I think you make good points, and overall I feel quite sympathetic to the view you expressed. Just one quick thought pushing a bit in the other direction:
†† I’m excluding ‘maximise profits’ as a value!
But perhaps this example is quite relevant? To put it crudely, perhaps we can get away with keeping the value “do the most good” stable. This seems more analogous to “maximize profits” than to any specification of value that refers to a specific content of “doing good” (e.g., food aid to country X, or “abolish factory farming”, or “reduce existential risk”).
More generally, the crucial point seems to be: the content and specifics of values might change, but some of this change might be something we endorse. And perhaps there’s a positive correlation between the likelihood of a change in values and how likely we’d be to agree with it upon reflection. [Exploring this fully seems quite complex both in terms of metaethics and empirical considerations.]
Thanks. I agree that we might endorse some (or many) changes. Hidden away in my first footnote is a link to a pretty broad set of values. To expand: I would be excited to give (and have in the past given) resources to people smarter than me who are outcome-oriented, maximizing, cause-impartial and egalitarian, as defined by Will here, even (or especially) if they plan to use them differently to how I would. Similarly, keeping the value ‘do the most good’ stable maybe means something like keeping the outcome-oriented, maximizing, cause-impartial and egalitarian values stable.
For clarity, I excluded profit maximisation because incentives to pursue this goal seem powerful in a way that might never apply to effective altruism, however broadly it is construed. (The ‘impartial’ part seems especially hard to keep stable.) In particular, profit maximisation does not even need to be propagated: e.g. if a company does some random other stuff for a while, its stakeholders will still have a moderate incentive to maximise profits, so will typically return to doing this. A similar statement is that ‘maximise profits’ is the default state of things. No matter how broad our conception of ‘do the most good’ can be made, it seems likely to lack this property (except for lock-in scenarios).
I think you make good points, and overall I feel quite sympathetic to the view you expressed. Just one quick thought pushing a bit in the other direction:
But perhaps this example is quite relevant? To put it crudely, perhaps we can get away with keeping the value “do the most good” stable. This seems more analogous to “maximize profits” than to any specification of value that refers to a specific content of “doing good” (e.g., food aid to country X, or “abolish factory farming”, or “reduce existential risk”).
More generally, the crucial point seems to be: the content and specifics of values might change, but some of this change might be something we endorse. And perhaps there’s a positive correlation between the likelihood of a change in values and how likely we’d be to agree with it upon reflection. [Exploring this fully seems quite complex both in terms of metaethics and empirical considerations.]
Thanks. I agree that we might endorse some (or many) changes. Hidden away in my first footnote is a link to a pretty broad set of values. To expand: I would be excited to give (and have in the past given) resources to people smarter than me who are outcome-oriented, maximizing, cause-impartial and egalitarian, as defined by Will here, even (or especially) if they plan to use them differently to how I would. Similarly, keeping the value ‘do the most good’ stable maybe means something like keeping the outcome-oriented, maximizing, cause-impartial and egalitarian values stable.
For clarity, I excluded profit maximisation because incentives to pursue this goal seem powerful in a way that might never apply to effective altruism, however broadly it is construed. (The ‘impartial’ part seems especially hard to keep stable.) In particular, profit maximisation does not even need to be propagated: e.g. if a company does some random other stuff for a while, its stakeholders will still have a moderate incentive to maximise profits, so will typically return to doing this. A similar statement is that ‘maximise profits’ is the default state of things. No matter how broad our conception of ‘do the most good’ can be made, it seems likely to lack this property (except for lock-in scenarios).