(The following is mostly copied from this thread due to a lack of time. I unfortunately can’t commit to much engagement on replies to this.)
The sign of the effect of MSI seems to rely crucially on a very high credence in the person-affecting view, where the interests of future people are not considered.
Since 2000, MSI has averted one maternal death by preventing on average 502 unintended pregnancies. Even if only ~20% of these unintended pregnancies would have counterfactually been carried to term (due to abortion, replacement, and other factors), that still means preventing one maternal death prevents the creation of ~100 human beings. In other words, MSI’s intervention prevents ~100x as much human life experience as it creates by averting a maternal death. If one desires to maximize expected choice-worthiness under moral uncertainty, assuming the value of human experience is independent of the person-affecting view, one must be ~99% confident that the person-affecting view is true for MSI to be net positive.
However, many EAs, especially longtermists, argue that the person-affecting view is unlikely to be true. For example, Will MacAskill spends most of Chapter 8 of What We Owe The Future arguing that “all proposed defences of the intuition of neutrality [i.e. person-affecting view] suffer from devastating objections”. Toby Ord writes in The Precipice p. 263 that “Any plausible account of population ethics will involve…making sacrifices on behalf of merely possible people.”
If there’s a significant probability that the person-affecting view may be false, then MSI’s effect could in reality be up to 100x as negative as its effect on mothers is positive.
(The following is mostly copied from this thread due to a lack of time. I unfortunately can’t commit to much engagement on replies to this.)
The sign of the effect of MSI seems to rely crucially on a very high credence in the person-affecting view, where the interests of future people are not considered.
Since 2000, MSI has averted one maternal death by preventing on average 502 unintended pregnancies. Even if only ~20% of these unintended pregnancies would have counterfactually been carried to term (due to abortion, replacement, and other factors), that still means preventing one maternal death prevents the creation of ~100 human beings. In other words, MSI’s intervention prevents ~100x as much human life experience as it creates by averting a maternal death. If one desires to maximize expected choice-worthiness under moral uncertainty, assuming the value of human experience is independent of the person-affecting view, one must be ~99% confident that the person-affecting view is true for MSI to be net positive.
However, many EAs, especially longtermists, argue that the person-affecting view is unlikely to be true. For example, Will MacAskill spends most of Chapter 8 of What We Owe The Future arguing that “all proposed defences of the intuition of neutrality [i.e. person-affecting view] suffer from devastating objections”. Toby Ord writes in The Precipice p. 263 that “Any plausible account of population ethics will involve…making sacrifices on behalf of merely possible people.”
If there’s a significant probability that the person-affecting view may be false, then MSI’s effect could in reality be up to 100x as negative as its effect on mothers is positive.