Executive summary: The author argues that ongoing moral catastrophes are probably happening now, drawing on Evan Williams’s inductive and disjunctive arguments that nearly all societies have committed uncontroversial evils and ours is unlikely to be the lone exception.
Key points:
The author says they already believe an ongoing moral catastrophe exists, citing factory farming as an example, and uses Williams’s paper to argue that everyone should think such catastrophes are likely.
Williams’s inductive argument is that almost every past society committed clear atrocities such as slavery, conquest, repression, and torture while believing themselves moral, so we should expect similar blind spots today.
Williams’s disjunctive argument is that because there are many possible ways to commit immense wrongdoing, even a high probability of avoiding any single one yields a low probability of avoiding all.
The author lists potential present-day catastrophes, including factory farming, wild animal suffering, neglect for foreigners and future generations, abortion, mass incarceration, natural mass fetus death, declining birth rates, animal slaughter, secularism causing damnation, destruction of nature, and child-bearing.
The author concludes that society should actively reflect on possible atrocities, expand the moral circle, take precautionary reasoning seriously, and reflect before taking high-stakes actions such as creating digital minds or allocating space resources.
The author argues that taking these possibilities seriously should change how we see our own era and reduce the chance of committing vast moral wrongs.
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Executive summary: The author argues that ongoing moral catastrophes are probably happening now, drawing on Evan Williams’s inductive and disjunctive arguments that nearly all societies have committed uncontroversial evils and ours is unlikely to be the lone exception.
Key points:
The author says they already believe an ongoing moral catastrophe exists, citing factory farming as an example, and uses Williams’s paper to argue that everyone should think such catastrophes are likely.
Williams’s inductive argument is that almost every past society committed clear atrocities such as slavery, conquest, repression, and torture while believing themselves moral, so we should expect similar blind spots today.
Williams’s disjunctive argument is that because there are many possible ways to commit immense wrongdoing, even a high probability of avoiding any single one yields a low probability of avoiding all.
The author lists potential present-day catastrophes, including factory farming, wild animal suffering, neglect for foreigners and future generations, abortion, mass incarceration, natural mass fetus death, declining birth rates, animal slaughter, secularism causing damnation, destruction of nature, and child-bearing.
The author concludes that society should actively reflect on possible atrocities, expand the moral circle, take precautionary reasoning seriously, and reflect before taking high-stakes actions such as creating digital minds or allocating space resources.
The author argues that taking these possibilities seriously should change how we see our own era and reduce the chance of committing vast moral wrongs.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.