That makes sense to me; I re-read your older post on killing vs. failing to create, and I think "strong personal reasons" to worry about people who will exist independently of our choices, vs. "weak impersonal reasons" to worry about bringing into existence future people is a distinction I find intuitive.
That makes sense to me; I re-read your older post on killing vs. failing to create, and I think "strong personal reasons" to worry about people who will exist independently of our choices, vs. "weak impersonal reasons" to worry about bringing into existence future people is a distinction I find intuitive.
I think one thing I hadn't done a good job separating out is, in arguments contrasting the void with future Utopias, often the Utopias are stipulated to be filled with staggeringly large numbers of people, so that even with only weak impersonal reasons to create future lives, the number of people involved is big enough that the overall product is still a huge number--I think part of my intuitive rejection of this sort of reasoning is it feels a bit to me like a Pascal's mugging. But I was conflating that with a contrast between the void and Utopia *at all*.
And I guess the void still has the unique property that the void precludes *any* number of future people existing, so comparisons with it will always have something of a Pascal-ish quality.
Anyway, thanks for a very interesting discussion! I really appreciate your willingness to engage with amateurs like me, and I really enjoy the blog as a whole. I loved Reasons and Persons when I read it years ago, and I'm really glad I've found a place where I can not just follow, but even participate in, discussions on the same issues.
It's only a Pascal's mugging if the one making the argument can just make up any number they want, with no independent argument for an expected range. Some people peripherally involved in long-termist arguments online undoubtedly do this, but the central figures in long-termism do make indepedent arguments based upon the history and mathematics of population growth, technology and wealth growth, and predictions about the colonization of space.
That's a fair point; it's definitely a lot better that the numbers filling the postulated utopias are not just ex culo.
And I don't want to keep fighting this point on an otherwise dead thread, but I just want to articulate my feeling that, at least in the formulation above, there's still something fuzzy about the math: it's not clear how exactly to multiply "weak impersonal reasons" by large numbers (and, also of course, by the probability that these numbers are actually attainable) to come to clear conclusions, and it sometimes feels like the strength of these arguments derives from the stupefaction one feels at the largeness of the large numbers.
But, as I say, it's a pretty good reminder that actually, the large numbers are in some ways the least controversial part of that calculation--definitely in comparison to quantifications of "weak impersonal reasons", and probably in comparison to the probabilities too--they are not (usually) just picked to be stupendously large out of convenience, so thanks for pointing that out.
That makes sense to me; I re-read your older post on killing vs. failing to create, and I think "strong personal reasons" to worry about people who will exist independently of our choices, vs. "weak impersonal reasons" to worry about bringing into existence future people is a distinction I find intuitive.
I think one thing I hadn't done a good job separating out is, in arguments contrasting the void with future Utopias, often the Utopias are stipulated to be filled with staggeringly large numbers of people, so that even with only weak impersonal reasons to create future lives, the number of people involved is big enough that the overall product is still a huge number--I think part of my intuitive rejection of this sort of reasoning is it feels a bit to me like a Pascal's mugging. But I was conflating that with a contrast between the void and Utopia *at all*.
And I guess the void still has the unique property that the void precludes *any* number of future people existing, so comparisons with it will always have something of a Pascal-ish quality.
Anyway, thanks for a very interesting discussion! I really appreciate your willingness to engage with amateurs like me, and I really enjoy the blog as a whole. I loved Reasons and Persons when I read it years ago, and I'm really glad I've found a place where I can not just follow, but even participate in, discussions on the same issues.
It's only a Pascal's mugging if the one making the argument can just make up any number they want, with no independent argument for an expected range. Some people peripherally involved in long-termist arguments online undoubtedly do this, but the central figures in long-termism do make indepedent arguments based upon the history and mathematics of population growth, technology and wealth growth, and predictions about the colonization of space.
That's a fair point; it's definitely a lot better that the numbers filling the postulated utopias are not just ex culo.
And I don't want to keep fighting this point on an otherwise dead thread, but I just want to articulate my feeling that, at least in the formulation above, there's still something fuzzy about the math: it's not clear how exactly to multiply "weak impersonal reasons" by large numbers (and, also of course, by the probability that these numbers are actually attainable) to come to clear conclusions, and it sometimes feels like the strength of these arguments derives from the stupefaction one feels at the largeness of the large numbers.
But, as I say, it's a pretty good reminder that actually, the large numbers are in some ways the least controversial part of that calculation--definitely in comparison to quantifications of "weak impersonal reasons", and probably in comparison to the probabilities too--they are not (usually) just picked to be stupendously large out of convenience, so thanks for pointing that out.