Just finished Semple (2021), ‘Good Enough for Government Work? Life-Evaluation and Public Policy,’ which I found fascinating for its synthesis of philosophy + economics + public policy, and potential relevance to EA (in particular, improving institutional decisionmaking).
The premise of the paper is essentially, “Normative policy analysis—ascertaining what government should do—is not just a philosophical exercise. It is (or should be) an essential task for people working in government, as well as people outside government who care about what government does. Life-evaluationist welfare-consequentialism is a practical and workable approach.”
Some things that are potentially EA-relevant
It gives brief policy analysis using a prioritarian welfare-consequentialism lens
It mentions unborn people, foreign residents, and animals as worthy of government + moral concern under welfare-consequentialism
It avoids having to defining welfare (and, implicitly, addresses the limitation of QALYs re: difficulty in comparing between one’s current and alternate lives)
Just finished Semple (2021), ‘Good Enough for Government Work? Life-Evaluation and Public Policy,’ which I found fascinating for its synthesis of philosophy + economics + public policy, and potential relevance to EA (in particular, improving institutional decisionmaking).
The premise of the paper is essentially, “Normative policy analysis—ascertaining what government should do—is not just a philosophical exercise. It is (or should be) an essential task for people working in government, as well as people outside government who care about what government does. Life-evaluationist welfare-consequentialism is a practical and workable approach.”
Some things that are potentially EA-relevant
It gives brief policy analysis using a prioritarian welfare-consequentialism lens
It mentions unborn people, foreign residents, and animals as worthy of government + moral concern under welfare-consequentialism
It avoids having to defining welfare (and, implicitly, addresses the limitation of QALYs re: difficulty in comparing between one’s current and alternate lives)
The inclusion of preferences reminds me of negative ideal preference utilitarianism