Jeffhe

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Jeffhe Mar 29, 2018, 12:54 AM
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?

The fact that they are separate doesn’t mean that their content is any different from the experience of the one person. Certainly, the amount of pain they involve isn’t any different.

Yes, each of the 5 minor headaches spread among the 5 people are phenomenally or qualitatively the same as each of the 5 minor headaches of the one person. The fact that the headaches are spread does not mean that any of them, in themselves, feel any different from any of the 5 minor headaches of the one person. A minor headache feels like a minor headache, irrespective of who has it.

Now, each such minor headache constitutes a certain amount of pain, so 5 such minor headaches constitutes five such pain contents, and in THAT sense, five times as much pain. Moreover, since there are 5 such minor headaches in each case (i.e. the 1 person case and the 5 people case), therefore, each case involves the same amount of pain. This is so even if 5 minor headaches all had by one person (i.e. the what-it’s-like-of-going-through-5-minor-headaches) is experientially different from 5 minor headaches spread across 5 people (5 experientially independent what-it’s-likes-of-going-through-1-minor-headache).

Analogously, a visual experience of the color orange constitutes a certain amount of orange-ish feel, so 5 such visual experiences constitutes 5 such orange-ish feels, and in THAT sense, 5 times as much orange-ish feel. If one person experienced 5 such visual experiences one right after another and we recorded these experiences on an “experience recorder” and did the same with 5 such visual experiences spread among 5 people (where they each have their visual experience one right after the other), and then we played back both recordings, the playbacks viewed from the point of view of the universe would be identical: if each visual experience was 1 minute long, then both playbacks would be 5 minutes long of the same content. In this straight forward sense, 5 such visual experiences had by one person involves just as much orange-ish feel as 5 such visual experiences spread among 5 people. This is so even if the what-it’s-like-of-going-through-5-such-visual-experiences is not experientially the same as 5 experientially independent what-it’s-likes-of-going-through-1-such-visual-experience.

Right? I assume this is what you have in mind.

I thus understand your alternative account or sense of ‘involves more pain than’. I can see how according to it, 5 minor headaches had by 1 person involves the same amount of pain as 5 minor headaches spread among 5 people.

But again, consider 5 minor headaches spread among 5 people vs 1 major headache. Here you claim that the 5 minor headaches involves more pain than 1 major headache, and I asked you to explain in what sense. Why did I do this? Because it is clearest here how your account fails to achieve what you think it can achieve.

So let’s carefully think about this for a second. Each minor headache constitutes a certain amount of pain—the amount of pain determined how shitty it feels in absolute terms. The same is true of the major headache. Since a major headache feels a lot shittier in absolute terms, we might use ‘6’ to represent the amount of pain it constitutes, and a ‘2’ to represent the amount of pain a single minor headache constitutes. IMPORTANTLY, both numbers—and the amount of pain they each represent—are determined by how shitty the major headache and the minor headache respectively FEEL. (Note: As I mentioned in an earlier reply, how shitty a pain episode feels is a function of both its intensity and duration).

Ok. Now, we have 5 experientially independent minor headaches. We have 5 such pain contents, and in THAT sense, 5 times as much pain. The duration of the playback would be 5 times as long compared to the playback of 1 minor headache.) Ok, but do we have something that we can appropriately call 10. Well, these numbers are meant to represent the amount of pain there is and we just said that the amount of pain is determined by how shitty something feels.

The question then is: Do 5 experientially independent minor headaches some how collectively constitute an amount of pain that feels like a 10. Clearly they don’t because only the what-it’s-like-of-going-through-5-minor-headaches can plausibly feel like a 10, and 5 experientially independent what-it’s-likes-of-going-through-1-minor-headache is not experientially the same as 1 what-it’s-like-of-going-through-5-minor-headaches.

You might reply that 5 experientially minor headaches collectively constitute a 10 in that each minor headache constitutes an amount of pain represented by 2 and there are 5 such headaches. In other words, the duration of the playback is 5 times as long. There is, in that sense, 5 times the amount of pain, which is 10.

Yes, there is 5 times the amount of pain in THAT sense, which is why I would agree that 5 minor headaches all had by one person involves just as much pain as 5 minor headaches spread among 5 people in THAT sense. BUT, notice that only the number 2 is experientially determined. The 5 is not. The 5 is the number of instances of the minor headaches. As a result, the number 10 is not experientially determined. So, the number 10 simply signifies a certain amount of pain (2) repeated 5 times. It does NOT signify an amount of pain that feels like a 10.

You might not disagree. You might ask, what is the problem here? The problem is that while you can compare a 10 and a 10 that are both determined in this non-purely experiential way, which in effect is what you do to get the result that 5 minor headaches had by one person involves just as much pain as 5 minor headaches spread among 5 people, you CANNOT compare a 10 and a 6 when the 10 is determined in this non-purely experiential way and the 6 is determined in a purely experiential way. For when the numbers are determined in different ways, they signify different things, and are thus incommensurate.

I can make the same point by talking in terms of pain, rather than in terms of numbers. When you say that 5 minor headaches all had by one person involves the same amount of pain as 5 minor headaches spread among 5 people, you are USING ‘amount of pain’ in a non-purely experiential sense. The amount of pain, so used, is determined by a certain amount of pain used in a purely experiential sense (i.e. an amount of pain determined by how shitty a minor headache feels) x how many minor headaches there are. While you can compare two amounts of pains, so used, with each other, you cannot compare an amount of pain, so used, with a certain amount of pain used in a purely experiential sense (i.e. an amount of pain determined by how shitty a major headache feels).

Of course, how many minor headaches there are will affect the amount of pain there is (used in a purely experiential sense) when the headaches all occur in one person. For 5 minor headaches all had by one person results in the what-it’s-like-of-going-through-5-minor-headaches, which feels shittier (i.e. is experentially worse) than a major headache and thus constitutes more pain than a major headache. Thus, when I say 5 minor headaches all had by one person involves an amount of pain that is more than the amount of pain of a major headache, I am using both “amount of pain” in a purely experiential sense. I am comparing apples to apples. But when you say that 5 minor headaches spread among 5 people involves an amount of pain that is more than the amount of pain of a major headache, you are using the former “amount of pain” in a non-purely experiential sense (the one I described in the previous paragraph) and the latter “amount of pain” in a purely experiential sense. You are comparing apples to oranges.

In this response, I’ve tried very hard to make clear why it is that even though your account of ‘involves more pain than’ can work for 5 minor headaches all had by one person vs 5 minor headaches spread across 5 people (and get the result you want: i.e. that the amount of pain in each case is the same), your account cannot work for 5 minor headaches spread across 5 people vs 1 major headache. Thus, your account cannot achieve what you think it can achieve.

