thanks, gregory. it’s valuable to have numbers on this but i have some concerns about this argument and the spirit in which it is made:
1) most arguments for x-risk reduction make the controversial assumption that the future is very positive in expectation. this argument makes the (to my mind even more) controversial assumption that an arbitrary life-year added to a presently-existing person is very positive, on average. while it might be that many relatively wealthy euro-american EAs have life-years that are very positive, on average, it’s highly questionable whether the average human has life-years that are on average positive at all, let alone very positive.
2) many global catastrophic risks and extinction risks would affect not only humans but also many other sentient beings. insofar as these x-risks are risks of the extinction of not only humans but also nonhuman animals, to make a determination of the person-affecting value of deterring x-risks we must sum the value of preventing human death with the value of preventing nonhuman death. on the widely held assumption that farmed animals and wild animals have bad lives on average, and given the population of tens of billions of presently existing farmed animals and 10^13-10^22 presently existing wild animals, the value of the extinction of presently living nonhuman beings would likely swamp the (supposedly) negative value of the extinction of presently existing human beings. many of these animals would live a short period of time, sure, but their total life-years still vastly outnumber the remaining life-years of presently existing humans. moreover, most people who accept a largely person-affecting axiology also think that it is bad when we cause people with miserable lives to exist. so on most person-affecting axiologies, we would also need to sum the disvalue of the existence of future farmed and wild animals with the person-affecting value of human extinction. this may make the person-affecting value of preventing extinction extremely negative in expectation.
3) i’m concerned about this result being touted as a finding of a “highly effective” cause. $9,600/life-year is vanishingly small in comparison to many poverty interventions, let alone animal welfare interventions (where ACE estimates that this much money could save 100k+ animals from factory farming). why does $9,600/life-year suddenly make for a highly effective when we’re talking about x-risk reduction, when it isn’t highly effective when we’re talking about other domains?
1) Happiness levels seem to trend strongly positive, given things like the world values survey (in the most recent wave − 2014, only Egypt had <50% of people reporting being either ‘happy’ or ‘very happy’, although in fairness there were a lot of poorer countries with missing data. The association between wealth and happiness is there, but pretty weak (e.g. Zimbabwe gets 80+%, Bulgaria 55%). Given this (and when you throw in implied preferences, commonsensical intuitions whereby we don’t wonder about whether we should jump in the pond to save the child as we’re genuinely uncertain it is good for them to extent their life), it seems the average human takes themselves to have a life worth living. (q.v.)
2) My understanding from essays by Shulman and Tomasik is that even intensive factory farming plausibly leads to a net reduction in animal populations, given a greater reduction in wild animals due to habitat reduction. So if human extinction leads to another ~100M years of wildlife, this looks pretty bad by asymmetric views.
Of course, these estimates are highly non-resilient even with respect to sign. Yet the objective of the essay wasn’t to show the result was robust to all reasonable moral considerations, but that the value of x-risk reduction isn’t wholly ablated on a popular view of population ethics—somewhat akin to how Givewell analysis on cash transfers don’t try and factor in poor meat eater considerations.
3) I neither ‘tout’ - nor even state—this is a finding that ‘xrisk reduction is highly effective for person-affecting views’. Indeed, I say the opposite:
Although it seems unlikely x-risk reduction is the best buy from the lights of the [ed: typo -
as context suggests, meant ‘person-affecting’] total view (we should be suspicious if it were), given $13000 per life year compares unfavourably to best global health interventions, it is still a good buy: it compares favourably to marginal cost effectiveness for rich country healthcare spending, for example.
thanks for the clarification on (3), gregory. i exaggerated the strength of the valence on your post.
on (1), i think we should be skeptical about self-reports of well-being given the pollyanna principle (we may be evolutionarily hard-wired overestimate the value of our own lives).
on (2), my point was that extinction risks are rarely confined to only human beings, and events that cause human extinction will often also cause nonhuman extinction. but you’re right that for risks of exclusively human extinction we must also consider the impact of human extinction on other animals, and that impact—whatever its valence—may also outside the impact of the event on human well-being.
I’m surprised by your last point, since the article says:
Although it seems unlikely x-risk reduction is the best buy from the lights of the total view (we should be suspicious if it were), given $13000 per life year compares unfavourably to best global health interventions, it is still a good buy: it compares favourably to marginal cost effectiveness for rich country healthcare spending, for example.
This seems a far cry from the impression you seem to have gotten from the article. In fact your quote of “highly effective” is only used once, in the introduction, as a hypothetical motivation for crunching the numbers. (Since, a-priori, it could have turned out the cost effectiveness was 100 times higher, which would have been very cost effective).
On your first two points, my (admittedly not very justified) impression is the ‘default’ opinons people typically have is that almost all human lives are positive, and that animal lives are extremely unimportant compared to humans. Whilst one can question the truth of these claims, writing an article aimed at the majority seems reasonable.
