From a recent Science: Agriculture and cities made human life better, right? Wrong, say archaeologists who presented stunning new evidence at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting. They pooled data on standardized indicators of health from skeletal remains, including stature, dental health, degenerative joint disease, anemia, trauma, and the isotopic signatures of what they ate, and gathered data on settlement size, latitude, and socioeconomic and subsistence patterns. They found that the health of many Europeans began to worsen markedly about 3000 years ago, after agriculture became widely adopted in Europe and during the rise of the Greek and Roman civilizations. …
Given time, I would think that evolution will always produce people who consider any given life to be worth living, even if that life really really really sucks. And those people will then have a survival advantage, and produce more offspring, who will be even more tolerant of low living standards, and so on. Eventually, what we originally considered to be pure hell would be considered by these "evolved" humans to be quite acceptable.
Mitchell, what's wrong with the repugnant conclusion? I agree that you find it repugnant, but we seem to disagree on how much evidence that is against its being grand and glorious. We have a bunch of intuitions and reasons, and they don't come to the same conclusion, so why don't we try to work out which is flawed?
Why intuitions on this seem likely to be bad evidence:
1) Human moral intuitions generally don't react a lot for people who can't return influence (e.g. distant people, other groups, people likely to keep suffering, strangers, sufferers of omissions rather than actions [hard to apportion blame], omissions in crowds). Those who don't exist yet are the extreme of this. So no reason our feelings should be attuned to their interests.
2) It is easier to imagine the difference between happier and sadder than between one person being happy and two from the inside. I can't imagine being two people easily, let alone a galaxy full. So I would expect level of happiness to be accounted for in feelings much more than number living.
Mitchell, Robin Hanson is made of many selves who live at different times. The current self who writes this is glad to be alive, and so is glad Robin Hanson did not die in his sleep last night. You might say that if I were dead I wouldn't have preferences, but my preferences about such things don't change much from day to day so the preferences of my yesterday self are a good proxy for my preferences now. It is not just that yesterday's self feels altruism toward today's self; it is that he liked to be alive too, and he correctly anticipated that I'd feel the same.
Katja - let me try to paraphrase the argument so far. It won't get the subtleties exactly right but I hope it makes the central issues clear.
I said that a world of a few happy people is better than a world of many unhappy people.
Robin said that the many unhappy people would still prefer their world to the world of a few happy people, because they don't exist in the latter world. And I gather he also thinks that we in this world should prefer the unhappy world to the happy world because there are more people (or people-who-want-to-live) in it. And finally this is presented as a reason to be enthusiastic about highly populated but possibly unhappy futures in this world.
In response I first drew the distinction between preferences that can make a difference, and preferences which are purely of abstract significance - which in being voiced express an aesthetic or ethical value, but which do not correspond to a choice of outcomes. When the people of the unhappy world are asked to express a preference between the unhappy world and the happy world, it is a purely abstract preference. They are already in the unhappy world and nothing can undo that. So it is at the very least a contingent matter as to whether they will say that their world is better than the abstract alternative.
The next issue concerns abstract preferences as expressed by us in this world. Robin asks us to judge one world as better than another basically by counting up the number of people in it who want to live (I am guessing that this is the criterion of "lives worth living"). I don't know if he would amend this principle in additive-utilitarian fashion by making quality of life a matter of degree; in that case a few very happy people might trump a slightly larger number of miserable people. But we seem to be coming close to the view that a galaxy full of people who are miserable, but not so miserable as to commit suicide, is better than a single planet of extremely happy people. I believe this is the "repugnant conclusion" and Robin says above he does not find it repugnant, whereas I regard it as a reductio ad absurdum of naive additive utilitarianism.
The final issue concerns the consequential preferences we express in this world regarding our own possible futures. Should we regard a future for this world, our world, that is miserable but populous, as better than one which is happy but sparsely populated? Robin apparently says yes, I say no.
I hope that this addresses your second batch of questions by providing the context to what I wrote. As to whether there's a fallacy in Robin's argument or not - the belief there's a fallacy comes from the sense that the proposition is absurd, and the inability to pin down the specific fallacy comes from not knowing the specific perspective from which it nonetheless appears reasonable to Robin.
"Katja - You're trying to compare utility for an existing entity (U/1) over utility for a non-existing entity (U*/0). Divide by zero might not be the best term for it, but any attempt to compare an existent person to a non-existent person (as you seem to be asking Tony to do) runs into an undefined quantity problem."