I worry that I haven’t been as clear as I wish to be (despite my efforts), so if any part of it comes off unclear, I hope you can be as charitable as you can and make an effort to understand what I’m saying, even if you disagree with it.
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- Alex_Barry's comment on Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed? by Jeffhe (Mar 29, 2018, 11:13 PM; 1 point)

Jeffhe Mar 28, 2018, 3:46 AM
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?
1) “The point is that the subject has the same experiences as that of having one headache five times, and therefore has the same experiences as five headaches among five people.”

One subject-of-experience having one headache five times = the experience of what-it’s-like-of-going-through-5-headaches. (Note that the symbol is an equal sign in case it’s hard to see.)

Five headaches among five people = 5 experientially independent experiences of what-it’s-like-of-going-through-1-headache. (Note the 5 experiences are experientially independent of each other because each is felt by a numerically different subject-of-experience, rather than all by one subject-of-experience.)

The single subject-of-experience does not “therefore has the same experiences as five headaches among five people.”

2) “You think it should be “involves more pain for one person than”. But I think it should be “involves more pain total”, or in other words I take your metric, evaluate each person separately with your metric, and add up the resulting numbers.”

Ok, and after adding up the numbers, what does the final resulting number refer to in reality? And in what sense does the referent (i.e. the thing referred to) involve more pain than a major headache?

Consider the case in which the 5 minor headaches are spread across 5 people, and suppose each minor headache has an overall shittiness score of 2 and a major headache has an overall shittiness score of 6. If I asked you what ‘2’ refers to, you’d easily answer the shitty feeling characteristic of what it’s like to go through a minor-headache. And you would say something analogous for ‘6’ if I asked you what it refers to.

You then add up the five ’2’s and get 10. Ok, now, what does the ’10′ refer to? You cannot answer the shitty feeling characteristic of what it’s like to go through 5 minor headaches, for this what-it’s-like is not present since no individual feels all 5 headaches. The only what-it’s-like that is present are 5 experientially independent what-it’s-like-of-going-through-1-minor-headache. Ok so what does ’10′ refer to? 5 of these shitty feelings? Ok, and in what sense do 5 of these shitty feelings involve more pain than 1 major headache? Clearly not in an experiential sense for only the what-it’s-like-of-going-through-5-minor-headaches is plausibly experientially worse than a major headache. So in what sense does the referent involve more pain than a major headache?

THIS IS THE CRUX OF OUR DISAGREEMENT. I CANNOT SEE HOW 5 what-it’s-like-of-going-through-1-minor-headache involves more pain than 1 major headache. YES, mathematically, you can show me ’10 > 6′ all day long, but I don’t see any reality onto which it maps!

3) “It’s just plain old cardinal utility: the sum of the amount of pain experienced by each person.”

Yes, but I don’t see how that “sum of pain” can involve more pain than 1 major headache because what that “sum of pain” is, ultimately speaking, are 5 what-it’s-likes-of-going-through-1-minor-pain, and NOT 1 what-it’s-like-of-going-through-5-minor-pains.

4) “Why?”

Because ultimately you’ll need an account of ‘involves more pain than’ on which 5 minor headaches spread across 5 people can involve more pain than 1 major headache. And in that situation, it is clearly the case that the 5 minor headaches are not experientially worse than the 1 major headache (for only the what-it’s-like-of-going-through-5-minor-headaches can plausibly be experientially worse than 1 major headache).

My point was just that you’ll need an account of ‘involves more pain than’ that can make sense of how 5 experientially independent what-it’s-likes-of-going-through-1-minor-headache can involve more pain than 1 major headache, for my account (i.e. “is experientially worse than”) certainly cannot make sense of it.

5) “It is distributed − 20% of it is in each of the 5 people who are in pain.”

But when it’s distributed, you won’t have an overall shittiness that is shittier than the experience of 1 major headache, at least not when we understand “is shittier than” as meaning “is experientially worse than”. For 5 experientially independent what-it’s-likes-of-going-through-1-minor-headache are not experientially worse than 1 major headache: only the what-it’s-like-of-going-through-5-minor-headaches can plausibly be experientially worse than 1 major headache.

Your task, again, is to provide a different account of ‘involves more pain than’ or ‘shittier than’ on which, somehow, 5 experientially independent what-it’s-likes-of-going-through-1-minor-headache can somehow involve more pain than 1 major headache.

Jeffhe Mar 27, 2018, 10:54 PM
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?
1) “But you are trying to argue about what makes one state of affairs morally worse than another. That is what you are trying to do in the first place. So it’s not, and cannot be, preliminary. And if you started from the ground up then it would have contained something that carried force to utilitarians for instance.

If you disagree, try to sketch out a view (that isn’t blatantly logically inconsistent) where someone would have agreed with you on Amy/Susan/Bob but disagreed on the headaches.”

Arguing for what factors are morally relevant in determining whether one case is morally worse than another is preliminary to arguing that some specific case (i.e. Amy and Susie suffering) is morally just as bad as another specific case (i.e. Bob suffering). My 3 cases were only meant to do the former. From the 3 cases, I concluded:
1. That the amount of pain is a morally relevant factor in determining whether one case is morally worse than another.
2. That the number of instances of pain is a morally relevant factor only to the extent that they affect the amount of pain at issue. (i.e. the number of instances of pain is not morally relevant in itself).
I take that to be preliminary work. Where I really dropped the ball was in my lackluster argument for P1 (and, likewise, for my assumption in case 3). No utilitarian would have found it convincing, and thus I would not have succeeded in convincing them that the outcome in which Amy and Susie both suffer is morally just as bad as the outcome in which only Bob suffers, even if they agreed with 1. and 2., which they do.

Anyways, to the extent that you think my argument for P1 sucked to the point where it was like I was begging the question against the utilitarian, I’m happy to concede this. I have since reworked my response to Objection 1 as a result, thanks to you.

2) “How is it biting a bullet to prefer to save one person being tortured AND one person with a headache, compared to simply saving one person being tortured?

I struggle to see how anyone might find that position counterintuitive. Rather, accepting the converse choice seems like biting the bullet.”

Because you effectively deny the one person ANY CHANCE of being helped from torture SIMPLY BECAUSE you can prevent an additional minor headache—a very very very minor one—by helping the two. Anyways, a lot of people think that is pretty extreme. If you don’t think so, that’s perhaps mainly because you don’t believe WHO SUFFERS MATTERS. If that’s the case, then I would encourage you to reread my response to Objection 2, where I make the case that who suffers is of moral significance.

3) “Making the other choice also gives someone no chance of being saved from torture, and it also gives someone no chance of being saved from a headache, so I don’t see what could possibly lead one to prefer it.”

You do give each party a 50% chance of being saved by choosing to flip a coin, instead of choosing to just help one party over the other. I prefer giving a 50% chance to each party because

A) I don’t think the case in which the two would suffer involves more pain than the case in which the one would (given our discussion under Michael_S’s post),

B) I believe who suffers matters (given my response to Objection 2)

Even if you disagree with me on A), I think if you agreed with me on B), you would at least give the one person a 49% of being helped, and the other two a 51% of being helped.

