Why does this confusion persist among long-time EA thought leaders after many years of hashing out the relevant very simple principles? “Beings currently alive” is a judgment about which changes are good in principle, “benefits the next 50 years” is an entirely different pragmatic scope limitation, and people keep bringing up the first in defense of things that can only really be justified by the second.
I understand how someone could be initially confused about this—I was too, initially. But, it seems like the right thing to do once corrected is to actually update your model of the world so you don’t generate the error again. Presentism without negative utilitarianism suggests that we should focus on some combination of curing aging, real wealth creation sufficient to extend this benefit to as many currently alive people as we can, and preventing deaths before we manage to extend this benefit, including due to GCRs likely to happen during the lives of currently living beings.
As it is, we’re not making intellectual progress, since the same errors keep popping up, and we’re not generating actions based on the principles we’re talking about, since people keep bringing up principles that don’t actually recommend the relevant actions. What are we doing, then, when we talk about moral principles?
To add on to this, I think the view you’re referring to is presentism combined with the deprivationism view on death: presentism = only presently alive people matter + deprivationism = the badness of death is the ammount of happiness the person would have had.
You could be, say, a presentist (or other person-affecting view) and combined with say, Epicureanism about death. That would hold only presently alive people matter and there’s no badness in death, and hence no value in extending lives.
If that were your view you’d focus on the suffering of presently humans instead. Probably mental illness or chronic pain. Maybe social isolation if you had a really neat intervention.
But yeah, you’re right that person-affecting views doesn’t capture the intuitive badnes of animal suffering. You could still be a presentist and v*gan on environmental grounds.
And I agree that presentism + deprivationism suggests trying to cure aging is very important and, depending on details, could have higher EV than suffering relief. I’m unclear that real wealth creation would do very much due to hedonic adaptation and social comparison challenges.
Why does this confusion persist among long-time EA thought leaders after many years of hashing out the relevant very simple principles? “Beings currently alive” is a judgment about which changes are good in principle, “benefits the next 50 years” is an entirely different pragmatic scope limitation, and people keep bringing up the first in defense of things that can only really be justified by the second.
I understand how someone could be initially confused about this—I was too, initially. But, it seems like the right thing to do once corrected is to actually update your model of the world so you don’t generate the error again. Presentism without negative utilitarianism suggests that we should focus on some combination of curing aging, real wealth creation sufficient to extend this benefit to as many currently alive people as we can, and preventing deaths before we manage to extend this benefit, including due to GCRs likely to happen during the lives of currently living beings.
As it is, we’re not making intellectual progress, since the same errors keep popping up, and we’re not generating actions based on the principles we’re talking about, since people keep bringing up principles that don’t actually recommend the relevant actions. What are we doing, then, when we talk about moral principles?
To add on to this, I think the view you’re referring to is presentism combined with the deprivationism view on death: presentism = only presently alive people matter + deprivationism = the badness of death is the ammount of happiness the person would have had.
You could be, say, a presentist (or other person-affecting view) and combined with say, Epicureanism about death. That would hold only presently alive people matter and there’s no badness in death, and hence no value in extending lives.
If that were your view you’d focus on the suffering of presently humans instead. Probably mental illness or chronic pain. Maybe social isolation if you had a really neat intervention.
But yeah, you’re right that person-affecting views doesn’t capture the intuitive badnes of animal suffering. You could still be a presentist and v*gan on environmental grounds.
And I agree that presentism + deprivationism suggests trying to cure aging is very important and, depending on details, could have higher EV than suffering relief. I’m unclear that real wealth creation would do very much due to hedonic adaptation and social comparison challenges.