I think global poverty and health is important because…
there is a case that it is the most effective cause from a utilitarian standpoint. This is particularly the case id you have population ethics other than the total view or you are suffering focused (or you think that it is as likely as not that the future will be net bad).
I have not seen any strong case that for someone with, say a person affecting view, it is clear they can have a greater impact by working to prevent extinction risk.
(Animal welfare considerations and the meat eaters dilemma may counteract this. But they also counteract the case for preventing extinction.)
I think the person affecting view isn’t very common among EA? I’m not 100% sure on this, but I believe Derek Parfit started with the person affecting view and latter shifted away from this.
One can also have a population ethic that is neither total nor person affecting. I can have a value function that is concave in the number of people existing going forward and some measure of how happy they are. I can also heavily weight suffering even if I have a total view.
As to your claim, I’m not sure what the data is. My impression is that maybe about half the EA people who have thought about it have a view other than total utilitarianism, and a larger share have some doubts about it, some moral uncertainty.
I also think that the fact that ‘pronatalism’ is not a big EA cause suggests people aren’t fully on board with the total view?
But I have a vague sense that people are working on some survey/opinion research on this? It might be an interesting question to poll EAs on in some way.
And of course, obviously the share of people (even EAs) who believe something doesn’t determine its rightness
I think global poverty and health is important because…
there is a case that it is the most effective cause from a utilitarian standpoint. This is particularly the case id you have population ethics other than the total view or you are suffering focused (or you think that it is as likely as not that the future will be net bad).
I have not seen any strong case that for someone with, say a person affecting view, it is clear they can have a greater impact by working to prevent extinction risk.
(Animal welfare considerations and the meat eaters dilemma may counteract this. But they also counteract the case for preventing extinction.)
I think the person affecting view isn’t very common among EA? I’m not 100% sure on this, but I believe Derek Parfit started with the person affecting view and latter shifted away from this.
One can also have a population ethic that is neither total nor person affecting. I can have a value function that is concave in the number of people existing going forward and some measure of how happy they are. I can also heavily weight suffering even if I have a total view.
As to your claim, I’m not sure what the data is. My impression is that maybe about half the EA people who have thought about it have a view other than total utilitarianism, and a larger share have some doubts about it, some moral uncertainty.
I also think that the fact that ‘pronatalism’ is not a big EA cause suggests people aren’t fully on board with the total view?
But I have a vague sense that people are working on some survey/opinion research on this? It might be an interesting question to poll EAs on in some way.
And of course, obviously the share of people (even EAs) who believe something doesn’t determine its rightness