It is true that once the coin has been flipped, one party still ends up suffering at the end of the day. But that does not mean that they didn’t at one point actually have a 50% of being helped.

4) “And merely having a “chance” of being saved is morally irrelevant. Chances are not things that exist in physical or experiential terms the way that torture and suffering do. No one gives a shit about merely having a chance of being saved; someone who had a chance of being saved and yet is not saved is no better off than someone who had no chance of being saved from the beginning. The reason that we value a chance of being saved is that it may lead to us actually being saved. We don’t sit on the mere fact of the chance and covet it as though it were something to value on its own.”

I agree that the only reason that we value a chance of being saved is that it may lead to us actually being saved, and in that sense, we don’t value it in itself. But I don’t get why that entails that giving each party a 50% of being saved is not what we should do.

Btw, sorry I haven’t replied to your response below brian’s discussion yet. I haven’t found the time to read that article you linked. I do plan to reply sometime soon.

Also, can you tell me how to quote someone’s text in the way that you do in your responses to me? It is much cleaner than my number listing and quotations. Thanks.

Jeffhe Mar 27, 2018, 9:47 PM
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in reply to: Dawn Drescher’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?
Hi Telofy, nice to hear from you again :)

You say that you have no intuition for what a subject-of-experience is. So let me say two things that might make it more obvious:

1.Here is how I defined a subject-of-experience in my exchange with Michael_S:

“A subject of experience is just something which “enjoys” or has experience(s), whether that be certain visual experiences, pain experiences, emotional experiences, etc… In other words, a subject of experience is just something for whom there is a “what-it’s-like”. A building, a rock or a plant is not a subject of experience because it has no experience(s). That is why we don’t feel concerned when we step on grass: it doesn’t feel pain or feel anything. On the other hand, a cow is a subject-of-experience: it presumably has visual experiences and pain experience and all sorts of other experiences. Or more technically, a subject-of-experience (or multiple) may be realized by a cow’s physical system (i.e. brain). There would be a single subject-of-experience if all the experiences realized by the cow’s physical system are felt by a single subject. Of course, it is possible that within the cow’s physical system’s life span, multiple subjects-of-experience are realized. This would be the case if not all of the experiences realized by the cow’s physical system are felt by a single subject.”

I later enriched the definition a bit as follows: “A subject-of-experience is a thing that has, OR IS CAPABLE OF HAVING, experience(s). I add the phrase ‘or is capable of having’ this time because it has just occurred to me that when I am in dreamless sleep, I have no experiences whatsoever, yet I’d like to think that I am still around—i.e. that the particular subject-of-experience that I am is still around. However, it’s also possible that a subject-of-experience exists only when it is experiencing something. If that is true, then the subject-of-experience that I am is going out of and coming into existence several times a night. That’s spooky, but perhaps true.”

2.Having offered a definition to Michael, I then say to him here is WHAT MAKES a particular subject-of-experience the numerically same subject-of-experience over time:

“Within any given physical system that can realize subjects of experience (e.g. a cow’s brain), a subject-of-experience at time t-1 (call this subject “S1”) is numerically identical to a subjective-of-experience at some later time t-2 (call this subject “S2“) if and only if an experience at t-1 (call this experience “E1”) and an experience at t-2 (call this experience “E2”) are both felt by S1. That is S1 = S2 iff S1 feels E1 and E2.”

Let me just add: A particular subject-of-experience can obviously be qualitatively different over time, which would happen when his personality changes or memory changes (or is erased) etc… But that doesn’t imply there is any numerical difference. I assume the distinction between numerical identity and qualitative identity is a familiar one to you. In any case, here is an example to illustrate the distinction: Two perfectly matching coins are qualitatively the same, yet they are numerically distinct insofar as they are not one and the same coin.

I hope what I have said here helps!

Jeffhe Mar 27, 2018, 8:10 PM
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?
Hi kbog, glad to hear back from you.

1) “But I don’t have an accurate appreciation of what it’s like to be 5 people going through 5 headaches either. So I’m missing out on just as much as the amnesiac. In both cases people’s perceptions are inaccurate.”

I don’t quite understand how this is a response to what I said, so let me retrace some things:

You first claimed that if I believed that 5 minor headaches all had by one person is experientially worse than 5 minor headaches spread across 5 people, then I would be committed to “believing that it doesn’t matter how many times you are tortured if your memory is wiped each time. Because you will never have the experience of being tortured a second time” and this is a problem.

I replied that it does matter how many times I get tortured because even if my memory is wiped each time, it is still ME (as opposed to a numerically different subject-of-experience, e.g. you) who would experience torture again and again. If my memory is wiped, I will incorrectly VIEW each additional episode of torture as the first one I’ve ever experienced, but it would not BE the first one I’ve ever experienced. I would still experience what-it’s-like-of-going-through-x-number-of-torture-episodes even if after each episode, my memory was wiped. Since it’s the what-it’s-like-of-going-through-x-number-of-torture-episodes (and not my memory of it) that is experientially worse than something else, and since X is morally worse than Y when X is experientially worse (i.e. involves more pain) than Y, therefore, it does matter how many times I’m tortured irrespective of my memory.

Now, the fact that you said that I “will never have the experience of being tortured a second time” suggests that you think that memory-continuity is necessary to being the numerically same subject-of-experience (i.e. person). If this were true, then every time a person’s memory is wiped, a numerically different person comes into existence and so no person would experience what-it’s-like-of-going-through-2-torture-episodes if a memory wipe happens after each torture episode. But I don’t think memory-continuity is necessary to being the numerically same subject-of-experience. I think a subject-of-experience at time t1 (call this subject “S1″) and a subject-of-experience at some later time t2 (call this subject “S2”) are numerically identical (though perhaps qualitatively different) just in case an experience at t1 (call this experience E1) and an experience at t2 (call this experience E2) are both felt by S1. In other words, I think S1 = S2 iff E1 and E2 are both felt by S1. S1 may have forgotten about E1 by t2 (due to a memory wipe), but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t S1 who also felt E2.

In a nutshell, memory (and thus how accurate we appreciate our past pains) is not morally relevant since it does not prevent a person from actually experiencing what-it’s-like-of-going-through-multiple-pains, and it is this latter thing that is morally relevant. So I don’t quite see the point of your latest reply.

2) “Of course you can define a relation to have that property, but merely defining it that way gives us no reason to think that it should be the focus of our moral concern.

If I were to define a relation to have the property of being the target of our moral concern, it wouldn’t be impacted by how it were spread across multiple people.”

