For what it’s worth, I get a sense of vagueness from this post, like I don’t have a strong understanding of what specific claims are being made and like I predict that different readers will spot or interpret different claims from this.
I think attempting to provide a summary of the key points in the form of specific claims and arguments for/against them would be a useful exercise, to force clarity of thought/expression here. So what follows is one possible summary. Note that I think many of the arguments in this attempted summary are flawed, as I’ll explain below.
“I think we should base our ethical decision-making in part on the views that people from the past (including past versions of currently living people) would’ve held or did hold. I see three reasons for this:
Those past people may have been right and we may be wrong
Those past people’s utility matters, and our decisions can affect their utility
A norm of respecting their preferences could contribute to future people respecting our preferences, which is good from our perspective”
I think (1) is obviously true, and it does seem worth people bearing it in mind. But I don’t see any reason to think that people on average currently under-weight that point—i.e., that people pay less attention to past views than they should given how often past views will be better than present views. I also don’t think that this post provided such arguments. So I don’t think that merely stating this basic point seems very useful. (Though I do think a post providing some arguments or evidence on whether people should change how much or when they pay attention to past views would be useful.)
I think (2) is just false, if by utility we have in mind experiences (including experiences of preference-satisfaction), for the obvious reason that the past has already happened and we can’t change it. This seems like a major error in the post. Your footnote 1 touches on this but seems to me to conflate arguments (2) and (3) in my above attempted summary.
Or perhaps you’re thinking of utils in terms of whether preferences are actually satisfied, regardless of whether people know or experience that and whether they’re alive at that time? If so, then I think that’s a pretty unusual form of utilitarianism, it’s a form I’d give very little weight to, and that’s a point that it seems like you should’ve clarified in the main text.
I think (3) is true, but to me it raises the key questions “How good (if at all) is it for future people to respect our preferences?”. “What are the best ways to get that to happen?”, and “Are there ways to get our preferences fulfilled that are better than getting future people to respect them?” And I think that:
It’s far from obvious that it’s good for future people to respect present-people-in-general’s preferences.
It’s not obvious but more likely that it’s good for them to respect EAs’ preferences.
It’s unlikely that the best way to get them to respect our preferences is to respect past people’s preferences to build a norm (alternatives include e.g. simply writing compelling materials arguing to respect our preferences, or shifting culture in various ways).
It’s likely that there are better options for getting our preferences fulfilled (relative to actively working to get future people to choose to respect our preferences), such as reducing x-risk or maybe even things like pursuing cryonics or whole-brain emulation to extend our own lifespans.
So here again, I get a feeling that this post:
Merely flags a hypothesis in a somewhat fuzzy way
Implies confidence in that hypothesis and in the view that this means we should spend more resources fulfilling or thinking about past people’s preferences
But it doesn’t really make this explicit enough or highlight in-my-view relatively obvious counterpoints, alternative options, or further questions
...I guess this comment is written more like a review than like constructive criticism. But what I’d say on the latter front (if you’re interested!) is that it seems worth trying to make your specific claims and argument structures more explicit, attempting to summarize all the key things (both because summaries are useful for readers and as an exercising in forcing clear thought), and spending more thought on alternative options and counterpoints to whatever you’re initially inclined to propose.
Or perhaps you’re thinking of utils in terms of whether preferences are actually satisfied, regardless of whether people know or experience that and whether they’re alive at that time? If so, then I think that’s a pretty unusual form of utilitarianism, it’s a form I’d give very little weight to, and that’s a point that it seems like you should’ve clarified in the main text.
Although I find this version of utilitarianism extremely implausible, it is actually a very common form of it. Discussions of preference-satisfaction theories of wellbeing presupposed by preference utilitarianism often explicitly point out that “satisfaction” is used in a logical rather than a psychological sense, to refer to the preferences that are actually satisfied rather than the subjective experience of satisfaction. For example, Shelly Kagan writes:
Second, there are desire or preference theories, which hold that being well-off is a matter of having one’s (intrinsic) desires satisfied. What is intended here, of course, is “satisfaction” in the logician’s sense: the question is simply whether or not the states of affairs that are the objects of one’s various desires obtain; it is irrelevant whether or not one realizes it, or whether one gets some psychological feeling of satisfaction.
So conditional on preference utilitarianism as it is generally understood, I think (2) is true. (But, to repeat, I don’t find this version of utilitarianism in the least plausible. I think the only reasons for respecting past people’s preferences are instrumental reasons (societies probably function more smoothly if their members have a justified expectation that others will put some effort into satisfying their preferences posthumously) and perhaps reasons based on moral uncertainty, although I’m skeptical about the latter.)
I put a bunch of weight on decision theories which support 2.
A mundane example: I get value now from knowing that, even if I died, my partner would pursue certain Claire-specific projects I value being pursued because it makes me happy to know they will get pursued even if I die. I couldn’t have that happiness now if I didn’t believe he would actually do it, and it’d be hard for him (a person who lives with me and who I’ve dated for many years) to make me believe that he actually would pursue them even if it weren’t true (as well as seeming sketchy from a deontological perspective).
