This work is among the first empirical papers considering attitudes towards population ethics. We commissioned two evaluations, from experts with complementary backgrounds. The first evaluator (Bruers, with expertise in welfare economics and normative ethics) rates the paper highly, while E2 (an ~experimental economist) is moderately favorable. Both see a contribution (“Highly policy relevant”, “valuable empirical insights”). Both offer some critiques and provide suggestions for robustness checks and ambitious future work. Bruers expresses “weak confidence” in the paper’s “main result” that “people do not hold the neutrality and procreation asymmetry intuitions”, loosely suggesting we should “prioritize existential risk reduction”. E2 criticizes the paper’s fundamental approach as: (1) unable to accommodate non-utilitarian beliefs/behavior, (2) implying an unrealistic “hedonic arithmetic” and (3) relying on “choices between populations” that may not reflect inherent axiological preferences. E2 also raises doubts about underpowered null results, limited characterisations of uncertainty, and the authors’ approach to aggregating participant responses into a “people believe” statement.
I hope to discuss this further and put it up as a linkpost when I have bandwidth.
The Unjournal commissioned an evaluation of this paper.
See here (and links within) for all content.
A brief summary from our abstract:
I hope to discuss this further and put it up as a linkpost when I have bandwidth.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/poZwKfPPtgCmTQcBk/unjournal-eval-of-caviola-et-al-2022-population-ethical