I am not simply defining a relation here. We both agree that experience is morally relevant and that therefore pain is morally bad, and that therefore an outcome that involves more pain than another outcome is morally worse than the latter outcome. That is, we agree X is morally worse than Y iff X involves more pain than Y. But how are we to understand phrase ‘involves more pain than’? I understand it as meaning “is experientially worse than”, which is why I ultimately think that 5 minor headaches all had by one person is morally worse than 5 minor headaches spread across 5 people. You seem to agree with me that the former is experientially worse than the latter, yet you deny that the former is morally worse than the latter. Thus, you have to offer another plausible account of the phrase ‘involves more pain than’ on which 5 minor headaches all had by one person involves just as much pain as 5 minor headaches spread across 5 people. IMPORTANTLY, this account has to be one according to which 5 minor headaches all had by one person can involve more pain than 1 major headache and not merely in an experientially worse sense. Can you offer such an account?

I mean, how can 5 minor headaches all had by one person involve more pain than 1 major headache if not in an experientially worse sense? You might try to use math to help illustrate your point of view. You might say, well suppose each minor headache represents a pain of a magnitude of 2, and the major headache represents a pain of a magnitude of 6. You might further clarify that the 2 doesn’t just signify the INTENSITY of the minor pain since how shitty a pain episode is doesn’t just depend on its intensity but also on its duration. Thus, you might clarify that the 2 represents the overall shitness of the pain—the disutility of it, so to speak. Next, you might say that insofar as there are 5 such minor headaches, they represent 10 disutility, and 10 is bigger than 6. Therefore 5 minor headaches all had by one person involves more pain than a major headache.

But then I would ask you: what is the reality underpinning the number 10? Is it not some overall shittiness that is experientially worse than the overall shittiness from experiencing one major headache? Is it not the overall shittiness of what-it’s-like-of-going-through-5-minor-headaches? If it is, then we haven’t departed from my “is experientially worse than” interpretation of ‘involves more pain than’. If it isn’t, then what is it?

To see the problem even more clearly, consider when the 5 minor headaches are spread across 5 people. Here again, you will say that the 5 minor headaches represent 10 disutility and 10 is greater than 6, therefore 5 minor headaches spread across 5 people involve more pain than one major headache. This conclusion is easy to arrive at when one just focuses on the math: 2 x 5 = 10 and 10 > 6. But we must not forget to ask ourselves what the “10” might signify in reality. Is it meant to signify an overall shittiness that is shittier than the experience of 1 major headache? Ok, but where in reality is this overall shittiness? I certainly don’t see it. I don’t see the presence of this overall shittiness because there is no experience of it.

(Thus, I find using math to show that 5 minor headaches spread across 5 people involves more pain than 1 major headache is very misleading: yes, mathematically, you can easily portray it. But, at bottom, the ’10′ maps onto nothing in reality.)

So in conclusion, I don’t see any other plausible interpretation of ‘involves more pain than’ than “is experientially worse than”. If that is the case, then not only is it the case that I haven’t arbitrarily defined a relation, but it’s also the case that this relation is the only plausible morally relevant relation.

3) “Well, so do I. The point is that the mere fact that 5 headaches in one person is worse for one person doesn’t necessarily imply that it is worse overall for 5 headaches among 5 people.”

We need to distinguish between experientially worse and morally worse. You agree that 5 headaches in one person is experientially worse than 5 headaches spread across 5 people, yet you insist that that doesn’t mean the former is morally worse than the latter. Well, again, this requires you to show that there is another plausible interpretation of ‘involves more pain than’ on which the former involves just as much pain as the latter.

Also, I should note that I was too hasty when I said that I think experience is the ONLY morally relevant factor. Actually, I also think who suffers is a morally relevant factor, but that doesn’t affect our discussion here.

Jeffhe Mar 23, 2018, 4:35 PM
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in reply to: Brian Wang’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?
Hi Brian,

I think the reason why you have such a strong intuition of just saving Amy and Susie in a choice situation like the one I described in my previous reply is that you believe Amy’s burning to death plus Susie’s sore throat involves more or greater pain than Bob’s burning to death. Since you think minimizing aggregate pain (i.e. maximizing aggregate utility) is what we should do, your reason for just Amy and Susie is clear.

But importantly, I don’t share your belief that Amy’s burning to death and Susie’s sore throat involves more or greater pain than Bob’s burning to death. On this note, I have completely reworked my response to Objection 1 a few days ago to make clear why I don’t share this belief, so please read that if you want to know why. On the contrary, I think Amy’s burning to death and Susie’s sore throat involves just as much pain as Bob’s burning to death.

So part of the positive case for giving everyone an equal chance is that the suffering on either side would involve the same LEVEL/AMOUNT of pain (even though the suffering on Amy’s and Susie’s side would clearly involve more INSTANCES of pain: i.e. 2 vs 1.)

But even if the suffering on Amy’s and Susie’s side would involve slightly greater pain (as you believe), there is a positive case for giving Bob some chance of being saved, rather than 0. And that is that who suffers matters, for the reason I offered in my response to Objection 2. I think that response provides a very powerful reason for giving Bob at least some chance, and not no chance at all, even if his pain would be less great than Amy’s and Susie’s together. (My response to Objection 3 makes clear that giving Bob some chance is not in conflict with being impartial, so that response is relevant too if you think doing so is being partial)

At the end of the day, I think one’s intuitions are based on one’s implicit beliefs and what one implicitly takes into consideration. Thus, if we shared the same implicit beliefs and implicitly took the same things into consideration, then we would share the same intuitions. So one way to view my essay is that it tries to achieve its goal by doing two things:

1) Challenging a belief (e.g. that Amy’s burning to death plus Susie’s sore throat involves more pain than Bob’s burning to death) that in part underlies the differences in intuition between me and people like yourself.

2) Reminding people of another important moral fact that should figure in their implicit thought processes (and thus be reflected in their intuitions): that who suffers matters. This moral fact is often forgotten about, which skews people’s intuitions. Once this moral fact is seriously taken into account, I bet people’s intuitions would not be the same. Importantly, I bet the vast majority of people (including yourself) would feel that giving Bob some chance of being saved is more appropriate than none, EVEN IF you still thought that Amy’s pain and Susie’s pain involve slightly more pain than Bob’s.

Jeffhe Mar 22, 2018, 3:05 AM
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in reply to: Michael_S’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?
No worries!

Jeffhe Mar 22, 2018, 1:32 AM
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in reply to: Brian Wang’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?
Hey Brian,

I just wanted to note that another reason why you might not want to use the veil-of-ignorance approach to justify why we should save the greater number is that it would force you to conclude that, in a trade off situation where you can either save one person from an imminent excruciating pain (i.e. being burned alive) or another person from the same severe pain PLUS a third person from a very minor pain (e.g. a sore throat), we should save the second and third person and give 0 chance to the first person.

I think it was F. M. Kamm who first raised this objection to the veil-of-ignorance approach in his book Morality, Mortality Vol 1. (I haven’t actually read the book). Interestingly, kbog—another person I’ve been talking with on this forum—accepts this result. But I wonder if others like yourself would. Imagine Bob, Amy and Susie were in a trade off situation of the kind I just described, and imagine that Bob never actually had a chance to be in Amy’s or Susie’s position. In such a situation, do you think you should just save Amy and Susie?

