I don’t think the authors ever make it very clear what “wide class of decision situations” means in the definitions of axiological and deontic strong longtermism.
They do give a rough sense of what they mean, and perhaps that suffices for now. But I think it’d be useful to be a bit clearer.
Here’s a relevant thing they do say:
Which decision situations fall within the scope of our claims? In the first instance, we argue that the following is one such case:
The cause-neutral philanthropist. Shivani has $10,000. Her aim is to spend this money in whatever way would most improve the world, and she is open to considering any project as a means to doing this.
The bulk of the paper is devoted to defending the claim that this situation is within the scope of axiological strong longtermism; in the final two sections we generalise this to a wider range of decision situations.
They also say:
We agree that the washing-out hypothesis is true of some decision contexts [which I think would make strong longtermism false in those contexts]: in particular, for many relatively trivial decision contexts, such as a decision about whether or not to click one’s fingers. However, we claim that it is also false of many decision situations, and in particular of Shivani’s. If Shivani is specifically looking for options whose effects do not wash out, we claim she can find some.
But, as noted, these quotes still seem to me to leave the question of what “wide class of decision situations” means to them fairly open.
I don’t think the authors ever make it very clear what “wide class of decision situations” means in the definitions of axiological and deontic strong longtermism.
They do give a rough sense of what they mean, and perhaps that suffices for now. But I think it’d be useful to be a bit clearer.
Here’s a relevant thing they do say:
They also say:
But, as noted, these quotes still seem to me to leave the question of what “wide class of decision situations” means to them fairly open.