Anon asks: “1. Population ethics: what view do you put most credence in? What are the best objections to it?”
Total view: just add up total wellbeing.
Best objection: very repugnant conclusion: Take any population Pi with N people in unadulterated bliss, for any N. Then there is some number M such that a population Pj that consists of 10^100(N) people living in utter hell, and M people with lives barely worth living, such that Pj is better than Pi.
“2. Population ethics: do you think questions about better/worse worlds are sensibly addressed from a “fully impartial” perspective? (I’m unsure what that would even mean… maybe… the perspective of all possible minds?). Or do you prefer to anchor reflection on population ethics in the values of currently existing minds (e.g. human values)?”
Yeah, I think we should try to answer this ‘from the point of view of the universe’.
“3. Given your work on moral uncertainty, how do you think about claims associated with conservative world views? In particular, things like (a) the idea that revolutionary individual reasoning is rather error prone, and requires the refining discipline of tradition as a guide (b) the (tragic?) view that human values – or values of many possible minds – are unlikely to converge (c) strong concern for the preservation of existing sources of moral value (d) general distrust of rapid social change.”
I endorse (d) if the social change is really major; I think the world is going pretty well overall, and the ways in which it’s going really badly (e.g. factory farming) don’t require revolutionary social change. I believe (b). No strong views on (a) or (c).
Anon asks: “1. Population ethics: what view do you put most credence in? What are the best objections to it?”
Total view: just add up total wellbeing.
Best objection: very repugnant conclusion: Take any population Pi with N people in unadulterated bliss, for any N. Then there is some number M such that a population Pj that consists of 10^100(N) people living in utter hell, and M people with lives barely worth living, such that Pj is better than Pi.
“2. Population ethics: do you think questions about better/worse worlds are sensibly addressed from a “fully impartial” perspective? (I’m unsure what that would even mean… maybe… the perspective of all possible minds?). Or do you prefer to anchor reflection on population ethics in the values of currently existing minds (e.g. human values)?”
Yeah, I think we should try to answer this ‘from the point of view of the universe’.
“3. Given your work on moral uncertainty, how do you think about claims associated with conservative world views? In particular, things like (a) the idea that revolutionary individual reasoning is rather error prone, and requires the refining discipline of tradition as a guide (b) the (tragic?) view that human values – or values of many possible minds – are unlikely to converge (c) strong concern for the preservation of existing sources of moral value (d) general distrust of rapid social change.”
I endorse (d) if the social change is really major; I think the world is going pretty well overall, and the ways in which it’s going really badly (e.g. factory farming) don’t require revolutionary social change. I believe (b). No strong views on (a) or (c).