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.
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.