Thanks for this. I really think we should have more paper summaries like this, on a regular basis.
There’s a point that caught my attention
Longtermism, aggregation, and catastrophic risk (Emma J. Curran)
[…]
This argument relies on an aggregative view where we should be driven by sufficiently many small harms outweighing a smaller number of large harms. However there are some cases where we might say such decision-making is impermissible e.g. letting a man get run over by a train instead of pulling a lever to save the man but also make lots of people late for work. One argument for why it’s better to save the man from death is the separateness of persons—there is no actual person who experiences the sum of the individual harms of being late—so there can be no aggregate complaint.
I really liked this paper and its whole argument. On the other hand, and I here I’m probably even going against the usual deontologist literature, I’m not sure that the problem with these counter-intuitive examples of aggregating small harms / pleasures is aggregation per se, but that in such cases hedonist aggregation tends to conflict with other types of aggregation – such as through a preference-based ordinal social welfare function (for instance, if every individual prefers a slight delay to having someone killed, then nobody should be killed) – or that they might violate something like a Golden Rule (if I wouldn’t want to die to avoid millions of minor delays, then I must not want to let someone die to avoid small delays). I suspect that just saying, like Rawls and Scanlon etc., that aggregation violates “separateness of persons” turns an interesting discussion into a “fight between strawmen”[1]
EAs sometimes ridicule people for siding with deontologists in such dilemmas. Rob Wiblin once said to A. Mogensen (during an 80kh podcast interview) that: “[...] at least for myself, as I mentioned, I actually don’t share this intuition at all, that there’s no number of people who could watch the World Cup where it would be justified to allow someone to die by electrocution. And in fact, I think that intuition that there’s no number is actually crazy and ridiculous and completely inconsistent with other actions that we take all the time.” If you agree with Rob’s statement, ask yourself questions like: a) Would you die to allow millions to watch the World Cup? b) Would you want someone to die to allow you to watch the World Cup—if that’s the only way? c) Would you support a norm (or vote for a law) stating that it is OK to let people die so we can watch the World Cup? d) If we were to vote to let Bernard die for us to watch the World Cup, would you vote yes? e) Do you think others would (usually) answer “yes” to these previous questions? Nothing here contradicts that we do let people die (though in situations where they voluntarily choose to take some risk in exchange of fair previous compensation) for us to watch the World Cup; not even that the world is a “better place” (in the sense that, e.g., there’s more welfare) if people die for our watching the World Cup. It might be the optimal policy, indeed. But I think that, if you answered “no” to some of the questions above, you are not entitled to say that this intuition is “crazy and ridiculous”. After all, if you prefer to save a life to watching the World Cup, and if you think others would reason similarly, why do you think that it is “crazy” to state that we should interrupt the show to save one person? It’s true that I might be conflating individual preferences and moral preferences / judgment here, but I am not sure about how easy it is to separate them; I’d probably lose any pleasure in watching a match if I knew someone unwillingly died for it – and I would certainly not say “Well, too bad; but by the Sure Thing Principle, it should not affect my preferences – may they have not died in vain”. Just like in the literature about the connection between perception and judgment, particularly when it comes to providing contexto, I think our individual preferences and mental states are deeply connected to more abstract judgments regarding norms. Sorry for this long footnote, since it’s not exaclty related to the core of the post, I felt it’d be inappropriate to insert it in the main comment.
Thanks for this. I really think we should have more paper summaries like this, on a regular basis.
There’s a point that caught my attention
I really liked this paper and its whole argument. On the other hand, and I here I’m probably even going against the usual deontologist literature, I’m not sure that the problem with these counter-intuitive examples of aggregating small harms / pleasures is aggregation per se, but that in such cases hedonist aggregation tends to conflict with other types of aggregation – such as through a preference-based ordinal social welfare function (for instance, if every individual prefers a slight delay to having someone killed, then nobody should be killed) – or that they might violate something like a Golden Rule (if I wouldn’t want to die to avoid millions of minor delays, then I must not want to let someone die to avoid small delays). I suspect that just saying, like Rawls and Scanlon etc., that aggregation violates “separateness of persons” turns an interesting discussion into a “fight between strawmen”[1]
EAs sometimes ridicule people for siding with deontologists in such dilemmas. Rob Wiblin once said to A. Mogensen (during an 80kh podcast interview) that:
“[...] at least for myself, as I mentioned, I actually don’t share this intuition at all, that there’s no number of people who could watch the World Cup where it would be justified to allow someone to die by electrocution. And in fact, I think that intuition that there’s no number is actually crazy and ridiculous and completely inconsistent with other actions that we take all the time.”
If you agree with Rob’s statement, ask yourself questions like:
a) Would you die to allow millions to watch the World Cup?
b) Would you want someone to die to allow you to watch the World Cup—if that’s the only way?
c) Would you support a norm (or vote for a law) stating that it is OK to let people die so we can watch the World Cup?
d) If we were to vote to let Bernard die for us to watch the World Cup, would you vote yes?
e) Do you think others would (usually) answer “yes” to these previous questions?
Nothing here contradicts that we do let people die (though in situations where they voluntarily choose to take some risk in exchange of fair previous compensation) for us to watch the World Cup; not even that the world is a “better place” (in the sense that, e.g., there’s more welfare) if people die for our watching the World Cup. It might be the optimal policy, indeed.
But I think that, if you answered “no” to some of the questions above, you are not entitled to say that this intuition is “crazy and ridiculous”. After all, if you prefer to save a life to watching the World Cup, and if you think others would reason similarly, why do you think that it is “crazy” to state that we should interrupt the show to save one person?
It’s true that I might be conflating individual preferences and moral preferences / judgment here, but I am not sure about how easy it is to separate them; I’d probably lose any pleasure in watching a match if I knew someone unwillingly died for it – and I would certainly not say “Well, too bad; but by the Sure Thing Principle, it should not affect my preferences – may they have not died in vain”. Just like in the literature about the connection between perception and judgment, particularly when it comes to providing contexto, I think our individual preferences and mental states are deeply connected to more abstract judgments regarding norms.
Sorry for this long footnote, since it’s not exaclty related to the core of the post, I felt it’d be inappropriate to insert it in the main comment.