Longtermism Is Correct Part 2

Defending the thesis more

1

This argument will show that we should care greatly about future people.

P1 If you could either create a person with a disability today that would decrease their quality of life or create a person in an alternative civilization of aliens with lower average quality of life than that of people with disabilities, you should create the person with the disability

P2 It would be moral to create a person in an alternative civilization of aliens with lower average quality of life than that of people with disabilities

Therefore, by transitivity, it would be moral to create a person with a disability, rather than creating no one.

P3 Causing a person to have a disability who would not otherwise would be very morally wrong

P4 Creating a person who does not have a disability with positive quality of life N¹ and then causing someone else to have a disability would be morally equivalent to creating a person with a disability, who would have a positive quality of life N, in the absence of having a disability

P5 If A and B together are good and B is bad then A is at least good enough to offset the badness of B

Therefore, creating a person who would have a positive quality of life N is good enough to offset the badness of giving a person a disability

If A is good enough to offset B then the combination of creating any number of instances of A and B would be a good thing

Therefore, creating any number of future people with quality of life N would be worth giving an equal number of people a disability

Giving a number of future people a disability would be seriously morally wrong

Therefore, failing to create any number of future people with quality of life N would be seriously morally wrong

If there are 10^30 future people in expectation then failing to bring them about would be morally worse than giving 10^30 people a disability

2

Nick Beckstead provides an argument for caring overwhelmingly about the far future. He begins with the following assumption.

Period Independence: By and large, how well history goes as a whole is a function of how well things go during each period of history; when things go better during a period, that makes the history as a whole go better; when things go worse during a period, that makes history as a whole go worse; and the extent to which it makes history as a whole go better or worse is independent of what happens in other such periods

This assumption is hard to deny. Any other method for determining the value of history as a whole would seem unacceptably ad-hoc. It seems intuitive that two centuries of things going well would be better than only one century of things going well. Even if one ends up rejecting this view after careful reflection, it can’t be denied that it’s intuitive as a starting assumption.

Beckstead provides the following

A rationale for Period Independence To appreciate the rationale for Period Independence consider the following scenario:

Asteroid Analysis: World leaders hire experts to do a cost-benefit analysis and determine whether it is worth it to fund an Asteroid Deflection System. Thinking mostly of the interests of future generations, the leaders decide that it would be well worth it.

And then consider the following ending:

Our Surprising History: After the analysis has been done, some scientists discover that life was planted on Earth by other people who now live in an inaccessible region of spacetime. In the past, there were a lot of them, and they had really great lives. Upon learning this, world leaders decide that since there has already been a lot of value in the universe, it is much less important that they build this device than they previously thought.

On some views in population ethics, the world leaders might be right. For example, if we believe that additional lives have diminishing marginal value, the total value of the future could depend significantly on how many lives there have been in the past. Intuitively, it would seem unreasonable to claim that how good it would be to build the Asteroid Deflection System depends on this information about our distant past. Parfit and Broome appeal to analogous arguments when attacking diminishing marginal value and average views in population ethics. See Parfit (1984, p. 420) and Broome (2004, p. 197) for examples.

This supporting argument seems even more intuitive and must be denied by deniers of period independence. If periods are dependent, then the previous history of the world will affect the desirability of creating a new person and of preserving the world. This, however, seems obviously false. No information about the quality of life of ancient Egyptians would affect the decision to continue the world.

Beckstead adds another assumption

Additionality: If “standard good things” happen during a period of history—there are people, the people have good lives, society is organized appropriately, etc.—that makes that period go better than a period where nothing of value happens.

This again seems intuitively plausible. Beckstead provides a justification, which I’ll quote in a minute, but first some background. Beckstead earlier gave an analogy about a computer program that was designed to figure out how good the world was, based on judging certain facts about the world.