It might be that actually within EA the average opinion is closer to yours, and in any case I agree the assumptions should have been clearly stated somewhere, along with the fact he is taking the symmetric as opposed to asymmetric view etc.
thanks, gregory. it’s valuable to have numbers on this but i have some concerns about this argument and the spirit in which it is made:
1) most arguments for x-risk reduction make the controversial assumption that the future is very positive in expectation. this argument makes the (to my mind even more) controversial assumption that an arbitrary life-year added to a presently-existing person is very positive, on average. while it might be that many relatively wealthy euro-american EAs have life-years that are very positive, on average, it’s highly questionable whether the average human has life-years that are on average positive at all, let alone very positive.
2) many global catastrophic risks and extinction risks would affect not only humans but also many other sentient beings. insofar as these x-risks are risks of the extinction of not only humans but also nonhuman animals, to make a determination of the person-affecting value of deterring x-risks we must sum the value of preventing human death with the value of preventing nonhuman death. on the widely held assumption that farmed animals and wild animals have bad lives on average, and given the population of tens of billions of presently existing farmed animals and 10^13-10^22 presently existing wild animals, the value of the extinction of presently living nonhuman beings would likely swamp the (supposedly) negative value of the extinction of presently existing human beings. many of these animals would live a short period of time, sure, but their total life-years still vastly outnumber the remaining life-years of presently existing humans. moreover, most people who accept a largely person-affecting axiology also think that it is bad when we cause people with miserable lives to exist. so on most person-affecting axiologies, we would also need to sum the disvalue of the existence of future farmed and wild animals with the person-affecting value of human extinction. this may make the person-affecting value of preventing extinction extremely negative in expectation.
3) i’m concerned about this result being touted as a finding of a “highly effective” cause. $9,600/life-year is vanishingly small in comparison to many poverty interventions, let alone animal welfare interventions (where ACE estimates that this much money could save 100k+ animals from factory farming). why does $9,600/life-year suddenly make for a highly effective when we’re talking about x-risk reduction, when it isn’t highly effective when we’re talking about other domains?
1) Happiness levels seem to trend strongly positive, given things like the world values survey (in the most recent wave − 2014, only Egypt had <50% of people reporting being either ‘happy’ or ‘very happy’, although in fairness there were a lot of poorer countries with missing data. The association between wealth and happiness is there, but pretty weak (e.g. Zimbabwe gets 80+%, Bulgaria 55%). Given this (and when you throw in implied preferences, commonsensical intuitions whereby we don’t wonder about whether we should jump in the pond to save the child as we’re genuinely uncertain it is good for them to extent their life), it seems the average human takes themselves to have a life worth living. (q.v.)
2) My understanding from essays by Shulman and Tomasik is that even intensive factory farming plausibly leads to a net reduction in animal populations, given a greater reduction in wild animals due to habitat reduction. So if human extinction leads to another ~100M years of wildlife, this looks pretty bad by asymmetric views.
Of course, these estimates are highly non-resilient even with respect to sign. Yet the objective of the essay wasn’t to show the result was robust to all reasonable moral considerations, but that the value of x-risk reduction isn’t wholly ablated on a popular view of population ethics—somewhat akin to how Givewell analysis on cash transfers don’t try and factor in poor meat eater considerations.
3) I neither ‘tout’ - nor even state—this is a finding that ‘xrisk reduction is highly effective for person-affecting views’. Indeed, I say the opposite:
thanks for the clarification on (3), gregory. i exaggerated the strength of the valence on your post.
on (1), i think we should be skeptical about self-reports of well-being given the pollyanna principle (we may be evolutionarily hard-wired overestimate the value of our own lives).
on (2), my point was that extinction risks are rarely confined to only human beings, and events that cause human extinction will often also cause nonhuman extinction. but you’re right that for risks of exclusively human extinction we must also consider the impact of human extinction on other animals, and that impact—whatever its valence—may also outside the impact of the event on human well-being.
I’m surprised by your last point, since the article says:
This seems a far cry from the impression you seem to have gotten from the article. In fact your quote of “highly effective” is only used once, in the introduction, as a hypothetical motivation for crunching the numbers. (Since, a-priori, it could have turned out the cost effectiveness was 100 times higher, which would have been very cost effective).
On your first two points, my (admittedly not very justified) impression is the ‘default’ opinons people typically have is that almost all human lives are positive, and that animal lives are extremely unimportant compared to humans. Whilst one can question the truth of these claims, writing an article aimed at the majority seems reasonable.
It might be that actually within EA the average opinion is closer to yours, and in any case I agree the assumptions should have been clearly stated somewhere, along with the fact he is taking the symmetric as opposed to asymmetric view etc.