I’m not sure I know what you mean by “moral objectivism” here. To try to clarify my view, I’m a moral anti-realist (though I don’t think that’s relevant to my point) and I’m fairly confident that the following is true about my values: the intrinsic value of my enjoyment of ice cream is no greater than the intrinsic value of other individuals’ enjoyment of ice cream (assuming their minds are like mine and can enjoy it in the same way), including future individuals. I think we live at a time in history where our expected effect on the number of individuals that ultimately come into existence and enjoy ice cream is enormous. As such, the instrumental value of my actions (such as my action to eat or not eat ice cream) generally dwarfs the intrinsic value of my conscious experience that results from my actions. So it’s not that there’s zero intrinsic value to my enjoyment of ice cream, it’s just that that intrinsic value is quite trivial in comparison to the net difference in value of the future conscious experiences that come into existence as a result of my decision to eat ice cream.
The fact that I have to spend some resources on making myself happy in order to do the best job at maxizing value overall (which mostly looks like productively contributing to longtermist goals in my view) is just a fact about my nature. I don’t see it as a criticism or shortcoming of my or human nature, just a thing that is true. So our preferences do matter also; it just happens that when trying to do the most good we find that it’s much easier to do good for future generations in expectation than it is to do good for ourselves. So the best thing to do ends up being to help ourselves to the degree that helps us help future generations the most (such that helping ourselves any more or less causes us to do less for longtermism). I think humane nature is such that that optimal balance looks like us making ourselves happy, as opposed to us making great sacrifices and living lives of misery for the greater good.
Let me know if you’re still unsure why I take the view that I do.
I think I can restate your view; there is no moral objective truth, but individual future lives are equally valuable to individual present lives, (I assume we will ignore the epistemic and economic arguments for now,) and your life in particular has no larger claim on your values than anyone else’s.
That certainly isn’t incoherent, but I think it’s a view that few are willing to embrace—at least in part because even though you do admit that personal happiness, or caring for those close to you, is instrumentally useful, you also claim that it’s entirely contingent, and that if new evidence were to emerge, you would endorse requiring personal pain to pursue greater future or global benefits.
I think that’s an accurate restatement of my view, with the caveat that I do have some moral uncertainty, i.e. give some weight to the possibility that my true moral values may be different. Additionally, I wouldn’t necessarily endorse that people be morally required to endure personal pain; personal pain would just be necessary to do greater amounts of good.
I think the important takeaway is that doing good for future generations via reducing existential risk is probably incredibly important, i.e. much more than half of expected future value exists in the long-term future (beyond a few centuries or millenia from now).
I’m not sure I know what you mean by “moral objectivism” here. To try to clarify my view, I’m a moral anti-realist (though I don’t think that’s relevant to my point) and I’m fairly confident that the following is true about my values: the intrinsic value of my enjoyment of ice cream is no greater than the intrinsic value of other individuals’ enjoyment of ice cream (assuming their minds are like mine and can enjoy it in the same way), including future individuals. I think we live at a time in history where our expected effect on the number of individuals that ultimately come into existence and enjoy ice cream is enormous. As such, the instrumental value of my actions (such as my action to eat or not eat ice cream) generally dwarfs the intrinsic value of my conscious experience that results from my actions. So it’s not that there’s zero intrinsic value to my enjoyment of ice cream, it’s just that that intrinsic value is quite trivial in comparison to the net difference in value of the future conscious experiences that come into existence as a result of my decision to eat ice cream.
The fact that I have to spend some resources on making myself happy in order to do the best job at maxizing value overall (which mostly looks like productively contributing to longtermist goals in my view) is just a fact about my nature. I don’t see it as a criticism or shortcoming of my or human nature, just a thing that is true. So our preferences do matter also; it just happens that when trying to do the most good we find that it’s much easier to do good for future generations in expectation than it is to do good for ourselves. So the best thing to do ends up being to help ourselves to the degree that helps us help future generations the most (such that helping ourselves any more or less causes us to do less for longtermism). I think humane nature is such that that optimal balance looks like us making ourselves happy, as opposed to us making great sacrifices and living lives of misery for the greater good.
Let me know if you’re still unsure why I take the view that I do.
I think I can restate your view; there is no moral objective truth, but individual future lives are equally valuable to individual present lives, (I assume we will ignore the epistemic and economic arguments for now,) and your life in particular has no larger claim on your values than anyone else’s.
That certainly isn’t incoherent, but I think it’s a view that few are willing to embrace—at least in part because even though you do admit that personal happiness, or caring for those close to you, is instrumentally useful, you also claim that it’s entirely contingent, and that if new evidence were to emerge, you would endorse requiring personal pain to pursue greater future or global benefits.
I think that’s an accurate restatement of my view, with the caveat that I do have some moral uncertainty, i.e. give some weight to the possibility that my true moral values may be different. Additionally, I wouldn’t necessarily endorse that people be morally required to endure personal pain; personal pain would just be necessary to do greater amounts of good.
I think the important takeaway is that doing good for future generations via reducing existential risk is probably incredibly important, i.e. much more than half of expected future value exists in the long-term future (beyond a few centuries or millenia from now).