Isnāt the point of the Long Reflection to avoid ālocking inā irreversible mistakes? Extinction, for example, is irreversible. But large population isnāt. So I donāt actually see any sense in which present āmin-natalismā maintains more future āoptionalityā (or better minimizes moral risks) than pro-natalism. Both leave entirely open what future generations choose to do. They just differ in our present population target. And presently aiming for a āminimal populationā strikes me as much the worse and riskier of the two options, for both intrinsic moral reasons and instrumental ones like misjudging /ā undershooting the minimally sustainable level.
Perhaps the most important question is whether you support a restriction on space colonization (completely or to a few nearby planets) during the Long Reflection. Unrestricted colonization seems good from a pure pro-natalist perspective, but bad from an optionalist perspective, as it makes much more likely that if anti-natalism (or adjacent positions like there should be strict care or controls over what lives can be brought into existence) is right, some of the colonies will fail to reach the correct conclusion and go on to colonize the universe in an unrestricted way, thus making humanity as a whole unable to implement the correct option.
If you do support such a restriction, then I think we agree on āthe highest order bitsā or the most important policy implication of optionalism, but probably still disagree on what is the best population size during the Long Reflection, which may be unresolvable due to our differing intuitions. I think I probably have more sympathy for anti-natalist intuitions than you do (in particular that most current lives may have negative value and people are mistaken about this), and worry more that creating negative-value lives and/āor bringing lives into existence without adequate care could constitute a kind of irreversible or irreparable moral error. Unfortunately I do not see a good way to resolve such disagreements at our current stage of philosophical progress.
Isnāt the point of the Long Reflection to avoid ālocking inā irreversible mistakes? Extinction, for example, is irreversible. But large population isnāt. So I donāt actually see any sense in which present āmin-natalismā maintains more future āoptionalityā (or better minimizes moral risks) than pro-natalism. Both leave entirely open what future generations choose to do. They just differ in our present population target. And presently aiming for a āminimal populationā strikes me as much the worse and riskier of the two options, for both intrinsic moral reasons and instrumental ones like misjudging /ā undershooting the minimally sustainable level.
Perhaps the most important question is whether you support a restriction on space colonization (completely or to a few nearby planets) during the Long Reflection. Unrestricted colonization seems good from a pure pro-natalist perspective, but bad from an optionalist perspective, as it makes much more likely that if anti-natalism (or adjacent positions like there should be strict care or controls over what lives can be brought into existence) is right, some of the colonies will fail to reach the correct conclusion and go on to colonize the universe in an unrestricted way, thus making humanity as a whole unable to implement the correct option.
If you do support such a restriction, then I think we agree on āthe highest order bitsā or the most important policy implication of optionalism, but probably still disagree on what is the best population size during the Long Reflection, which may be unresolvable due to our differing intuitions. I think I probably have more sympathy for anti-natalist intuitions than you do (in particular that most current lives may have negative value and people are mistaken about this), and worry more that creating negative-value lives and/āor bringing lives into existence without adequate care could constitute a kind of irreversible or irreparable moral error. Unfortunately I do not see a good way to resolve such disagreements at our current stage of philosophical progress.