Michael St Jules 🔸 comments on Existential Choices Symposium with Will MacAskill and other special guests (3-5pm GMT Monday)

[Michael St Jules 🔸]

Hmm, interesting.

I think this bit from the footnote helped clarify, since I wasn’t sure what you meant in your comment:

Note, however, that there is no assumption that d—f are outcomes for anyone to choose, as opposed to outcomes that might arise naturally. Thus, it is not clear how the appeal to choice set dependent betterness can be used to block the argument that f is not worse than d, since there are no choice sets in play here.

I might be inclined to compare outcome distributions using the same person-affecting rules as I would for option sets, whether or not they’re being chosen by anyone. I think this can make sense on actualist person-affecting views, illustrated with my “Best in the outcome argument”s here, which is framed in terms of betterness (between two outcome distributions) and not choice. (The “Deliberation path argument” is framed in terms of choice.)

Then, I’d disagree with this:

And if, say, it makes the outcome better if an additional happy person happens to exist without anyone making it so