And, +1 to Austin’s example of funders; funders occasionally have people ask for retroactive funding, and say that they only did the thing because their model of the funders suggested the funder would pay.
Thank you so, so much for writing up your review & criticism! I think your sense of vagueness is very justified, mostly because my own post is more “me trying to lay out my intuitions” and less “I know exactly how we should change EA on account of these intuitions”. I had just not seen many statements from EAs, and even less among my non-EA acquaintances, defending the importance of (1), (2), or (3) - great breakdown, btw. I put this post up in the hopes of fostering discussion, so thank you (and all the other commenters) for contributing your thoughts!
I actually do have some amount of confidence in this view, and do think we should think about fulfilling past preferences—but totally agree that I have not made those counterpoints, alternatives, or further questions available. Some of this is: I still just don’t know—and to that end your review is very enlightening! And some is: there’s a tradeoff between post length and clarity of argument. On a meta level, EA Forum posts have been ballooning to somewhat hard-to-digest lengths as people try to anticipate every possible counterargument; I’d push for a return to more of Sequences-style shorter chunks.
I think (2) is just false, if by utility we have in mind experiences (including experiences of preference-satisfaction), for the obvious reason that the past has already happened and we can’t change it. This seems like a major error in the post. Your footnote 1 touches on this but seems to me to conflate arguments (2) and (3) in my above attempted summary.
I still believe in (2), but I’m not confident I can articulate why (and I might be wrong!). Once again, I’d draw upon the framing of deceptive or counterfeit utility. For example, I feel that involuntary wireheading or being tricked into staying in a simulation machine is wrong, because the utility provided is not a true utility. The person would not actually realize that utility if they were cognizant that this was a lie. So too would the conversationist laboring to preserve biodiversity feel deceived/not gain utility if they were aware of the future supplanting their wishes.
Can we change the past? I feel like the answer is not 100% obviously “no”—I think this post by Joe Carlsmith lays out some arguments for why:
Overall, rejecting the common-sense comforts of CDT, and accepting the possibility of some kind of “acausal control,” leaves us in strange and uncertain territory. I think we should do it anyway. But we should also tread carefully.
(but it’s also super technical and I’m at risk of having misunderstood his post to service my own arguments.)
In terms of one specific claim: Large EA Funders (OpenPhil, FTX FF) should consider funding public goods retroactively instead of prospectively. More bounties and more “this was a good idea, here’s your prize”, and less “here’s some money to go do X”.
I’m not entirely sure what % of my belief in this comes from “this is a morally just way of paying out to the past” vs “this will be effective at producing better future outcomes”; maybe 20% compared to 80%? But I feel like many people would only state 10% or even less belief in the first.
To this end, I’ve been working on a proposal for equity for charities—still in a very early stage, but as you work as a fund manager, I’d love to hear your thoughts (especially your criticism!)
For what it’s worth, I get a sense of vagueness from this post, like I don’t have a strong understanding of what specific claims are being made and like I predict that different readers will spot or interpret different claims from this.
I think attempting to provide a summary of the key points in the form of specific claims and arguments for/against them would be a useful exercise, to force clarity of thought/expression here. So what follows is one possible summary. Note that I think many of the arguments in this attempted summary are flawed, as I’ll explain below.
“I think we should base our ethical decision-making in part on the views that people from the past (including past versions of currently living people) would’ve held or did hold. I see three reasons for this:
Those past people may have been right and we may be wrong
Those past people’s utility matters, and our decisions can affect their utility
A norm of respecting their preferences could contribute to future people respecting our preferences, which is good from our perspective”
I think (1) is obviously true, and it does seem worth people bearing it in mind. But I don’t see any reason to think that people on average currently under-weight that point—i.e., that people pay less attention to past views than they should given how often past views will be better than present views. I also don’t think that this post provided such arguments. So I don’t think that merely stating this basic point seems very useful. (Though I do think a post providing some arguments or evidence on whether people should change how much or when they pay attention to past views would be useful.)
I think (2) is just false, if by utility we have in mind experiences (including experiences of preference-satisfaction), for the obvious reason that the past has already happened and we can’t change it. This seems like a major error in the post. Your footnote 1 touches on this but seems to me to conflate arguments (2) and (3) in my above attempted summary.
Or perhaps you’re thinking of utils in terms of whether preferences are actually satisfied, regardless of whether people know or experience that and whether they’re alive at that time? If so, then I think that’s a pretty unusual form of utilitarianism, it’s a form I’d give very little weight to, and that’s a point that it seems like you should’ve clarified in the main text.
I think (3) is true, but to me it raises the key questions “How good (if at all) is it for future people to respect our preferences?”. “What are the best ways to get that to happen?”, and “Are there ways to get our preferences fulfilled that are better than getting future people to respect them?” And I think that:
It’s far from obvious that it’s good for future people to respect present-people-in-general’s preferences.
