Hi Moritz :) Thanks for articulating this take, which I think is novel and quite daring in arguing that we should be deeply uncertain whether most sentient lives are worth living. I agree with quite a lot of object-level stuff you say. I also have scattered half-thoughts that unfortunately haven’t cohered, hopefully you find at least some of them useful or interesting:
1) re: your first argument for doubting whether most sentient lives are worth living, I’m reminded of the neutral point debate, and in particular footnote 31: “Some people I’ve spoken to have suggested it’s bad to save lives solely on the grounds those in the developing world lead lives belows the neutral point.” I intuitively emphatically disagree with the strong version of this, but couldn’t justify it on purely SWB grounds unless the neutral point could justifiably be set lower than (say) that of Afghanistan, the lowest country in the WHRs. And there is some justification. That said...
2) I used to be ~all in on happiness & SWB for altruistic decision guidance, persuaded by arguments such as HLI’s, but find myself putting more weight on valuism & capabilitarianism recently, after much introspection on my own pursuits (“100% generalizable to others!”) coupled with arguments such as Jason Crawford’s contra HLI. I think this reduces the force of your second argument even though I agree with your perspectives supporting that, and (because value-fulfillment is necessarily objective, as Crawford explains) lets us be a bit more rational in evaluating value of life vs subjective assessments, which partly reduces the force of your first one. (As an aside, animals arguably have central capabilities too.) That said, I don’t know how to calculative cost-effectiveness from a valuism / capabilitarianism perspective…
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)).
Hi Moritz :) Thanks for articulating this take, which I think is novel and quite daring in arguing that we should be deeply uncertain whether most sentient lives are worth living. I agree with quite a lot of object-level stuff you say. I also have scattered half-thoughts that unfortunately haven’t cohered, hopefully you find at least some of them useful or interesting:
1) re: your first argument for doubting whether most sentient lives are worth living, I’m reminded of the neutral point debate, and in particular footnote 31: “Some people I’ve spoken to have suggested it’s bad to save lives solely on the grounds those in the developing world lead lives belows the neutral point.” I intuitively emphatically disagree with the strong version of this, but couldn’t justify it on purely SWB grounds unless the neutral point could justifiably be set lower than (say) that of Afghanistan, the lowest country in the WHRs. And there is some justification. That said...
2) I used to be ~all in on happiness & SWB for altruistic decision guidance, persuaded by arguments such as HLI’s, but find myself putting more weight on valuism & capabilitarianism recently, after much introspection on my own pursuits (“100% generalizable to others!”) coupled with arguments such as Jason Crawford’s contra HLI. I think this reduces the force of your second argument even though I agree with your perspectives supporting that, and (because value-fulfillment is necessarily objective, as Crawford explains) lets us be a bit more rational in evaluating value of life vs subjective assessments, which partly reduces the force of your first one. (As an aside, animals arguably have central capabilities too.) That said, I don’t know how to calculative cost-effectiveness from a valuism / capabilitarianism perspective…
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)).