Thanks for the post. Coincidentally, I was thinking about how I have a strong moral preference for a longer timeline when I saw it. I feel attracted by total total utilitarianism, but suppose we have N individuals, each living 80y, with the same constant utility U. Now, these individuals can either live more concentrated (say, in 100y) or more scattered (say, in 10000y) in time; I strongly prefer the latter (I’d pay some utility for it) - even though it runs against any notion of (pure) temporal discount. My intuition (though I don’t trust it) is that, from the “point of view of nowhere”, at some point, length may trump population; but maybe it’s just some ad hoc influence of a strong bias against extinction. Please, let me know about any source discussing this (I admit I didn’t search enough for it).
Please, let me know about any source discussing this.
If with “this” you mean timeline utilitarianism, then there isn’t one unfortunately (I haven’t published this idea anywhere else yet). Once I’ve finished university I hope some EA institution will hire me to do research into descriptive population ethics. So hopefully I can provide you with some data on our intuitions about timelines in a couple years.
I suspect that people more concerned with the quality of life will tend to favor average timeline utilitarianism, and all the people in this community that are so focused on x-risk and life-extension might be a minority with their stronger preference for the quantity of life (anti-deathism is the natural consequence of being a strong total timeline utilitarian). If you want to read something similar to this then you could always check out the wider literature surrounding population ethics in general.
Thanks for the post. Coincidentally, I was thinking about how I have a strong moral preference for a longer timeline when I saw it.
I feel attracted by total total utilitarianism, but suppose we have N individuals, each living 80y, with the same constant utility U. Now, these individuals can either live more concentrated (say, in 100y) or more scattered (say, in 10000y) in time; I strongly prefer the latter (I’d pay some utility for it) - even though it runs against any notion of (pure) temporal discount. My intuition (though I don’t trust it) is that, from the “point of view of nowhere”, at some point, length may trump population; but maybe it’s just some ad hoc influence of a strong bias against extinction.
Please, let me know about any source discussing this (I admit I didn’t search enough for it).
If with “this” you mean timeline utilitarianism, then there isn’t one unfortunately (I haven’t published this idea anywhere else yet). Once I’ve finished university I hope some EA institution will hire me to do research into descriptive population ethics. So hopefully I can provide you with some data on our intuitions about timelines in a couple years.
I suspect that people more concerned with the quality of life will tend to favor average timeline utilitarianism, and all the people in this community that are so focused on x-risk and life-extension might be a minority with their stronger preference for the quantity of life (anti-deathism is the natural consequence of being a strong total timeline utilitarian).
If you want to read something similar to this then you could always check out the wider literature surrounding population ethics in general.