It seems clear to me that both individuals and societies regularly trade off between human life extension and other human goals, including the reduction of human suffering. One has to at least implicitly make that tradeoff when deciding on a governmental budget, or deciding how often you will have a colonoscopy. If it’s not possible to decide how to trade off these things, I think we have a problem that is practically much bigger than effective altruism.
The less well-trodden question to me, then, is whether we can estimate a tradeoff between animal suffering and human suffering. For most people, I think that’s where more of the uncertainty lies. But I’m not sure whether that is the case for you or not.
If we can compare the moral value of a year’s worth of human life extension to the value of reducing human suffering caused by a stimulus of specified severity, and then compare that to the value of reducing animal suffering caused by the same stimulus, then we should be able to compare the human life extension to the reduction of animal suffering.
I’m curious whether the crux is more on the first half of the equation, or the second. (Or whether you think the transitive logic just doesn’t work here.)
It seems clear to me that both individuals and societies regularly trade off between human life extension and other human goals, including the reduction of human suffering. One has to at least implicitly make that tradeoff when deciding on a governmental budget, or deciding how often you will have a colonoscopy. If it’s not possible to decide how to trade off these things, I think we have a problem that is practically much bigger than effective altruism.
The less well-trodden question to me, then, is whether we can estimate a tradeoff between animal suffering and human suffering. For most people, I think that’s where more of the uncertainty lies. But I’m not sure whether that is the case for you or not.
If we can compare the moral value of a year’s worth of human life extension to the value of reducing human suffering caused by a stimulus of specified severity, and then compare that to the value of reducing animal suffering caused by the same stimulus, then we should be able to compare the human life extension to the reduction of animal suffering.
I’m curious whether the crux is more on the first half of the equation, or the second. (Or whether you think the transitive logic just doesn’t work here.)