I have a difficulty with this idea of a neutral point, below which it is preferable to not exist. At the very least, this is another baked in assumption—that the worst wellbeing imaginable is worse than non-existence.
There are two reasons for me being troubled with this assumption:
I’ve been living with a chronic illness for many years, which causes constant suffering. I’m expected to keep living like that for decades to come. I can’t accept the idea that there’s a point of suffering beyond which I should not live.
Giving such a point will allow one to make decisions about whether people should live or die. As a rule that I personally believe in, we should never make such decisions.
Hello Guy. This is an important, tricky, and often unpleasant, issue to discuss. I’m speaking for myself here: HLI doesn’t have an official view on this issue, except that it’s complicated and needs more thought; I’m still not sure how to think about this.
I’ll respond to your second comment first. You say we should not decide whether people live or die. Whilst I respect the sentiment, this choice is unfortunately unavoidable. Healthcare systems must, for instance, make choices between quality and quantity of lives—there are not infinite resources. The well-worn QALY and DALY measures exist in the hope of making such choices in a more principled way. Charitable donors, when deciding where to give, might support any one of a variety of life-saving charities, or charities that focus on something else—in a sense, they are choosing whether people live or die. Because we have to make such choices anyway, it doesn’t depend on where the neutral point is fixed. As we note in section 2.2. of this recent HLI report, QALYs allow states worse than death, whereas DALYs do not. Yet both trade-off quality vs quantity of life.
Turning to your first comment, I note this is a topic about which opinion seems to split. Some people, such as yourself, think existence is always better than non-existence. Others think that life can be worse than death—a life of unrelenting suffering, perhaps—and that people can be rational in seeking to end their own lives. Curiously, I note that people are quite ready to accept that, when it comes to factory farming, those animals would lead bad lives, so it is better that they never exist. That said, I don’t think this is an issue we can expect, or need, to find unanimity on. Those who think life is always worth living would, presumably, want to make comparisons differently from those who think life is not always worth living. One way to capture these different views, and explore their implications, is exactly by varying the level of the neutral point.
I’m aware that by prioritising how to use limited resources, we’re making decisions about people’s lives. But there’s a difference between saying “we want to save everyone, but can’t” and saying “This group should actually not be saved, because their lives are so bad”.
Curiously, I note that people are quite ready to accept that, when it comes to factory farming, those animals would lead bad lives, so it is better that they never exist.
I actually agree! But I don’t think it’s the same thing. I don’t want to kill existing animals; I want to not intentionally create new ones for factory farms. Continued existence is better than death if you already exist. Creating someone just to suffer is a different matter. This isn’t symmetric (and as a mathematician, I note that that means it can’t be described by just giving some “local” numerical rating to each state of being and comparing them).
Guy—thank you for this comment. I’m very sorry about your suffering.
I think EAs should take much more seriously the views of people like you who have first-hand experience with these issues. We should not be assuming that ‘below neutral utility’ implies ‘it’s better not to be alive’. We should be much more empirical about this, and not make strong a priori assumptions grounded in some over-simplified, over-abstracted view of utilitarianism.
We should listen to the people, like you, who have been living with chronic conditions—whether pain, depression, PTSD, physical handicaps, cognitive impairments, or whatever—and try to understand what keeps people going, and why they keep going.
I have a difficulty with this idea of a neutral point, below which it is preferable to not exist. At the very least, this is another baked in assumption—that the worst wellbeing imaginable is worse than non-existence.
There are two reasons for me being troubled with this assumption:
I’ve been living with a chronic illness for many years, which causes constant suffering. I’m expected to keep living like that for decades to come. I can’t accept the idea that there’s a point of suffering beyond which I should not live.
Giving such a point will allow one to make decisions about whether people should live or die. As a rule that I personally believe in, we should never make such decisions.
Hello Guy. This is an important, tricky, and often unpleasant, issue to discuss. I’m speaking for myself here: HLI doesn’t have an official view on this issue, except that it’s complicated and needs more thought; I’m still not sure how to think about this.
I’ll respond to your second comment first. You say we should not decide whether people live or die. Whilst I respect the sentiment, this choice is unfortunately unavoidable. Healthcare systems must, for instance, make choices between quality and quantity of lives—there are not infinite resources. The well-worn QALY and DALY measures exist in the hope of making such choices in a more principled way. Charitable donors, when deciding where to give, might support any one of a variety of life-saving charities, or charities that focus on something else—in a sense, they are choosing whether people live or die. Because we have to make such choices anyway, it doesn’t depend on where the neutral point is fixed. As we note in section 2.2. of this recent HLI report, QALYs allow states worse than death, whereas DALYs do not. Yet both trade-off quality vs quantity of life.
Turning to your first comment, I note this is a topic about which opinion seems to split. Some people, such as yourself, think existence is always better than non-existence. Others think that life can be worse than death—a life of unrelenting suffering, perhaps—and that people can be rational in seeking to end their own lives. Curiously, I note that people are quite ready to accept that, when it comes to factory farming, those animals would lead bad lives, so it is better that they never exist. That said, I don’t think this is an issue we can expect, or need, to find unanimity on. Those who think life is always worth living would, presumably, want to make comparisons differently from those who think life is not always worth living. One way to capture these different views, and explore their implications, is exactly by varying the level of the neutral point.
I’m aware that by prioritising how to use limited resources, we’re making decisions about people’s lives. But there’s a difference between saying “we want to save everyone, but can’t” and saying “This group should actually not be saved, because their lives are so bad”.
I actually agree! But I don’t think it’s the same thing. I don’t want to kill existing animals; I want to not intentionally create new ones for factory farms. Continued existence is better than death if you already exist. Creating someone just to suffer is a different matter. This isn’t symmetric (and as a mathematician, I note that that means it can’t be described by just giving some “local” numerical rating to each state of being and comparing them).
Guy—thank you for this comment. I’m very sorry about your suffering.
I think EAs should take much more seriously the views of people like you who have first-hand experience with these issues. We should not be assuming that ‘below neutral utility’ implies ‘it’s better not to be alive’. We should be much more empirical about this, and not make strong a priori assumptions grounded in some over-simplified, over-abstracted view of utilitarianism.
We should listen to the people, like you, who have been living with chronic conditions—whether pain, depression, PTSD, physical handicaps, cognitive impairments, or whatever—and try to understand what keeps people going, and why they keep going.