it turns out that saving people by hastening the arrival of LEV wouldn’t prevent births and could actually increase the average fertility rate of the world. This leads to a counterintuitive result: Aging research could be even more valuable under the impersonal view of population ethics.
The sense of ‘even more valuable’ meant here seem to be something like ‘more adjusted morally relevant QALYs.’ But a total view of population ethics (contrasted with a symmetric person-affecting view) generically massively increases the potential QALYs at stake, and shifts the relative choiceworthiness of different options, so that on the impersonal view life extension is less valuable compared to the alternatives (and thus less of a priority for actual efforts) even if more important in absolute terms:
Because animal populations turn over extremely rapidly and our interventions generally take too long to help current animals (only changing the conditions of future generations), the impersonal view vastly amplifies the relative importance of helping them relative to long-lived humans
Considerations of existential risk for future generations potentially affect populations many orders of magnitude larger than current human populations (and most of those generations will in any case have access to life-extension), so the total view strongly favors interventions that yield QALYs through effects on long run civilizational trajectories or survival, rather than effects like those from medical life extension
Life extension may help affect distant future generations, and fertility boosts increase growth, but doesn’t seem very well-targeted to that task
So I think the counterintuitive result is counterintuitive because it’s not asking the right (action-guiding) question, and in action-guiding terms the person-affecting view does much more strongly favor life extension.
I used “Counterintuitive”, because people tend to think the person-affecting view generates more cost-effectiveness than the impersonal view (see comments under my first post), regardless of how the views affect the comparison with other causes. But yes, adopting the person-affective view seems to make aging research look better in comparison to the other causes you mention, since it negates a lot of their impact. Instead, adopting the impersonal view makes the comparison favour prevention of x-risks that could wipe out literally all of humanity (otherwise aging research looks far better), and probably some interventions regarding non-human animals, also depending on how much you value animals.
Note that this doesn’t make aging research worthless to evaluate from an EA perspective. Many people and orgs (eg. Open Philanthropy) donate to more than just two top causes… and aging research seems to be second or third place, probably depending on how much you value non-human animals. Mathematically, it makes sense to differentiate between various top causes in order to reduce risk. Differentiating also makes sense when there are single specific interventions, in a seemingly worse causa area, that may nonetheless be more cost-effective than available interventions in a cause-area that overall looks better, which includes cases in which the more cost-effective interventions in the top cause-areas are funded, or if there are particularly cost-effective interventions in the seemingly worse cause-area.
The sense of ‘even more valuable’ meant here seem to be something like ‘more adjusted morally relevant QALYs.’ But a total view of population ethics (contrasted with a symmetric person-affecting view) generically massively increases the potential QALYs at stake, and shifts the relative choiceworthiness of different options, so that on the impersonal view life extension is less valuable compared to the alternatives (and thus less of a priority for actual efforts) even if more important in absolute terms:
Because animal populations turn over extremely rapidly and our interventions generally take too long to help current animals (only changing the conditions of future generations), the impersonal view vastly amplifies the relative importance of helping them relative to long-lived humans
Considerations of existential risk for future generations potentially affect populations many orders of magnitude larger than current human populations (and most of those generations will in any case have access to life-extension), so the total view strongly favors interventions that yield QALYs through effects on long run civilizational trajectories or survival, rather than effects like those from medical life extension
Life extension may help affect distant future generations, and fertility boosts increase growth, but doesn’t seem very well-targeted to that task
So I think the counterintuitive result is counterintuitive because it’s not asking the right (action-guiding) question, and in action-guiding terms the person-affecting view does much more strongly favor life extension.
I agree.
I used “Counterintuitive”, because people tend to think the person-affecting view generates more cost-effectiveness than the impersonal view (see comments under my first post), regardless of how the views affect the comparison with other causes. But yes, adopting the person-affective view seems to make aging research look better in comparison to the other causes you mention, since it negates a lot of their impact. Instead, adopting the impersonal view makes the comparison favour prevention of x-risks that could wipe out literally all of humanity (otherwise aging research looks far better), and probably some interventions regarding non-human animals, also depending on how much you value animals.
Note that this doesn’t make aging research worthless to evaluate from an EA perspective. Many people and orgs (eg. Open Philanthropy) donate to more than just two top causes… and aging research seems to be second or third place, probably depending on how much you value non-human animals. Mathematically, it makes sense to differentiate between various top causes in order to reduce risk. Differentiating also makes sense when there are single specific interventions, in a seemingly worse causa area, that may nonetheless be more cost-effective than available interventions in a cause-area that overall looks better, which includes cases in which the more cost-effective interventions in the top cause-areas are funded, or if there are particularly cost-effective interventions in the seemingly worse cause-area.