Seeking balance
Josh Piecyk š¹
Karma: 17
Congrats! Your table of contents seems very thoughtfully structured and piques my interest. Iām curious how you arrived at the marginal cost of ~$10,000/āprocedure and ~$1000/āyear in storage costs and QALY estimations, but I assume that will be discussed more in detail in the book.
Also as a heads up, your link to the study about erasing memories leads to a server error (at least on my end).
Thank youāthat is helpful and does make more sense. I was under the false impression that moral weights were designed to be the only thing people ought to consider when comparing interventions, and Iām curious how many people on both sides of the argument have a similar misconception.
In your Welfare Range Estimate and your Introduction to Moral Weights, you donāt mention the potential of humans to make a positive impact, instead focusing only on averting DALYs. Perhaps Iām missing something here, but isnāt this neglecting the hedonic goods from a positive utilitarian perspective and only addressing it from the negative utilitarian side of things?
Please let me know if this topic is addressed in another entry in your sequence, and thank you for the time you have spent researching and writing about these important topics!
This project and many participants on this forum this week also seem to be neglecting the positive utilitarian perspective. 1 human saved has the potential to make an immense positive impact on the world, whereas animals do not.
Thank you for showing me that calculation. Upon further thought, I think my belief is more along the lines of 1,000,000 to 3,000,000 chickens being equivalent to a single human life.
Based on suffering reduction alone, my opinion is that the weight of human suffering carries at least 1,000,000 times more weight than a chicken. When also considering the potential indirect positive impacts a human can have, as well as the difference in experience size between humans and animals, the decision to prioritize human welfare over animal welfare becomes even clearer to me. I hope our society reaches a point at which human suffering has been reduced to the point that we can focus on animal welfare, but I think weāre likely decades away.
Iād like to caveat this by saying Iām rather new to effective altruism, and I expect my views to evolve the more I learn. Iām curious to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying philosophical premises inherent in some of the views expressed here.
No I donāt agree that my claim implies that humans are infinitely more morally valuable than animals, rather they are significantly more valuable. I believe that we are currently allocating too much resources to animal welfare.
I donāt think itās productive to think of hypothetical scenarios that are extremely far detached from reality like your paper cut scenario. Instead, Iām imagining a child in sub-saharan Africa going blind due to malnutrition or dying from malaria, and Iām having a hard time imagining prioritizing the welfare of any amount of chickens over that child. I acknowledge that the non-infinite number exists, maybe itās 100,000 or 1,000,000 cage-free chickens in exchange for a human life. However, it seems clear to me that the magnitude of current human suffering deserves every marginal bit of resources it can receive at the cost of helping animals.
No one is purely impartial. Virtually everyone allocates more resources to themselves than a stranger. Almost every parent will allocate more resources to their children than a stranger. Many choose to allocate more resources to a sibling or close friend in need even if a stranger is in āmoreā need.
Impartiality is a spectrum, and it is driven by personal beliefs and values. Iām more partial towards humans on this spectrum than many other voters on this poll. From a positive utilitarian perspective, a human life that is saved has more potential to make their own positive impact than an animal could.
I do believe that animal welfare is important, but I also believe that promoting human welfare is significantly more important. I believe that any currently existing moral value comparison that results in the decision to donate significantly more money towards animal welfare than people must be under valuing the welfare of humans.Thus, I believe human health and well-being ought to be prioritized. Perhaps this classifies me as āspeciesistā, though I prefer the label humanist.
I found 1 unpopular EA post discussing your last point of the malthusian risk involved with global health aid in subsaharan Africa, and Iām unsure why this topic isnāt discussed more frequently on this forum. The post also mentions a study that found that East Africa may currently be in a malthusian trap such that a charity contributing to population growth in this region could have negative utility and be doing more harm than good.
Thank you for writing this. I have been struggling with this question myself, and your recommendation will hopefully give me motivation to finally getting around to creating a budget