It’s not obvious but more likely that it’s good for them to respect EAs’ preferences.
It’s unlikely that the best way to get them to respect our preferences is to respect past people’s preferences to build a norm (alternatives include e.g. simply writing compelling materials arguing to respect our preferences, or shifting culture in various ways).
It’s likely that there are better options for getting our preferences fulfilled (relative to actively working to get future people to choose to respect our preferences), such as reducing x-risk or maybe even things like pursuing cryonics or whole-brain emulation to extend our own lifespans.
So here again, I get a feeling that this post:
Merely flags a hypothesis in a somewhat fuzzy way
Implies confidence in that hypothesis and in the view that this means we should spend more resources fulfilling or thinking about past people’s preferences
But it doesn’t really make this explicit enough or highlight in-my-view relatively obvious counterpoints, alternative options, or further questions
...I guess this comment is written more like a review than like constructive criticism. But what I’d say on the latter front (if you’re interested!) is that it seems worth trying to make your specific claims and argument structures more explicit, attempting to summarize all the key things (both because summaries are useful for readers and as an exercising in forcing clear thought), and spending more thought on alternative options and counterpoints to whatever you’re initially inclined to propose.
[Note that I haven’t read other comments.]
Although I find this version of utilitarianism extremely implausible, it is actually a very common form of it. Discussions of preference-satisfaction theories of wellbeing presupposed by preference utilitarianism often explicitly point out that “satisfaction” is used in a logical rather than a psychological sense, to refer to the preferences that are actually satisfied rather than the subjective experience of satisfaction. For example, Shelly Kagan writes:
So conditional on preference utilitarianism as it is generally understood, I think (2) is true. (But, to repeat, I don’t find this version of utilitarianism in the least plausible. I think the only reasons for respecting past people’s preferences are instrumental reasons (societies probably function more smoothly if their members have a justified expectation that others will put some effort into satisfying their preferences posthumously) and perhaps reasons based on moral uncertainty, although I’m skeptical about the latter.)
I put a bunch of weight on decision theories which support 2.
A mundane example: I get value now from knowing that, even if I died, my partner would pursue certain Claire-specific projects I value being pursued because it makes me happy to know they will get pursued even if I die. I couldn’t have that happiness now if I didn’t believe he would actually do it, and it’d be hard for him (a person who lives with me and who I’ve dated for many years) to make me believe that he actually would pursue them even if it weren’t true (as well as seeming sketchy from a deontological perspective).
And, +1 to Austin’s example of funders; funders occasionally have people ask for retroactive funding, and say that they only did the thing because their model of the funders suggested the funder would pay.
Thank you so, so much for writing up your review & criticism! I think your sense of vagueness is very justified, mostly because my own post is more “me trying to lay out my intuitions” and less “I know exactly how we should change EA on account of these intuitions”. I had just not seen many statements from EAs, and even less among my non-EA acquaintances, defending the importance of (1), (2), or (3) - great breakdown, btw. I put this post up in the hopes of fostering discussion, so thank you (and all the other commenters) for contributing your thoughts!
I actually do have some amount of confidence in this view, and do think we should think about fulfilling past preferences—but totally agree that I have not made those counterpoints, alternatives, or further questions available. Some of this is: I still just don’t know—and to that end your review is very enlightening! And some is: there’s a tradeoff between post length and clarity of argument. On a meta level, EA Forum posts have been ballooning to somewhat hard-to-digest lengths as people try to anticipate every possible counterargument; I’d push for a return to more of Sequences-style shorter chunks.
I still believe in (2), but I’m not confident I can articulate why (and I might be wrong!). Once again, I’d draw upon the framing of deceptive or counterfeit utility. For example, I feel that involuntary wireheading or being tricked into staying in a simulation machine is wrong, because the utility provided is not a true utility. The person would not actually realize that utility if they were cognizant that this was a lie. So too would the conversationist laboring to preserve biodiversity feel deceived/not gain utility if they were aware of the future supplanting their wishes.
Can we change the past? I feel like the answer is not 100% obviously “no”—I think this post by Joe Carlsmith lays out some arguments for why:
(but it’s also super technical and I’m at risk of having misunderstood his post to service my own arguments.)
In terms of one specific claim: Large EA Funders (OpenPhil, FTX FF) should consider funding public goods retroactively instead of prospectively. More bounties and more “this was a good idea, here’s your prize”, and less “here’s some money to go do X”.
I’m not entirely sure what % of my belief in this comes from “this is a morally just way of paying out to the past” vs “this will be effective at producing better future outcomes”; maybe 20% compared to 80%? But I feel like many people would only state 10% or even less belief in the first.
To this end, I’ve been working on a proposal for equity for charities—still in a very early stage, but as you work as a fund manager, I’d love to hear your thoughts (especially your criticism!)
Finally (and to put my money where my mouth is): would you accept a $100 bounty for your comment, paid in Manifold Dollars aka a donation to the charity of your choice? If so, DM me!