Thank you Mo, you are a well of great resources, as always!
1) The neutral point debate is fascinating and something I should have been aware of. I will dig deeper into this! The IDInsight study is also very interesting and relevant. However, I think it doesn’t fully address my skepticism about how rationally we as humans can think about the net value of our own and other lives. I realise that this kind of skepticism is hard to address via studies, but I think there are better ways than surveying people due to the reasons I mentioned.
2) I agree that we should put weight on different moral theories and that those will favour saving lives over not doing so to a very large extent (except for maybe antinatalism and a few others). This is a reason why I am very uncertain about the view I outlined.
Overall, these kinds of considerations lead me to think that it is probably better to save lives than not and this is why I am NOT saying that the number of sentient lives should be reduced across the board. But I have significant uncertainty around this, which somewhat move the needle towards (1) welfare-improving interventions that do not have strong population effects (e.g., cage-free egg campaigns or mental health interventions) and (2) interventions that reduce the number of some of the worst lives lived (e.g., diet change campaigns which lead to less animals being farmed (mostly in factory farms)).
Thank you Mo, you are a well of great resources, as always!
1) The neutral point debate is fascinating and something I should have been aware of. I will dig deeper into this! The IDInsight study is also very interesting and relevant. However, I think it doesn’t fully address my skepticism about how rationally we as humans can think about the net value of our own and other lives. I realise that this kind of skepticism is hard to address via studies, but I think there are better ways than surveying people due to the reasons I mentioned.
2) I agree that we should put weight on different moral theories and that those will favour saving lives over not doing so to a very large extent (except for maybe antinatalism and a few others). This is a reason why I am very uncertain about the view I outlined.
Overall, these kinds of considerations lead me to think that it is probably better to save lives than not and this is why I am NOT saying that the number of sentient lives should be reduced across the board. But I have significant uncertainty around this, which somewhat move the needle towards (1) welfare-improving interventions that do not have strong population effects (e.g., cage-free egg campaigns or mental health interventions) and (2) interventions that reduce the number of some of the worst lives lived (e.g., diet change campaigns which lead to less animals being farmed (mostly in factory farms)).