What is the intuition behind Additionality? It goes back to our “computer program” analogy above. When we write the computer program that estimates the value of a possible future, it makes sense for that computer program to look at how well things go during each period in that possible future. And it seems that in order to know how well things go during a given period, the computer program should just have to look at qualitative facts about what happens during that period, such as what kind of “standard good things” are happening during that period. All the standard good things that are happening now are good, and better than a “blank” period where no standard good things happen. So if similar things happen in future periods, that should be good as well.

In my argument, Additionality rules out strict Person-Affecting Views. There might be other reasons people would deny Additionality, but I have no such reasons in mind. According to strict Person-Affecting Views, the fact that a person's life would go well if he lived could not, in itself, imply that it would be in some way good to create him. Why not? Since the person was never created, there is no person who could have benefitted from being created. On this type of view, the only be important to ensure that there are future generations if it would somehow benefit people alive today, or people who have lived in the past (perhaps by adding meaning to their lives). If one does not accept a view of this kind, I see no reason to think that it doesn't matter whether “standard good things” happen in the future.

Beckstead’s next assumption is the following

Temporal Impartiality: the value of a particular period is independent of when it occurs.

This assumption is not very controversial among philosophers, but many economists reject it. On their view, we should count benefits that come in the future as intrinsically less important than benefits that come sooner, and the value of future benefits should decrease exponentially with time. Since Parfit (1984, Appendix F), Cowen and Parfit (1992), and Broome (1992) have convincingly argued against this position and few philosophers believe it anyway, I will only briefly explain why it should be rejected.

Some rather obvious examples suggest that there is no fundamental significance to when benefits and harms take place. To take an example from Parfit (1984), suppose I bury some broken glass in a forest. In one case, a child steps on the broken glass 10 years from now and is injured. In another case, a child steps on the broken glass 110 years from now and is injured in precisely the same way. If we discount for time, then we will count the first alternative as much worse than the second. If we use a 5% discount rate per year, we should count this alternative as over one hundred times worse. This is very implausible.

Finally, Beckstead’s last assumption is

Risk Neutrality: The value of an uncertain prospect equals its expected value. This assumption is important because, in all probability, any given project will do very little to affect the long-term prospects of civilization. Therefore, my argument must proceed by arguing that the value of the future is extremely large, so that reducing existential risk by a small probability, or having some small probability of creating some other positive trajectory change, is also very large. The most straightforward way to do this is to use the Risk Neutrality assumption to argue that reducing existential risk by some fraction is as important as achieving that fraction of the potential value of the future.

Beckstead provides a variety of objections to person affecting views. He objects to the simplest person affecting view, according to which non-existence is incomparable to existence, such that neither creating nor not creating a person can be moral or immoral.

Having explained the argument, let's examine its problems. The most troubling issue is that the argument delivers a standard Person-Affecting View, rather than an asymmetric one. To see this, let's consider one of Parfit's cases: The Wretched Child: Some woman knows that, if she has a child, he will be so multiply diseased that his life will be worse than nothing. He will never develop, will live for only a few years, and will suffer from pain that cannot be wholly relieved. If she has this child, it will not be good or bad for anyone else. Of this case, Parfit says, “Even if we reject the phrase ‘worse than nothing,’ it is clear that it would be wrong knowingly to conceive such a child.” (Parfit, 1984, p. 391). Parfit is surely right about this. However, Incomparability of Non-Existence entails that non-existence cannot be better for the child than living this wretched life. By stipulation, the child's existence affects no one else, so the child's existence cannot make the outcome worse. Thus, the Person-Affecting Restriction implies that it cannot be worse if the Wretched Child exists.

Next, he objects to asymetric person affecting views which says

it is bad to create people who would have miserable lives, but not good to create people who would have good lives

Beckstead objects, writing

The most obvious problem is that Strict Asymmetric Views cannot explain why, when choosing which of two “extra” people to create, it is better to create someone who would have an excellent life rather than someone who would have a pretty good life. Since the interests of all “extra” people are ignored, there is nothing to choose between these alternatives.8 But this is very implausible

He delivers another objection shortly thereafter

Though many people think that Asymmetric Views can best capture our thinking about the morality of having children, this is not true. According to common sense, it is not bad to have children under ordinary conditions, provided one can be reasonably confident that one's child will have a good life, one can fulfill one's duties to the child, and having the child does not interfere with one's pre-existing obligations. But if we accept a Strict Asymmetric View, if we create a happy child, we do something that is not good. However, if we create a person with a bad life, such as the Wretched Child, we do something bad. If some action could be bad, but could not be good, then it must be bad (in expectation).