So the same problem I run into when I wonder whether if I had another jar I could fit more jelly beans into it - I don't have the jar yet, so the calculation would be (extra beans)/(number of extra jars I have now) = 100/0 = oh no!Is there a pertinent difference I'm missing, or do I need to give up making judgments about future quantities all together?
"This is one of those cases of Alice-in-Wonderland reasoning where one feels that an enormous fallacy is being committed, but the very alienness of what is being asserted makes it hard to guess what assumptions make it seem plausible to the other person, which in turn makes it a little difficult to engage with."
If you can't pin down a fallacy, maybe it's the lack of one that makes somebody else find it plausible? If it's just your feeling of alienness about the assertion, why do you think your feeling on that is likely to be more reliable than others' feelings plus their reasoning?
In the second part of your next paragraph you say you can prefer worlds you aren't in. You do so because of the people in the worlds who will enjoy them presumably. Why can't I do the same for future possible worlds containing people who don't exist yet? Why does it matter that once they do exist past possibilities of them not are irrelevant? Their judgement on the matter isn't important to whether we should prefer such worlds.
Robin: "[From behind a veil of ignorance] If I saw my chance of existing given a scenario as proportional to population, and my quality of life given existence to be a random draw from that scenario, which scenario would I prefer?"
Well, that depends. How pleasant is life behind the veil of ignorance? Is real existence better or worse?
Chip Smith sent me the following regarding antinatalism, but it seems appropriate here:
The Fehig essay is called "A Pareto Principle for Possible People." I haven't read it, but it's discussed by Benatar [author of "Better To Have Never Been"]. It's weird as intuition pumps go (there's a pill creates a desire that is either met or denied and the asymmetry is thus addressed without the existential predicate that leads people to squawk about non-identity).
Do you folks think it is morally preferable to be given a desire which is then satisfied relative to doing nothing or just neutral? Would you carry over the logic to creating a new life you expect to possess positive utility, or do you think there is an important distinction?
"the whole point is that some people don't exist in your first scenario, which is an outcome those people prefer less than the second scenario outcome, where they exist."
This is one of those cases of Alice-in-Wonderland reasoning where one feels that an enormous fallacy is being committed, but the very alienness of what is being asserted makes it hard to guess what assumptions make it seem plausible to the other person, which in turn makes it a little difficult to engage with.
I could begin by observing that once a person exists, possible worlds in which they never exist are no longer possible for them, and thus no longer of practical significance. Choosing between this world, in which I exist, and some other world, in which I never exist, is not like choosing between one future and another future for this world. It is also simply not the case that I (or anyone else) will necessarily favor any world that happens to contain me over every world that does not. If I am asked to imagine a utopian alternative history which diverges from this one thousands of years ago, and then asked whether that world is better than this one, I really ought to say that world is the better one, even though I'm not in it, because it is a utopia and this is not.
Quality of life is entirely subjective. It is quite possible that many people are actually less happy than they would be in a hunter-gatherer tribal society. Which would explain why, since Plato at least, they have striven to recreate it.
What's the surprise? 3 millenniums ago only the strongest survived past childhood and had children, so of course those skeletons are going to look fit. Besides, people developed their bodies with the intense labor and died at their prime age.
I suspect this is also one of the reasons you strongly support cryonics. You seem to not draw a clear distinction between avoiding dying (with the familiar notions of dying in place) and between some relatively theoretical and freaky form of existence that cryonics offers.
Please don't leap to conclusions like that; I, for instance, strongly support cryonics while strongly disagreeing with Robin's stance on population ethics.
It is true that people prefer living miserable lives to dying. It is not clear that they prefer living miserable lives to having never been born! I am evolutionarily trained to not be a big fan of dying. To steal from a popular quote (Mark Twain I think):
I have been dead for billions of years prior to this life and have not suffered the slightest inconvenience!
I suspect this is also one of the reasons you strongly support cryonics. You seem to not draw a clear distinction between avoiding dying (with the familiar notions of dying in place) and between some relatively theoretical and freaky form of existence that cryonics offers. I am evolutionarily trained to like the idea of being treated by doctors, have a longer lifespan etc. in the normal sense. I have zero evolutionary training in whether I should like something like cryonics or existence in a theoretical sense, which was probably only an idle philosophical question so far.
