Also, allow me to make a small reversal test. You say there is a small market for kidney organs disincentivizing the capital markets from coming in and investing in solutions. If we could, should we be trying to increase the prevalence of kidney disease to increase the potential size of the market for forming kidneys from the recipient’s own cells so that there is a larger reward pool to motivate investors to solve the problem? After all, there are also positive externalities, since growing kidneys is similar to growing any other organ. So advances in this field could be extrapolated and lead to the curing of many other conditions.
“Just do good” is an easy heuristic up until it runs against “just kill yourself” at which point I think we should actually do the utility calculation beyond the 1st degree effects, yes.
My claim is that we shouldn’t be using utilitarian ethics to judge this and instead do the heuristically obvious things, that’s what EA <sometimes> does.
But those heuristics have boundaries which are usually set at harming self and others.
The reason I make this argument is because self-harm is only justified in a very naive utilitarian framework, I believe a mature framework of ethics avoids it in other ways. And I am making this argument primarily for young naive people (like myself) who might not have that fully developed frame of ethics. Some of which might still be utilitarians.
In other words, I would not do the reverse and I don’t think that the “makes the market less efficient” argument stands up to scrutiny in any sensible framework of ethics. But neither does altruistic kidney donation, so I am trying, to the best of my abilities, to showcase the fallacy in the ethical framework with which readers are likely to operate.
Also, allow me to make a small reversal test. You say there is a small market for kidney organs disincentivizing the capital markets from coming in and investing in solutions. If we could, should we be trying to increase the prevalence of kidney disease to increase the potential size of the market for forming kidneys from the recipient’s own cells so that there is a larger reward pool to motivate investors to solve the problem? After all, there are also positive externalities, since growing kidneys is similar to growing any other organ. So advances in this field could be extrapolated and lead to the curing of many other conditions.
To quote my other comment:
My claim is that we shouldn’t be using utilitarian ethics to judge this and instead do the heuristically obvious things, that’s what EA <sometimes> does.
But those heuristics have boundaries which are usually set at harming self and others.
The reason I make this argument is because self-harm is only justified in a very naive utilitarian framework, I believe a mature framework of ethics avoids it in other ways. And I am making this argument primarily for young naive people (like myself) who might not have that fully developed frame of ethics. Some of which might still be utilitarians.
In other words, I would not do the reverse and I don’t think that the “makes the market less efficient” argument stands up to scrutiny in any sensible framework of ethics. But neither does altruistic kidney donation, so I am trying, to the best of my abilities, to showcase the fallacy in the ethical framework with which readers are likely to operate.