Thus, loosely speaking, I have some sense that agreeing with totalism in population ethics would “screen off” questions about the theory of well-being
Yes, this seems a sensible conclusion to me. I think we’re basically in agreement: varying one’s account of the good could lead to a new approach to prioritisation, but probably won’t make a practical difference given totalism and some further plausible empirical assumptions.
That said, I suspect doing research into how to improve the quality of lives long-term would be valuable and is potentially worth funding (even from a totalist viewpoint, assuming you think we have or will hit diminishing returns to X-risk research eventually).
FWIW, my own guess is that explicitly defending or even mentioning a specific population ethical view would be net bad—because of the downsides you mention—for almost any audience other than EAs and academic philosophers. However, I anticipate my reaction being somewhat common among, say, readers of the EA Forum specifically.
Oh I’m glad you agree—I don’t really want to tangle with all this on the HLI website. I thought about giving more details on the EA forum than were on the website itself, but that struck me as having the downside of looking sneaky and was a reason against doing so.
Yes, this seems a sensible conclusion to me. I think we’re basically in agreement: varying one’s account of the good could lead to a new approach to prioritisation, but probably won’t make a practical difference given totalism and some further plausible empirical assumptions.
That said, I suspect doing research into how to improve the quality of lives long-term would be valuable and is potentially worth funding (even from a totalist viewpoint, assuming you think we have or will hit diminishing returns to X-risk research eventually).
Oh I’m glad you agree—I don’t really want to tangle with all this on the HLI website. I thought about giving more details on the EA forum than were on the website itself, but that struck me as having the downside of looking sneaky and was a reason against doing so.