Jeffhe Mar 21, 2018, 3:27 AM
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in reply to: Michael_S’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?
Hi Michael,

I removed the comment about worrying that we might not reach a consensus because I worried that it might send you the wrong idea (i.e. that I don’t want to talk anymore). It’s been tiring I have to admit, but also enjoyable and helpful. Anyways, you clearly saw my comment before I removed it. But yeah, I’m good with talking on.

I agree that experiences are the result of chemical reactions, however the nature of the relations “X being experientially worse than Y” and “X being greater in number than Y” are relevantly different. Someone by the name of “kbog” recently read my very first reply to you (the updated edition) and raised basically the same concern as you have here, and I think I have responded to him pretty aptly. So if you don’t mind, can you read my discussion with him:

http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1lt/is_effective_altruism_fundamentally_flawed/dmu

I would have answered you here, but I’m honestly pretty drained from replying to kbog, so I hope you can understand. Let me know what you think.

Regarding defining S1, I don’t think I can do better than to say that S1 is a thing that has, or is capable of having, experience(s). I add the phrase ‘or is capable of having’ this time because it has just occurred to me that when I am in dreamless sleep, I have no experiences whatsoever, yet I’d like to think that I am still around—i.e. that the particular subject-of-experience that I am is still around. However, it’s also possible that a subject-of-experience exists only when it is experiencing something. If that is true, then the subject-of-experience that I am is going out of and coming into existence several times a night. That’s spooky, but perhaps true.

Anyways, I can’t seem to figure out why you need any better of a definition of a subject-of-experience than that. I feel like my definition sufficiently distinguishes it from other kinds of things. Moreover, I have provided you with a criteria for identity over time. Shouldn’t this be enough?

You write, “I think moral personhood doesn’t make sense as a binary concept (the mind from a brain is different at different times, sometimes vastly different such as in the case of a major brain injury) The matter in the brain is also different over time (ship of Theseus).”

I agree with all of this, but I would insist those NEED NOT BE numerical differences, just qualitative differences. A mind can be very qualitatively different (e.g. big personality change) from one moment to the next, but that does not necessarily mean that it is a numerically different mind. Likewise, a brain can be very qualitative different (e.g. big change in shape) from one moment to the next, but that does not necessarily mean that it is a numerically different brain.

You then write, “I don’t see a good reason to call these the same person in a moral sense in a way that two minds of two coexisting brains wouldn’t be.”

Well, if a particular mind is the numerically same mind before and after a big qualitative change (e.g., due to a brain injury), then clearly there is reason to call it the same mind/person in a way that two minds of two coexisting brains wouldn’t be. After all, it’s the numerically same mind, whereas two minds of two coexisting brains are clearly two numerically different minds.

You might agree that there is a literal reason to call it the same mind, but deny that there is a moral reason that wouldn’t be true of two minds of two coexisting brains. But I think the literal reason constitutes or provides the moral reason: if a mind is numerically the same mind before and after a big qualitative change (e.g. big personality change), then that means whatever experiences are had by that mind before and after the change are HAD BY THAT NUMERICALLY SAME MIND. So if that particular mind suffered a headache before the radical change and then suffered a headache after the change, it is THAT PARTICULAR MIND THAT SUFFERS BOTH. That is enough reason to also call that mind the same mind in a moral sense that wouldn’t also be true of two numerically different minds of two coexisting brains.

I didn’t quite understand the sentences after that.

Jeffhe Mar 21, 2018, 1:14 AM
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?
1) “But if anyone did accept that premise then they would already believe that the number of people suffering doesn’t matter, just the intensity. In other words, the only people to whom this argument applies are people who would agree with you in the first place that Amy and Susie’s suffering is not a greater problem than Bob’s suffering. So I can’t tell if it’s actually doing any work. If not, then it’s just adding unnecessary length. That’s what I mean when I say that it’s too long. Instead of adding the story with the headaches in a separate counterargument, you could have just said all the same things about Amy and Susie and Bob’s diseases in the first place, making your claim that Amy and Susie’s diseases are not experientially worse than Bob’s disease and so on.”

The reason why I discussed those three cases was to answer the basic question: what makes one state of affairs morally worse than another. Indeed, given my broad audience, some who have no philosophy background, I wanted to start from the ground up.

From that discussion, I gathered two principles that I used to support premise 2 of my argument against Objection 1. I say “gathered” and not “deduced” because you actually don’t disagree with those two principles, even though you disagree with an assumption I made in one of the cases (i.e. case 3). What your disagreement with that assumption indicates is a disagreement with premise 1 of my argument against Objection 1.

P1. read: “The degree of suffering in the case of Amy and Susie would be the same as in the case of Bob, even though the number of instances of suffering would differ (e.g., 2:1).”

You disagree because you think Amy’s and Susie’s pains would together be experientially worse than Bob’s pain.

All this is to say that I don’t think the discussion of the 3 cases was unnecessary, because it served the important preliminary goal of establishing what makes one state of affairs morally worse than another.

However, it seems like I really should have defended P1. of my argument (and similarly my assumption in case 3) more thoroughly. So I do admit that my post is lacking in this respect, which I appreciate you’re pointing out. I’m also sure there are ways to make it more clear and concise. I will consider your suggested approach during future editting sessions.

Update (Mar 21): After thinking through what you said some more, I’ve decided I’m going to re-do my response to Objection 1 along the lines of what you’re suggesting. Thanks for motivating this improvement.

2) “PU says that we should assign moral value on the basis of people’s preferences for them. So if someone thinks that being tortured is really really really bad, then we say that it is morally really really really bad. We give the same weight to things that people do. If you say that someone is being risk-averse, that means (iff you’re using the term correctly) that they’re putting so much effort into avoiding a risk that they are reducing their expected utility. That means that they are breaking at least one of the axioms of the Von Neumann-Morgenstern Utility Theorem, which (one would argue, or assert) means that they are being irrational.”

Thanks for that explanation. I see where I went wrong in my previous reply now, so I concede this point.

3) “Yes to both.”

Ok, interesting. And, just out of curiosity, you don’t consider this as biting a bullet? I mean there are people who have given up on the veil-of-ignorance approach specifically because they think it is morally unacceptable to not give the single person ANY chance of being saved from torture just because it comes with the additional, and relatively trivial, benefit of relieving a minor headache.

P.S. I will reply to your other comment after I’ve read the paper you linked me to. But, I do want to note that you were being very uncharitable in your reply that “Stipulations can’t be true or false—they’re stipulations. It’s a thought experiment for epistemic purposes.” Clearly stipulations/suppositions cannot be false relative to the thought experiment. But surely they can be false relative to reality—to what is actually the case.

Jeffhe Mar 20, 2018, 10:39 PM
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?
1) “Well I can see how it is possible for someone to believe that. I just don’t think it is a justified position, and if you did embrace it you would have a lot of problems. For instance, it commits you to believing that it doesn’t matter how many times you are tortured if your memory is wiped each time. Because you will never have the experience of being tortured a second time.”