Beckstead then argues that “Strict Asymmetric Views have their least plausible implications in cases of extinction.” He provides the following argument.

Voluntary Extinction: All people collectively decide not to have any children. No one is ever made upset, irritated, or otherwise negatively affected by the decision. In fact, everyone is made a little better off.

As (Temkin, 2000, 2008) points out, it would be bad if this happened, the benefits to present people notwithstanding.

On an Asymmetric Person-Affecting View, we must count the interests of "extra" people if they have bad lives, but not if they have good lives. This leads to another troubling conclusion:

Mostly Good or Extinction: In one future, all but a few people have excellent lives. But a very small percentage of these people suffer from a painful disease that makes life not worth living. In the other future, no people exist.9

Intuitively, the first future is better than the second. But, given an Asymmetric Person-Affecting View, this is not true. On that view, all the good lives are ignored but the bad lives are not, and that makes existence worse than extinction. Ordinarily, we believe that there is a trade-off between bad lives and good lives. But on an Asymmetric View, we give no weight to the good lives, so the trade-off is not made properly

This trio of objections is enough to sink the view.

Next, Beckstead objects to moderate person affecting views.

According to Moderate Person-Affecting Views, we cannot ignore the well-being of "extra" people, but their well-being counts for less. On the simplest version of this view, we add up the well-being of everyone who exists in an alternative to determine how good it would be, giving slightly less weight to the "extra" people.

Beckstead then presents several objections.

Moderate Person-Affecting Views let us say some intuitive things about cases like Sight or Paid Pregnancy, but not all of them. On these views, it is good to create additional people, and it can be better to create additional people even if it means that existing people will be worse off. Therefore, in some versions of these cases, Moderate Person-Affecting Views will have some implausible implications, at least if Unrestricted Views do.

Moderate Person-Affecting Views also face diffculties in Parfit's pregnancy cases:

The Medical Programmes: There are two rare conditions, J and K, which cannot be detected without special tests. If a pregnant woman has Condition J, this will cause the child she is carrying to have a certain handicap. A simple treatment would prevent this effect. If a woman has Condition K when she conceives a child, this will cause this child to have the same particular handicap. Condition K cannot be treated, but always disappears within two months. Suppose next that we have planned two medical programmes, but there are funds for only one; so one must be canceled. In the first programme, millions of women would be tested during pregnancy. Those found to have Condition J would be treated. In the second programme, millions of women would be tested when they intend to try to become pregnant. Those found to have Condition K would be warned to postpone conception for at least two months, after which this incurable condition will have disappeared. Suppose finally that we can predict that these two programmes would achieve results in as many cases. [Either one will decrease the total number of children with disabilities by 1000.] Parfit (1984, p. 367)

Suppose we fund Post-Conception Screening. The children of women with Condition J would have existed regardless of what we did, but this is not true for the children of women with Condition K; this is because if we tell women with Condition K about their condition, they will wait to conceive, and different children will exist. Therefore, the children who would have existed if we funded PreConception Screening are “extra” people; because of this, if we adopt any kind of Person-Affecting View, funding Post-Conception Screening was better than funding Pre-Conception Screening. Intuitively though, it seems that the two programs are equally good.10

Some people claim that when they consider this case, they find that Post-Conception Screening is better for precisely the reasons stated above. If they believe this, we can ask how much better they think it is. Suppose, for instance, Post-Conception Screening only prevented half as many handicaps as Pre-Conception Screening. Unless we assign very significant weight to "extra" people, all Moderate Person-Affecting theorists must hold that Post-Conception screening would be preferable even in this case. It is hard to believe that Person-Affecting considerations could make Post-Conception Screening that much better than Pre-Conception Screening. To accommodate this judgment, we must place very significant weight on the interests of "extra" people (at least 50%).

