In one-person cases, it is much less intuitively transparent how the costs, odds, and potential benefits all compare. We can calculate how a utilitarian would value the prospects. But it isn't immediately obvious that we must share this evaluation of the ex ante prospects in question. That's why we need to shift to an intuitively clearer…
In one-person cases, it is much less intuitively transparent how the costs, odds, and potential benefits all compare. We can calculate how a utilitarian would value the prospects. But it isn't immediately obvious that we must share this evaluation of the ex ante prospects in question. That's why we need to shift to an intuitively clearer case.
In my case, the details are more transparently accessible to our intuition, since we can simply (1) assess whether the total benefit outweighs the total cost (as it clearly does), (2) conclude that the ex ante prospect of performing ALL the acts, given their total costs and benefits, must be evaluated positively on net -- i.e., the acts are collectively "worth it" in purely welfarist, difference-making terms; (3) distribute this prospective evaluation equally across EACH act that equally and independently contributes to the whole, and hence (4) conclude that each act, individually, is also "worth it" on purely welfarist grounds (offering an ex ante prospect that we must evaluate positively on net).
None of this reasoning depends on the absence of other reasons, since I'm not appealing to some vague intuition that you "should help". Rather, I'm appealing to the specific intuitions that (i) the acts are collectively "worth it" (i.e., offer a net positive ex ante prospect) on purely welfarist grounds, and (ii) ex ante prospects of collections of acts must cohere with the ex ante prospects of the individual acts that constitute the collection.
I thought the whole point of attributing moral significance to collective action was that, for some degree of this significance, it might be (i) obligatory for each member of collective to make a sacrifice that has an independent chance of reducing a small risk of extinction, when and because every person is doing their part to reduce the risk, but (ii) permissible for each member of collective to not make a sacrifice that has an independent chance of reducing a small risk of extinction, when and because a significantly large number of people are not doing their part to reduce the risk. If collectivity is significant in this way, it wouldn't follow from your examples that every individual ought to act to to reduce very small extinction risks just because they ought to act as part of a collective where everyone reduces these risks.
You're thinking about deontic status instead of rational choice (specifically, evaluating ex ante prospects). My argument is about the latter, not the former.
Ah okay, maybe I misunderstood what you meant when you said that the opportunity to independently reduce the risk of mass extinction by 1/X is "clearly worth taking." I understood this to mean that you thought it would be wrong for individuals not to take these risks.
In one-person cases, it is much less intuitively transparent how the costs, odds, and potential benefits all compare. We can calculate how a utilitarian would value the prospects. But it isn't immediately obvious that we must share this evaluation of the ex ante prospects in question. That's why we need to shift to an intuitively clearer case.
In my case, the details are more transparently accessible to our intuition, since we can simply (1) assess whether the total benefit outweighs the total cost (as it clearly does), (2) conclude that the ex ante prospect of performing ALL the acts, given their total costs and benefits, must be evaluated positively on net -- i.e., the acts are collectively "worth it" in purely welfarist, difference-making terms; (3) distribute this prospective evaluation equally across EACH act that equally and independently contributes to the whole, and hence (4) conclude that each act, individually, is also "worth it" on purely welfarist grounds (offering an ex ante prospect that we must evaluate positively on net).
None of this reasoning depends on the absence of other reasons, since I'm not appealing to some vague intuition that you "should help". Rather, I'm appealing to the specific intuitions that (i) the acts are collectively "worth it" (i.e., offer a net positive ex ante prospect) on purely welfarist grounds, and (ii) ex ante prospects of collections of acts must cohere with the ex ante prospects of the individual acts that constitute the collection.
I thought the whole point of attributing moral significance to collective action was that, for some degree of this significance, it might be (i) obligatory for each member of collective to make a sacrifice that has an independent chance of reducing a small risk of extinction, when and because every person is doing their part to reduce the risk, but (ii) permissible for each member of collective to not make a sacrifice that has an independent chance of reducing a small risk of extinction, when and because a significantly large number of people are not doing their part to reduce the risk. If collectivity is significant in this way, it wouldn't follow from your examples that every individual ought to act to to reduce very small extinction risks just because they ought to act as part of a collective where everyone reduces these risks.
What am I missing?
You're thinking about deontic status instead of rational choice (specifically, evaluating ex ante prospects). My argument is about the latter, not the former.
Ah okay, maybe I misunderstood what you meant when you said that the opportunity to independently reduce the risk of mass extinction by 1/X is "clearly worth taking." I understood this to mean that you thought it would be wrong for individuals not to take these risks.
Nah, I'm generally pretty uninterested in deontic status. Compare: https://rychappell.substack.com/p/impermissibility-is-overrated