I disagree. I was precisely trying to guard against such thoughts by enriching my first reply to Michael_S with a case of forgetfulness. I wrote, “Now, by the end of our 5th minor headache, we might have long forgotten about the first minor headache because, say, it happened so long ago. So, by the end of our 5th minor headache, we might not have an accurate appreciation of what it’s like to go through 5 minor headaches EVEN THOUGH we in fact have experienced what it’s like to go through 5 minor headaches.” (I added the caps here for emphasis)

The point I was trying to make in that passage is that if one person (i.e. one subject-of-experience) experienced all 5 minor headaches, then whether he remembers them or not, the fact of the matter is that HE felt all of them, and insofar as he has, he is experientially worse off than someone who only felt a major headache. Of course, if you asked him at the end of his 5th minor headache whether HE thinks he’s had it worse than someone with a major headache, he may say “no” because, say, he has forgotten about some of the minor headaches he’s had. But that does NOT MEAN that, IN FACT, he did not have it worse. After all, the what-it’s-like-of-going-through-5-minor-headaches is experentially worse than one major headache, and HE has experienced the former, whether he remembers it or not.

So, if my memory is wiped each time after getting tortured, of course it still matters how many times I’m tortured. Because I WILL have the experience of being tortured a second time, whether or not I VIEW that experience as such.

2) “There are two rooms, painted bright orange inside. One person goes into the first room for five minutes, five people go into the second for one minute. If we define orange-perception as the phenomenon of one conscious mind’s perception of the color orange, the amount of orange-perception for the group is the same as the amount of orange-perception for the one person.

Something being experiential doesn’t imply that it is not quantitative. We can clearly quantify experiences in many ways, e.g. I had two dreams, I was awake for thirty seconds, etc. Or me and my friends each saw one bird, and so on.”

My point wasn’t that we can’t quantify experience in various ways, but that relations of an experiential nature, like the relation of X being experientially worse than Y, behave in relevantly different ways from relations of a quantitative—maybe ‘non-experiential’ might have been a better word—nature, like the relation of X being heavier than Y. As I tried to explain, the “experientially-worse-than” relation is impacted by whether the X (e.g. 5 minor headaches) are spread across 5 people or all had by one person, whereas the “heavier-than” relation is not impacted by whether X (e.g. 100 tons) are spread across 5 objects or true of 1 object.

3) “Yes, but the question here is whether 5 what-it’s-lies-of-going-through-1-minor-headache is 5x worse than 1 minor headache. We can believe this moral claim without believing that the phenomenon of 5 separate headaches is phenomenally equivalent to 1 experience of 5 headaches. There are lots of cases where A is morally equivalent to B even though A and B are physically or phenomenally different.”

The moral question here is whether a case in which 5 minor headaches are all had by one person is morally equivalent (i.e. morally just as bad) as a case in which 5 minor headaches are spread across 5 people. You think it is, and I think it isn’t. Instead, I think the former case is morally worse than the latter case.

And the ONLY reason why I think this is because I think 5 headaches all had by one person is experientially worse than 5 headaches spread across 5 people. As I said before, I think experience is the only morally relevant factor.

Since I don’t think anything other than experience matters, I would deny the existence of cases in which A and B are morally just as bad/good where A and B differ phenomenally.

Jeffhe Mar 20, 2018, 7:00 PM
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?
1) “Because I don’t have any reason to feel different.”

Ok, well, that comes as a surprise to me. In any case, I hope after reading my first reply to Michael_S, you at least sort of see how it could be possible that someone like I would feel surprised by that, even if you don’t agree with my reasoning. In other words, I hope you at least sort of see how it could be possible that someone who would clearly agree with you that, say, 5 minor headaches all had by 1 tall person is experientially just as bad as 5 minor headaches all had by 1 short person, might still disagree with you that 5 minor headaches all had by 1 person is experientially just as bad as 5 minor headaches spread across 5 people.

2) “If you want to show that the cases are different in a relevant way, then you need to spell it out. In the absence of reasons to say that there is a difference, we assume by default that they’re similar.”

That’s what my first reply to Michael_S, in effect, aimed to do.

3) “The third sentence does not follow from the second. This is like saying “there is nothing present in a Toyota Corolla that could make it weigh more than a Ford F-150, therefore five Toyota Corollas cannot weigh more than a Ford F-150.” Just because there is no one element in a set of events that is worse than a bad thing doesn’t mean that the set of events is not worse than the bad thing. There are lots of events where badness increases with composition, even without using aggregative utilitarian logic. E.g.: it is okay to have sex with Michelle, and it is okay to marry Tiffany, but it is not okay to do both.”

Your reductio-by-analogy (I made that phrase up) doesn’t work, because your analogy is relevantly different. In your analogy, we are dealing with the relation of _ being heavier than _, whereas I’m dealing with the relation of _ being experientially worse than _. These relations are very different in nature: one is quantitative in nature, the other is experiential in nature. You might insist that this is not a relevant difference, but I think it is when one really slows down to think about exactly what is it that makes 5 minor headaches experientially worse than a major headache.

As I mentioned, the answer is the what-it’s-like-of-going-through-5-minor-headaches. That is, the what-it’s-like of going through one minor headache, then another (sometime later), then another, then another, then another. It’s THAT SPECIFIC WHAT-IT’S-LIKE that can plausibly be experientially worse than a major headache. It’s THAT SPECIFIC WHAT-IT’S-LIKE that can plausibly be “shittier” or “sucker” than a major headache.

However, when the 5 minor headaches are spread across 5 people, there is just 5 what-it’s-likes-of-going-through-1-minor-headache, and no single what-it’s-like-of-going-through-5-minor-headaches. Why? Because each of the minor headaches in this situation would be felt by a numerically non-identical subject-of-experience (i.e. 5 people), and numerically different subjects-of-experience cannot have their experiences “linked”. Otherwise, they would not be numerically different.

Therefore, only 5 minor headaches, when all had by one subject-of-experience (i.e. one person) can they be experientially worse than one major headache. And therefore, 5 minor headaches, when all had by one person, is experientially worse than 5 minor headaches, spread across 5 people.

I think what I just said above shows clearly how the relation of _ being experientially worse than _ is impacted by whether the 5 minor headaches are all had by one person or spread across 5 different people. Whereas the relation of _ being heavier than _ is not similarly affected. So that is the relevant difference.

I hope you can really consider what I’m saying here. Thanks.

Jeffhe Mar 20, 2018, 5:59 PM
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?
1) “You simply assert that we would rather save Emma’s major headache rather than five minor ones in case 3. But if you’ve stipulated that people would rather endure one big headache than five minor ones, then the big headache has more disutility. Just because the minor ones are split among different people doesn’t change the story. I just don’t follow the argument here.”

