Re "Would they really be okay with, say, burying landmines under a children’s playground on the condition that the mines are set to be inert for a century?"
No, but, in doing so, you would kill those children. And people against longtermism are obviously against killing children. ("Blatantly indecent," indeed.)
And there's no obvious step from that prohibition to longtermism, to neutrality, etc. I'm not sure there's even an unobvious step.
Here is a critique. I hope it comes across as constructive, that's what I'm aiming for.
Your post ignores the perspective of suffering focused ethics (a range of views from "reducing suffering matters somewhat more" to "reducing suffering is all that matters"). Ignoring or short-changing that perspective seems to be a pattern in your writing here and on utilitarianism.net . Doing so seems pervasive also among many others in the EA top tier. With top tier I mean people with the highest status in the EA community and/or people who hold positions of power in the most established and well-funded EA organizations like Open Phil and 80000 hours.
I find Magnus Vinding's argument on this very revealing and convincing
It seems MacAskill's book also continues that problematic pattern, at least after skimming his chapter 8 on population ethics. There appears to be no mention of Boonin, Vinding or other s-focused writers in the book.
It seems to me that you and people in the EA top tier can take a step toward "building a morally exploratory world" by giving suffering focused ethics more space and resources.
As a final note, it appears that you yourself in this text mostly appeal to intuitions about preventing harms or suffering, rather than creating beings with positive wellbeing or improving already positive states. For example your discussion of climate change, "broken glass left on a hiking trail" and "burying landmines".
Hi Passio, I'm confused; why, in a review of a book, would I discuss some other random view that isn't the topic of the book? I don't think this is the appropriate forum for your complaint.
As you note, I do prominently discuss the importance of reducing suffering. For the record, I'm fine with prioritarian-like views that weight suffering slightly more than positive benefits; I don't see that it makes a huge difference. If you go too far -- to the point that extinction becomes preferable to an imperfectly happy future -- then I think the view is completely insane, so I doubt you'd like the results if I were to discuss it more. (I think many of the dismissals cited in your link are well warranted; I wrote one of them.)
Finally, I don't think that "building a morally exploratory world" requires positively giving resources to views one finds evil or repugnant. You're welcome to develop your views and make your case (on your own website), but you're not *entitled* to others' support; you have to earn it by actually persuading them of the merits of your view. But again, this post is not the place for that; to deter hijacking, I'll be deleting any further comments in this vein.
Chapter 6 is on recovering from extreme catastrophe / civilizational collapse, and the final chapter ("What to do") flags "General disaster preparedness" (incl. bunkers, etc.) as something that "seems robustly good".
Re "Would they really be okay with, say, burying landmines under a children’s playground on the condition that the mines are set to be inert for a century?"
No, but, in doing so, you would kill those children. And people against longtermism are obviously against killing children. ("Blatantly indecent," indeed.)
And there's no obvious step from that prohibition to longtermism, to neutrality, etc. I'm not sure there's even an unobvious step.
I look forward to reading MacAskill's whole book.
Here is a critique. I hope it comes across as constructive, that's what I'm aiming for.
Your post ignores the perspective of suffering focused ethics (a range of views from "reducing suffering matters somewhat more" to "reducing suffering is all that matters"). Ignoring or short-changing that perspective seems to be a pattern in your writing here and on utilitarianism.net . Doing so seems pervasive also among many others in the EA top tier. With top tier I mean people with the highest status in the EA community and/or people who hold positions of power in the most established and well-funded EA organizations like Open Phil and 80000 hours.
I find Magnus Vinding's argument on this very revealing and convincing
https://magnusvinding.com/2022/06/17/dismal-dismissal/
It seems MacAskill's book also continues that problematic pattern, at least after skimming his chapter 8 on population ethics. There appears to be no mention of Boonin, Vinding or other s-focused writers in the book.
It seems to me that you and people in the EA top tier can take a step toward "building a morally exploratory world" by giving suffering focused ethics more space and resources.
As a final note, it appears that you yourself in this text mostly appeal to intuitions about preventing harms or suffering, rather than creating beings with positive wellbeing or improving already positive states. For example your discussion of climate change, "broken glass left on a hiking trail" and "burying landmines".
Hi Passio, I'm confused; why, in a review of a book, would I discuss some other random view that isn't the topic of the book? I don't think this is the appropriate forum for your complaint.
As you note, I do prominently discuss the importance of reducing suffering. For the record, I'm fine with prioritarian-like views that weight suffering slightly more than positive benefits; I don't see that it makes a huge difference. If you go too far -- to the point that extinction becomes preferable to an imperfectly happy future -- then I think the view is completely insane, so I doubt you'd like the results if I were to discuss it more. (I think many of the dismissals cited in your link are well warranted; I wrote one of them.)
Finally, I don't think that "building a morally exploratory world" requires positively giving resources to views one finds evil or repugnant. You're welcome to develop your views and make your case (on your own website), but you're not *entitled* to others' support; you have to earn it by actually persuading them of the merits of your view. But again, this post is not the place for that; to deter hijacking, I'll be deleting any further comments in this vein.
Chapter 6 is on recovering from extreme catastrophe / civilizational collapse, and the final chapter ("What to do") flags "General disaster preparedness" (incl. bunkers, etc.) as something that "seems robustly good".