exists in one outcome, there is no comparison to be made. By analogy, to say “X is taller than Y”, X and Y need to have a height. If X or Y lack the property of height, they cannot stand in the relationship of “being taller than”. It’s confused to say “the Eiffel Tower is taller than nothing”. “Nothing” lacks a height (rather than has a height of zero), thus the Eiffel tower’s height is incomparable to the height of “nothing”. If we’re concerned with the personal betterness relationship, we are comparing two states of the person (i.e. the person needs to exist and have some good, bad, or neutral-making properties). A non-existent entity cannot stand in the personal betterness relationship with an existing person. There is no sensible comparison to be made; one cannot compare something with nothing.
Taken together, these two statements entail that creating new lives is incomparable in value to not creating them.
Thanks for the thoughts, Michael. Sorry for the minor thread necro—Milan just linked me to this comment from my short post on short-termism.
The first point feels like a crux here.
On the second, the obvious counterargument is that it applies just as well to e.g. murder; in the case where the person is killed, “there is no sensible comparison to be made” between their status and that in the case where they are alive.
You could still be against killing for other reasons, like effects on friends of the victim, but I think most people have an intuition that the effects of murder on the victim alone are a significant argument against it. For example, it seems strange to say it’s fine to kill someone when you’re on a deserted island with no hope of rescue, no resource constraints, and when you expect the murder to have no side effects on you.
I guess the counter-counterargument is something like “while they were alive, if they knew they were going to die, they would not approve.” But that seems like a fallback to the first point, rather than an affirmation of the second.
A relevant thought experiment: upon killing the other islander, the murderer is miraculously given the chance to resurrect them. This option is only available after the victim is dead; should it matter what their preferences were in life? (I think some people would bite this bullet, which also implies that generally living in accordance with our ancestors’ aggregate wishes is good.)
On the second, the obvious counterargument is that it applies just as well to e.g. murder; in the case where the person is killed, “there is no sensible comparison to be made” between their status and that in the case where they are alive
Person-affecting views are those will hold not all possible people matter. Once you’ve decided who matters (the present, necessary or actual people), it’s then a different question how you think about the badness of death for those that matter. You can say creating people isn’t good/bad, but it’s still bad if already existing people die early. FWIW, I also find Epicureanism about the badness of death rather plausible, i.e. I don’t think we compare the value of living longer for someone. I recognise this makes me something of a ‘moral hipster’ but I think the arguments for it are pretty good, although I won’t get into that here. As such, I think death, whether by murder or other means, isn’t bad for someone. I think we tend to have the intuition that murder is wrong over and above what it deprives the deceased from, which it why we think it’s just as wrong to murder someone with 1 month vs 10 years left to live. hence I think you’re getting at a deontological intuition, not one about value.
I find the stuff about posthumous harms and benefits very implausible. If Socrates wants us to say ‘Socrates’ and we do, does it really make his life go better?
First, it’s unclear how many EAs are totalists or long-termists. I suppose this post is addressed at those who support global poverty and development, which is (from surveys) the majority of EAs. To support global poverty and development you could—this is not an exhaustive list - (a) be a person-affector or (b) be a totalist who is sceptical about the effectiveness of far-future stuff or (c) be a long-termist who think near-term interventions have strong long-term impacts, such that they are cost-competitive with X-risk.
Second, on why I’m sympathetic to person-affecting view, the short answer is because I find the following two concepts highly plausible.
First, the person-affecting restriction: an outcome can only be better or worse if it is better or worse for someone. (Parfit, Reasons and Persons attributes such a view to Narveson, explaining “On [Narveson’s] view, it is not good that people exist because their lives contain happiness. Rather, happiness is good because it is good for people”)
Second, non-comparativism about existence: non-existence is neither better than, worse than, or equally good as, existence for someone. Why believe this? For the personal betterness relation to hold (i.e. for an outcome to be better for someone) the person needs to exist in both of those outcomes. If the person only exists in one outcome, there is no comparison to be made. By analogy, to say “X is taller than Y”, X and Y need to have a height. If X or Y lack the property of height, they cannot stand in the relationship of “being taller than”. It’s confused to say “the Eiffel Tower is taller than nothing”. “Nothing” lacks a height (rather than has a height of zero), thus the Eiffel tower’s height is incomparable to the height of “nothing”. If we’re concerned with the personal betterness relationship, we are comparing two states of the person (i.e. the person needs to exist and have some good, bad, or neutral-making properties). A non-existent entity cannot stand in the personal betterness relationship with an existing person. There is no sensible comparison to be made; one cannot compare something with nothing.
Taken together, these two statements entail that creating new lives is incomparable in value to not creating them.
That’s about the quickest answer I can give.
Thanks for the thoughts, Michael. Sorry for the minor thread necro—Milan just linked me to this comment from my short post on short-termism.
The first point feels like a crux here.
On the second, the obvious counterargument is that it applies just as well to e.g. murder; in the case where the person is killed, “there is no sensible comparison to be made” between their status and that in the case where they are alive.
You could still be against killing for other reasons, like effects on friends of the victim, but I think most people have an intuition that the effects of murder on the victim alone are a significant argument against it. For example, it seems strange to say it’s fine to kill someone when you’re on a deserted island with no hope of rescue, no resource constraints, and when you expect the murder to have no side effects on you.
I guess the counter-counterargument is something like “while they were alive, if they knew they were going to die, they would not approve.” But that seems like a fallback to the first point, rather than an affirmation of the second.
A relevant thought experiment: upon killing the other islander, the murderer is miraculously given the chance to resurrect them. This option is only available after the victim is dead; should it matter what their preferences were in life? (I think some people would bite this bullet, which also implies that generally living in accordance with our ancestors’ aggregate wishes is good.)
Person-affecting views are those will hold not all possible people matter. Once you’ve decided who matters (the present, necessary or actual people), it’s then a different question how you think about the badness of death for those that matter. You can say creating people isn’t good/bad, but it’s still bad if already existing people die early. FWIW, I also find Epicureanism about the badness of death rather plausible, i.e. I don’t think we compare the value of living longer for someone. I recognise this makes me something of a ‘moral hipster’ but I think the arguments for it are pretty good, although I won’t get into that here. As such, I think death, whether by murder or other means, isn’t bad for someone. I think we tend to have the intuition that murder is wrong over and above what it deprives the deceased from, which it why we think it’s just as wrong to murder someone with 1 month vs 10 years left to live. hence I think you’re getting at a deontological intuition, not one about value.
I find the stuff about posthumous harms and benefits very implausible. If Socrates wants us to say ‘Socrates’ and we do, does it really make his life go better?