I DO NOT simply assert this. In case 3, I wrote, “Here, I assume you would say that we should save Emma from the major headache or at least give her a higher chance of being saved because a major headache is morally worse than 5 minor headaches spread across 5 persons and it’s morally worse BECAUSE a major headache hurts more (in some non-arbitrary sense) than the 5 minor headaches spread across 5 people. Here, the non-arbitrary sense is straightforward: Emma would be hurting more than any one of the 5 others who would each experience only 1 minor headache.” (I capped ‘because’ for emphasis here)

You would not buy that reason I gave (because you believe 5 minor headaches, spread across 5 people, is experientially worse than a major headache), but that is a different story. If you were more charitable and patient while reading my post, thinking about who my audience is (many of whom aren’t utilitarians and don’t buy into interpersonal aggregation of pains) etc, I doubt you would be leveling all the accusations you have against me. It wastes both your time and my time to have to deal with them.

2) “My whole point here is that your response to Objection 1 doesn’t do any work to convince us of your premises regarding the headaches. Yeah there’s an argument, but its premise is both contentious and undefended.”

I was just using your words. You said “But you have not argued it, you assumed it, by way of supposing that 5 headaches are worse when they happen to one person than when they happen to multiple people.” As I said, I assumed a premise that I thought the vast majority of my audience would agree with (i.e., at bottom, that 5 minor headaches all had by one person is experientially worse than 5 minor headaches spread across 5 people). If YOU find that premise contentious, great, we can have a discussion about it, but please don’t make it sound like my argument doesn’t do any work for anyone.

3) “I’m not just speaking for utilitarians, I’m speaking for anyone who doesn’t buy the premise for choice 3. I expect that lots of non-utilitarians would reject it as well.”

Well, I don’t, which is why I assumed the premise in the first place. I mean I wouldn’t assume a premise that I thought the majority of my audience will disagree with. It’s certainly not obvious to me that 5 minor headaches all had by one person is experientially just as bad as 5 minor headaches spread across 5 people.

4) “The original position argument is not an empirical prediction of what humans would choose in such-and-such circumstances, it’s an analysis of what we would expect of them as the rational thing to do, so the hedonist utilitarian points out that risk aversion violates the axioms of expected utility theory and it would be rational of people to not make that choice, whereas the preference utilitarian just calibrates the utility scale to people’s preferences anyway so that there isn’t any dissonance between what people would select and what utilitarianism says.”

Sorry, I’m not familiar with the axioms of expected utility theory or with preference utilitarianism. But perhaps I can understand your position by asking 2 questions:

1) According to you, would it be rational behind the veil of ignorance to agree to a policy that said: In a trade off situation between saving a person from torture or saving another person from torture AND saving a third person from a minor headache, the latter two are to be saved. 2) In an actual trade off situation of this kind, would you think we ought to save the latter two?

Jeffhe Mar 20, 2018, 3:35 AM
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?
1) “But that involves arbitrarily saving fewer people. I mean, you could call that non-arbitrary, since you have some kind of reason for it, but it’s fewer people all the same, and it’s not clear how reason or empathy would generally lead one to do this. So there is no prima facie case for the position that you’re defending.”

To arbitrarily save fewer people is to save them on a whim. I am not suggesting that we should save them on a whim. I am suggesting that we should give each person an equal chance of being saved. They are completely different ideas.

2) “But you have not argued it, you assumed it, by way of supposing that 5 headaches are worse when they happen to one person than when they happen to multiple people, which presupposes that more total suffering does not necessarily imply worseness in such gedanken.”

Please show me where I supposed that 5 minor headaches are MORALLY worse when they happen to one person than when they happen to multiple people. In both choice situations 2 and 3, I provided REASONS for saying

A) why 5 minor headaches all had by one person is morally worse than 1 major headache had by one person, and

B) why 1 major headache had by one person is morally worse than 5 minor headaches spread across 5 people.

From A. and B., you can infer that I believe 5 minor headaches all had by one person is morally worse than 5 minor headaches spread across 5 persons, but don’t say that I supposed this. I provided reasons. You can reject those reasons, but that is a different story.

If you meant that I supposed that 5 minor headaches are EXPERENTIALLY worse when they happen to one person than when they happen to multiple people, sure, it can be inferred from what I wrote that I was supposing this. But importantly, to make this assumption is not a stretch as it seems (at least to me) like an assumption plausibly shared by many. But it turns out that Michael_S disagreed, at which time I was glad to defend this assumption. More importantly, even if I made this supposition (as we have to start from somewhere), it does not mean that by doing so, I was simply assuming and not arguing for what you quoted.

3) “But you need to defend such an implication if you wish to claim that it is not morally worse for more people to suffer an equal amount.”

If you don’t see an argument in my response to Objection 1, I’ll live with that since I put a lot of time into writing that essay and no one else has said the same.

4) “Because anyone who buys the basic arguments for helping more people rather than fewer will often prefer to alleviate five minor headaches rather than one major one, regardless of whether they happen to different people or not.”

By basic arguments, I presume you mean utilitarian arguments. First off, I was not writing this for a utilitarian audience. If I writing this for an audience that finds it intuitive to save Amy and Susie instead of Bob, and I was trying to show how other (perhaps more basic) intuitions that I assumed were commonly held (i.e. saving one from a major headache instead of 5 each from a minor headache) could provide the ingredients for showing that we should provide each of them with an equal chance of being helped.

If I was writing this for strictly a utilitarian audience, I would have taken a different approach which would have included explaining why 5 pains all had by one person is experentially worse than 5 pains spread across 5 people.

Many people who are effective altruists have reasons for helping people, such as the pond argument, but not reasons for helping the many over the few. So it is uncharitable of you to simply assume that my audience are all utilitarians.

5) “brianwang712′s response based on the Original Position implies that the decision to not prevent 5 minor headaches is wrong, even though he didn’t take the time to spell it out.”

Not true. It is not clear what the conclusion from the original position would be when the levels of pain for the people involved differ. Some people are extremely risk-adverse to extreme pains, and may not agree to a policy of helping the greater number when what is at stake for the few is really bad pain.

6) “Look, your comments towards him are very long and convoluted. I’m not about to wade through it just to find the specific 1-2 sentences where you go astray. Especially when you stuff posts with “updates” alongside copies of your original comments, I find it almost painful to look through.”

I’m sorry you find them convoluted. I updated the very first replies to Brian and Michael_S in order to try to make my position more clear for first-time readers like you. I spent a lot of time on trying to make my replies more clear because I don’t want to waste reader’s time. If I failed to do that, I can only say I tried.

7) “I don’t see why identifying with helping the less fortunate (something which almost everybody does, in some fashion or other) implies that we should hold philosophical arguments to gentle standards.”

I never asked for gentle standards. I asked for a non-dismissive and friendly attitude.

8) “The time and knowledge of people who help the less fortunate is particularly valuable, so one should be willing and able to credibly signal the occasional times when one is confident that the people who help the less fortunate ought to be focusing elsewhere.”

