AFAIK there is no serious proposal for a “weighted lottery system”. It doesn’t have support under any ethical system that I can think of. I’m worried that taking a view like that, and then giving it a name and a bunch of formal counterarguments, makes it more popular and notable despite the lack of arguments for it. Especially when people find out that they can use it to back up their existing moral instincts and avoid cognitive dissonance.
firstly have a concern about the value of hope—the possibly quite practical value of hope. If people know they’re going to receive no help, they lose hope—this is a loss of welfare, this is a negative thing.
This is only true to the extent that we can predict hope that is irrational in a particular direction. Moreover, one also needs to argue that a large number of people feeling optimistic outweighs the death of one person and the suffering of him and people who know him combined with the economic burden of disease.
And the concern here is that when you say that a particular group of people are just going to receive no help whatsoever and have no chance of savior, that is unfair in some way.
I don’t know of any notable set of beliefs where dying when you didn’t have a chance of being saved is worse than dying when you did have a chance of being saved.
It’s not necessarily incompatible with EA. If that’s your account of well-being, then that’s your account of well-being. You just need to justify it.
AFAIK there is no serious proposal for a “weighted lottery system”. It doesn’t have support under any ethical system that I can think of. I’m worried that taking a view like that, and then giving it a name and a bunch of formal counterarguments, makes it more popular and notable despite the lack of arguments for it. Especially when people find out that they can use it to back up their existing moral instincts and avoid cognitive dissonance.
This is only true to the extent that we can predict hope that is irrational in a particular direction. Moreover, one also needs to argue that a large number of people feeling optimistic outweighs the death of one person and the suffering of him and people who know him combined with the economic burden of disease.
I don’t know of any notable set of beliefs where dying when you didn’t have a chance of being saved is worse than dying when you did have a chance of being saved.
It’s not necessarily incompatible with EA. If that’s your account of well-being, then that’s your account of well-being. You just need to justify it.