Mitchell, the whole point is that some people don't exist your first scenario, which is an outcome those people prefer less than the second scenario outcome, where they exist.
Given time, I would think that evolution will always produce people who consider any given life to be worth living, even if that life really really really sucks. And those people will then have a survival advantage, and produce more offspring, who will be even more tolerant of low living standards, and so on. Eventually, what we originally considered to be pure hell would be considered by these "evolved" humans to be quite acceptable.
Katja wrote:
> I can't imagine being two people easily, let alone a galaxy full.
Approximate being two people as living twice as long.
Mitchell, what's wrong with the repugnant conclusion? I agree that you find it repugnant, but we seem to disagree on how much evidence that is against its being grand and glorious. We have a bunch of intuitions and reasons, and they don't come to the same conclusion, so why don't we try to work out which is flawed?
Why intuitions on this seem likely to be bad evidence:
1) Human moral intuitions generally don't react a lot for people who can't return influence (e.g. distant people, other groups, people likely to keep suffering, strangers, sufferers of omissions rather than actions [hard to apportion blame], omissions in crowds). Those who don't exist yet are the extreme of this. So no reason our feelings should be attuned to their interests.
2) It is easier to imagine the difference between happier and sadder than between one person being happy and two from the inside. I can't imagine being two people easily, let alone a galaxy full. So I would expect level of happiness to be accounted for in feelings much more than number living.
Mitchell, Robin Hanson is made of many selves who live at different times. The current self who writes this is glad to be alive, and so is glad Robin Hanson did not die in his sleep last night. You might say that if I were dead I wouldn't have preferences, but my preferences about such things don't change much from day to day so the preferences of my yesterday self are a good proxy for my preferences now. It is not just that yesterday's self feels altruism toward today's self; it is that he liked to be alive too, and he correctly anticipated that I'd feel the same.
Mitchell, if a life is worth living, that means it's on the whole at least slightly happy, not "miserable".
Katja - let me try to paraphrase the argument so far. It won't get the subtleties exactly right but I hope it makes the central issues clear.
I said that a world of a few happy people is better than a world of many unhappy people.
Robin said that the many unhappy people would still prefer their world to the world of a few happy people, because they don't exist in the latter world. And I gather he also thinks that we in this world should prefer the unhappy world to the happy world because there are more people (or people-who-want-to-live) in it. And finally this is presented as a reason to be enthusiastic about highly populated but possibly unhappy futures in this world.
In response I first drew the distinction between preferences that can make a difference, and preferences which are purely of abstract significance - which in being voiced express an aesthetic or ethical value, but which do not correspond to a choice of outcomes. When the people of the unhappy world are asked to express a preference between the unhappy world and the happy world, it is a purely abstract preference. They are already in the unhappy world and nothing can undo that. So it is at the very least a contingent matter as to whether they will say that their world is better than the abstract alternative.
The next issue concerns abstract preferences as expressed by us in this world. Robin asks us to judge one world as better than another basically by counting up the number of people in it who want to live (I am guessing that this is the criterion of "lives worth living"). I don't know if he would amend this principle in additive-utilitarian fashion by making quality of life a matter of degree; in that case a few very happy people might trump a slightly larger number of miserable people. But we seem to be coming close to the view that a galaxy full of people who are miserable, but not so miserable as to commit suicide, is better than a single planet of extremely happy people. I believe this is the "repugnant conclusion" and Robin says above he does not find it repugnant, whereas I regard it as a reductio ad absurdum of naive additive utilitarianism.
The final issue concerns the consequential preferences we express in this world regarding our own possible futures. Should we regard a future for this world, our world, that is miserable but populous, as better than one which is happy but sparsely populated? Robin apparently says yes, I say no.
I hope that this addresses your second batch of questions by providing the context to what I wrote. As to whether there's a fallacy in Robin's argument or not - the belief there's a fallacy comes from the sense that the proposition is absurd, and the inability to pin down the specific fallacy comes from not knowing the specific perspective from which it nonetheless appears reasonable to Robin.
Psychohistorian,
"Katja - You're trying to compare utility for an existing entity (U/1) over utility for a non-existing entity (U*/0). Divide by zero might not be the best term for it, but any attempt to compare an existent person to a non-existent person (as you seem to be asking Tony to do) runs into an undefined quantity problem."
