tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post3281263942960005668..comments2024-02-15T06:35:18.238-05:00Comments on *Reflective Disequilibrium*: Population ethics and inaccessible populationsCarlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16384464120149476437noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post-20354157486625023762014-09-05T11:19:02.034-04:002014-09-05T11:19:02.034-04:00Pablo: I excluded CLU from my analysis because the...Pablo: I excluded CLU from my analysis because there can be pareto improvements according to Average and Total which are worse according to CLU (e.g. moving from some lives at 10% of the critical level to twice as many lives at 20% of the critical level). So my argument didn't cover CLU in full generality. However, you are right that once the lives to be added are above the CL, CLU will recommend things if they improve total and average (or at least it looks like it -- I haven't checked thoroughly).<br /><br />Nick: Yes that's right.Toby Ordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18019744097526255393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post-79488633689613898762014-09-05T05:14:43.291-04:002014-09-05T05:14:43.291-04:00That's a good summary, Nick. I guess the key w...That's a good summary, Nick. I guess the key word in Toby's sentence is not "pareto" (which is true for short- or long-term work) but "large" (which is more true for long-term work).Brian Tomasikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10510289096715716609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post-45542244053806491072014-09-04T05:51:41.671-04:002014-09-04T05:51:41.671-04:00Brian, I think Toby's point is as follows. Car...Brian, I think Toby's point is as follows. Carl has argued that, under certain plausible assumptions about inaccessible populations, both total and average utilitarianism give overwhelming weight to very long-term considerations in certain contexts. Many (though not all) issues in population ethics involve making trade-offs between average quality of life and number of people (see e.g. p. 403 of Parfit's Reasons and Persons, or Hurka's variable value theory). But in these cases where very long-term considerations get overwhelming weight according to both average and total perspectives, many other theories would also give them overwhelming weight. Carl's argument can thus be extended to increase the important of very long-term considerations from a wider variety of ethical perspectives than it appears at first, despite the fact that very few philosophers take strict average utilitarianism seriously.Nick Becksteadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16561745593227211371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post-45904831027238080042014-08-26T15:10:35.628-04:002014-08-26T15:10:35.628-04:00Toby: "For example if we just compare extinct...Toby: "For example if we just compare extinction soon with large and prosperous future, we get that it is a large pareto improvement in terms of both total and average."<br /><br />Yes, but the crucial question is how x-risk work compares with more ordinary efforts to improve human welfare in the short run. Those efforts are also Pareto improvements for both views.Brian Tomasikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10510289096715716609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post-76106165723725019702014-08-26T00:15:25.091-04:002014-08-26T00:15:25.091-04:00As Toby points out, the Average View is advocated ...As Toby points out, the Average View is advocated by no living professional philosopher. As a colorful anecdote, I once was dining with John Broome and as soon as I mentioned an implication of average utilitarianism, he interrupted me, saying "We can safely ignore what follows from that theory, since no one takes it seriously."<br /><br />However, some respectable thinkers do endorse other population theories that violate utility or existence independence (as those conditions are defined <a href="http://ppe.sagepub.com/content/2/3/342.short" rel="nofollow">in this paper</a>). So Carl's findings are relevant for those who hold these theories, or those who take moral peer disagreement seriously.<br /><br />Toby, why do you say that critical level theories are an exception? Unless the critical level is set unreasonably high (such that current lives turn out to be not worth living), lives in a "large and prosperous future" would be well above the critical level. The value of indefinite human survival would therefore be higher than the value of premature extinction not only on total and average theories, but also on critical level theories.Pablohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10363127923767597327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post-36391703702057512442014-08-22T21:28:37.655-04:002014-08-22T21:28:37.655-04:00Do you think that the potential impact of a single...Do you think that the potential impact of a single individual on population size is small enough to judge it with critical-level utilitarianism (or an analogous non-utilitarian theory)? <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=73511" rel="nofollow">Critical-level utilitarianism</a> (CLU) judges new lives by comparing them with an unchanging neutral life, and other population principle that agree with it in constant-population cases can be linearly approximated by it (the "CLU approximation"). I think this approximation is very convenient when it's accurate, since it allows you to reduce all the various population principles to a single dimension of "population strictness" - how good a life has to be to be neutral.<br /><br />For reasonably smooth population ethics this approximation works for short-term population change achievable by one person. For example, the CLU approximation works for average utilitarianism as long as your actions can't possibly change the population size by more than a few percent. For things like existential risk reduction, though, the CLU approximation fails: if successful, you might hugely change the human population size.<br /><br />How well do you think the CLU approximation works when considering far-future populations? The answer does depend on the size of inaccessible populations: if there are more of them, your potential impact is relatively smaller, and the approximation will be better.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00208631411452360285noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18935445.post-58886772170051392002014-08-22T09:29:09.797-04:002014-08-22T09:29:09.797-04:00Great post Carl. This goes very well with some of ...Great post Carl. This goes very well with some of Nick Beckstead's more recent thoughts on how surprisingly many theories of population ethics suggest that the future is very important. I'll try to look more systematically at some of this in the near future on my population ethics grant.<br /><br />For example, while it is interesting that the Average view gives a large weight to the future (under some plausible auxiliary assumptions), it is not clear how relevant this is since there appear to be precisely zero philosophers who advocate the Average view (at least to the point of writing a paper defending it). However, since many conflicts in population ethics are cases where one trades off Average for Total or vice versa, it may be possible to modify this example into one that applies to a huge swath of possible theories at once.<br /><br />Indeed this looks quite easy, as least in some versions. For example if we just compare extinction soon with large and prosperous future, we get that it is a large pareto improvement in terms of both total and average. This should capture many theories (though Critical Level and Person Affecting theories are definitely among the exceptions).Toby Ordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18019744097526255393noreply@blogger.com