To be fair, we should admit that Unrestricted Views will have their share of problems in variations of this case. Rather than funding Pre-Conception or Post-Conception treatment, defenders of Unrestricted Views must claim it is better to pay 1000 women to have healthy, non-blind children, as in Sight or Paid Pregnancy. But we have already acknowledged this problem.

Another case is quite problematic for Moderate Person-Affecting Views. Consider:

Disease Now or Disease Later: A non-fatal disease will harm a large number of people. It will either do this now, or it will do it in the future. If the people are affected in the future, a greater number will be so affected; which future people exist will depend on our choice. Whatever we do, everyone will have a life that is worth living. (Doing it later will have no desirable compounding effects.)

According to Moderate Person-Affecting Views, both Symmetric and Asymmetric, it would be better to let future people face the disease. How much extra harm we are willing to tolerate will depend on our choice of weighting. Again, this puts pressure on us to make sure the weighting is fairly high. (The lower it is, the more "extra" people we will allow to suffer in order to protect people alive today.) The source of the problem here is that while it may be intuitive that it is better to help present people than to create additional happy people, it is not very plausible that it is less important to prevent harm to future people.

Finally, Beckstead says

Notice how the challenges facing Moderate Person-Affecting Views interact. To avoid implausible conclusions in The Medical Programmes and Disease Now or Disease Later?, the weight assigned to potential people must be reasonably high. To avoid implausible conclusions in Sight or Paid Pregnancy, the weight must be fairly low. Of course, this is unsurprising: having a very low weight for "extra" people is like accepting some kind of Strict Person-Affecting View, and accepting a very high weight is very much like accepting an Unrestricted View.

Often, in this kind of case, a moderate path will seem reasonable. But here, a moderate path seems to have little speaking in its favor. A moderate weighting (roughly 50%, say) would have implausible consequences in all of these cases.

Beckstead goes on to argue against views that deny period independence. One such view claims that value overall has declining marginal worthwhileness. On this view, adding extra value to a very valuable world is less important than adding extra value to a barely valuable world. However, this view has a very unacceptable implication. On this view, whether or not we should add new people depends on causally inefficacious other people who exist. Thus, lots of happy aliens galaxies away would affect the desirability of future people. Even if these views say that world value is determined by the value of current people, it still has an objectionable implication. On such a view, it would be more important to have a child if the world is worse. Thus, if having a child who would live a good life in a cave that they’d never escape from, you should consider geopolitics. This is clearly ludicrous.

Beckstead additionally writes

Such an asymmetry may also have strange practical implications. Suppose that there were an upper bound on the value of ensuring the existence of additional people within periods but not across periods and consider this case: Sam's Delayed Birth: We have a sperm and an egg which we can use to create Sam now, or in the future. If we create Sam now, his life will go somewhat better, and the timing of his existence will not affect anyone else's well-being. However, an enormous people are alive right now. In the future, fewer people will be alive.

Additionally, this view has another weird implication. Suppose you are uncertain about the value of the present. You think it may have 100^100^100 units of value, but it may have only 58 units of value overall. The odds of each of those are 50%.

On this view, if given the following offer

Offer: Take option 1 which will cause you to have a child with 50 units of value if the world currently has 100^100^100 units of value, or option 2 which will cause you to have a child with 5 units of value if the world has 58 units of value.

On this view, option 2 would be better, because it has a higher chance of adding value to a world where value isn’t nearly capped out. However, this is clearly absurd.

Beckstead provides more arguments—his Ph.D thesis is well worth reading. He gives the subject a more thorough treatment than I can give it here. However, one thing has, I think, been made clear from consideration of these arguments: longtermism is correct. Denying the conclusions of longtermism commits people to ludicrous views—ones much more unintuitive than longtermism. We’ll see more of those in the future.

1. Let N be the average quality of life of future people, assume it is positive