I mostly agree. I’m not sure I see how that’s a counter to my second point though. My second point was just that (contrary to what the paper seems to assume) some amount of ethical non-representativeness is not in itself bad:
There’s room to debate just how much these ethical views should concentrate their investments, but if the answer is not zero, then it’s not the case that e.g. the field having “non-representative moral visions of the future” is a “daunting problem” for anyone.
Also, if we’re worried about implementation of large policy shifts (at least, if we’re worried about this under “business as usual” politics), I think utilitarians/longtermists can’t and won’t actually dominate the debate, because policymaking processes in modern democracies by default engage a large and diverse set of stakeholders. (In other words, dominance in the internal debates of a niche research field won’t translate into dominance of policymaking debates—especially when the policy in question would significantly affect many people.)
I mostly agree. I’m not sure I see how that’s a counter to my second point though. My second point was just that (contrary to what the paper seems to assume) some amount of ethical non-representativeness is not in itself bad:
Also, if we’re worried about implementation of large policy shifts (at least, if we’re worried about this under “business as usual” politics), I think utilitarians/longtermists can’t and won’t actually dominate the debate, because policymaking processes in modern democracies by default engage a large and diverse set of stakeholders. (In other words, dominance in the internal debates of a niche research field won’t translate into dominance of policymaking debates—especially when the policy in question would significantly affect many people.)