So the same problem I run into when I wonder whether if I had another jar I could fit more jelly beans into it - I don't have the jar yet, so the calculation would be (extra beans)/(number of extra jars I have now) = 100/0 = oh no!Is there a pertinent difference I'm missing, or do I need to give up making judgments about future quantities all together?
Mitchell,
"This is one of those cases of Alice-in-Wonderland reasoning where one feels that an enormous fallacy is being committed, but the very alienness of what is being asserted makes it hard to guess what assumptions make it seem plausible to the other person, which in turn makes it a little difficult to engage with."
If you can't pin down a fallacy, maybe it's the lack of one that makes somebody else find it plausible? If it's just your feeling of alienness about the assertion, why do you think your feeling on that is likely to be more reliable than others' feelings plus their reasoning?
In the second part of your next paragraph you say you can prefer worlds you aren't in. You do so because of the people in the worlds who will enjoy them presumably. Why can't I do the same for future possible worlds containing people who don't exist yet? Why does it matter that once they do exist past possibilities of them not are irrelevant? Their judgement on the matter isn't important to whether we should prefer such worlds.
Robin: "[From behind a veil of ignorance] If I saw my chance of existing given a scenario as proportional to population, and my quality of life given existence to be a random draw from that scenario, which scenario would I prefer?"
Well, that depends. How pleasant is life behind the veil of ignorance? Is real existence better or worse?
Chip Smith sent me the following regarding antinatalism, but it seems appropriate here:
The Fehig essay is called "A Pareto Principle for Possible People." I haven't read it, but it's discussed by Benatar [author of "Better To Have Never Been"]. It's weird as intuition pumps go (there's a pill creates a desire that is either met or denied and the asymmetry is thus addressed without the existential predicate that leads people to squawk about non-identity).
Do you folks think it is morally preferable to be given a desire which is then satisfied relative to doing nothing or just neutral? Would you carry over the logic to creating a new life you expect to possess positive utility, or do you think there is an important distinction?
"the whole point is that some people don't exist in your first scenario, which is an outcome those people prefer less than the second scenario outcome, where they exist."
This is one of those cases of Alice-in-Wonderland reasoning where one feels that an enormous fallacy is being committed, but the very alienness of what is being asserted makes it hard to guess what assumptions make it seem plausible to the other person, which in turn makes it a little difficult to engage with.
I could begin by observing that once a person exists, possible worlds in which they never exist are no longer possible for them, and thus no longer of practical significance. Choosing between this world, in which I exist, and some other world, in which I never exist, is not like choosing between one future and another future for this world. It is also simply not the case that I (or anyone else) will necessarily favor any world that happens to contain me over every world that does not. If I am asked to imagine a utopian alternative history which diverges from this one thousands of years ago, and then asked whether that world is better than this one, I really ought to say that world is the better one, even though I'm not in it, because it is a utopia and this is not.
But maybe I'm missing the point.
Quality of life is entirely subjective. It is quite possible that many people are actually less happy than they would be in a hunter-gatherer tribal society. Which would explain why, since Plato at least, they have striven to recreate it.
What's the surprise? 3 millenniums ago only the strongest survived past childhood and had children, so of course those skeletons are going to look fit. Besides, people developed their bodies with the intense labor and died at their prime age.
I suspect this is also one of the reasons you strongly support cryonics. You seem to not draw a clear distinction between avoiding dying (with the familiar notions of dying in place) and between some relatively theoretical and freaky form of existence that cryonics offers.
Please don't leap to conclusions like that; I, for instance, strongly support cryonics while strongly disagreeing with Robin's stance on population ethics.
@Robin:
It is true that people prefer living miserable lives to dying. It is not clear that they prefer living miserable lives to having never been born! I am evolutionarily trained to not be a big fan of dying. To steal from a popular quote (Mark Twain I think):
I have been dead for billions of years prior to this life and have not suffered the slightest inconvenience!
I suspect this is also one of the reasons you strongly support cryonics. You seem to not draw a clear distinction between avoiding dying (with the familiar notions of dying in place) and between some relatively theoretical and freaky form of existence that cryonics offers. I am evolutionarily trained to like the idea of being treated by doctors, have a longer lifespan etc. in the normal sense. I have zero evolutionary training in whether I should like something like cryonics or existence in a theoretical sense, which was probably only an idle philosophical question so far.
Mitchell, the whole point is that some people don't exist your first scenario, which is an outcome those people prefer less than the second scenario outcome, where they exist.