I didn’t quite understand the latter half, but yes, their time is valuable, which is why I’ve tried to be as clear I can. In any case, it is a good thing to critically examine one’s own views from time to time, no matter how vital one’s time seems under the supposition of that view. So—if I understood the latter part correctly—you needn’t worry so much about saving other people’s time from my post.

9) “Conversations mustn’t be friendly to be informative, and I’m really not being dismissive about anything you write which I do have the time to read.”

A person (at least speaking for myself) is much more receptive to the content of another’s comment when they are put in a friendly (though demanding) manner. Thus, friendliness helps make conversation more informative.

Whereas dismissive and unfriendly comments like “I’m not about to wade through it just to find the specific 1-2 sentences where you go astray.” or “I find it almost painful to look through.” do not.

P.S. I will not be replying to any more of your comments that I feel are either uncharitable, dismissive or shows a lack of effort spent on understanding my position.

Ops, just noticed I missed a comment you made:

10) “Because there is no reason for the distribution of certain wrongs across different people to affect the badness of those wrongs, as our account of the badness of those wrongs does not depend on any facts about the particular people to whom they occur.”

As I see it, a case or state of affairs in which 5 minor headaches are all felt by one person is MORALLY WORSE than a case in which 5 minor headaches are spread across 5 persons because 5 minor headaches all felt by one person is EXPERIENTIALLY WORSE than 5 minor headaches spread across 5 persons.

I take experience to be the only morally relevant factor, and in this way, I am a moral singularist (as opposed to pluralist). For why I think the former is experientially worse than the latter, please at least read my first reply to Michael_S. Thanks.

Jeffhe Mar 20, 2018, 1:46 AM
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?
1) The reason that the conclusions made in such a scenario have a bearing on reality is that the conclusions are necessarily both fair and rational.

The conclusions are rational under the stipulation that each person has an equal chance of being in anybody’s position. But it is not actually rational given that the stipulation is false. So you can’t just say that the conclusions have a bearing on reality because they are necessarily rational. They are rational under the stipulation, but not when you take into account what is actually the case.

And I don’t see how the conclusion is fair to Bob when the conclusion is based on a false stipulation. Bob is a real person. He shouldn’t be treated like he had an equal chance of being in Amy’s or Susie’s position, when he in fact didn’t.

2) “My reply to Bob would be to essentially restate brianwang’s original comment...”

Sorry, can you quote the part you’re referring to?

3) ”...and explain how the morally correct course of action is supported by a utilitarian principle of indifference argument.”

Can you explain what this “utilitarian principle of indifference argument” is?

4) “and that none of the things he says (like the fact that he is not Amy or Susie, or the fact that he is scared) are sound counterarguments.”

Please don’t distort what I said. I had him say, “The fact of the matter is that I had no chance of being in Amy’s or Susie’s position.”, which is very different from saying that he was not Amy or Susie. If he wasn’t Amy or Susie, but actually had an equal chance of being either of them, then I would take the veil of ignorance approach more seriously.

I added the part that he is said because I wanted it to sound realistic. It is uncharitable to assume that that forms part of my argument.

Jeffhe Mar 19, 2018, 11:17 PM
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?
1) “Reason and empathy don’t tell you to arbitrarily save fewer people.”

I never said they tell me to arbitrarily save fewer people. I said that they tell us to give each person an equal chance of being saved.

2) “This doesn’t answer the objection.”

That premise (as indicated by “P1.”), plus my support for that premise, was not meant to answer an objection. It was just the first premise of an argument that was meant to answer objection 1.

3) “There is more suffering when it happens to two people, and more suffering is morally worse.”

Yes, there is more instances of suffering. But as I have tried to argue, x instances of suffering spread across x people is just as morally bad as 1 instance of the same kind of suffering had by one other person. If by ‘more suffering’ you meant worse suffering in an experiential sense, then please see my first response to Michael.

4) “The fact that the level of suffering in each person is the same doesn’t imply that they are morally equivalent outcomes.”

I didn’t say it was implied. If I thought it was implied, then my response to Objection 1 would have been much shorter.

5) “This is a textbook case of begging the question.”

I don’t see how my assumption is anywhere near what I want to conclude. It seems to me like an assumption that is plausibly shared by all. That’s why I assumed it in the first place: to show that my conclusion can be arrived at from shared assumptions.

6) “No one you’re arguing with will grant that we should act differently for cases 2 and 3.”

I would hesitate to use “No one”. If this were true, then I would have expected more comments along those lines. More importantly, I wonder why one wouldn’t grant that we should act differently in choice situations 2 and 3. If the reason boils down to the thought that 5 minor pains is experientially worse than 1 major pain, regardless if the 5 minor pains are all had felt by one person or spread across 5 different people, then I would point you to my conversation with Michael_S.

Finally, I just want to say that all the people I’ve conversed with on this forum so far have been very friendly and not dismissive, despite perhaps some differences in view. I wasn’t surprised by that because (presumably) most people on here are effective altruists, and it would seem rather odd for an effective altruist—someone who identifies with helping the less fortunate—to be unfriendly or dismissive. Anyways, I do hope to remain unsurprised by that. I think only in a friendly and non-dismissive atmosphere can the interlocutors benefit from their conversation.

Jeffhe Mar 19, 2018, 10:24 PM
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?
Hey kbog,

Thanks for your comment. I never said it was up for debate. Rather, given that it is stipulated, I question whether agreements reached under such stipulations have any force or validity on reality, given that the stipulation is, in fact, false.

Please read my second response to brianwang712 where I imagine that Bob has a conversation with him. I would be curious how you would respond to Bob in that conversation.

Jeffhe 19 Mar 2018 18:15 UTC
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in reply to: Gordon Seidoh Worley’s comment on: Is Effective Altruism fundamentally flawed?
Hey gworley3,

Here’s the comment I made about the difference between effective-altruism and utilitarianism (if you’re interested): http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1ll/cognitive_and_emotional_barriers_to_eas_growth/dij

Jeffhe 19 Mar 2018 17:45 UTC
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in reply to: Gordon Seidoh Worley’s comment on: [Error communicating with LW2 server]
Hey gworley3,

I decided to delete the post seeing that it wasn’t getting many responses. Thanks for replying anyways!

Jeffhe 19 Mar 2018 0:33 UTC
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in reply to: Kirsten’s comment on: [Error communicating with LW2 server]
Hey Khorton,

Thanks for sharing! For some reason, I totally did not expect faith/religion to come up. Clearly I have not thought broadly in enough ><. If I included a new option like

10) I donate/plan to donate because I am of a particular faith/religion that calls on me or requires me to do charitable deeds

do you think that would be more true of you than 1)? How important is it to you that doing charitable deeds is morally good or right? In other words, what if God did not create morality and simply requested that you help others without it being morally good or bad? Do you think you would still do it?