The moral circle is not ever expanding, and I consider that a good thing.
A very wide moral circle is actually very costly to a person. Not only can it cause a lot of stress to think of the suffering of beings in the far future or nonhuman animals in farming or in the wild, but it also requires a lot of self-sacrifice to actually live up to this expanded circle.
In addition, it can put you at odds with other well-meaning people who care about the same beings, but in a different way. For example, when I still cared about future generations, I mostly cared about them in terms of preventing their nonconsensual suffering and victimization. However, the common far-future altruism narrative is that we ought to make sure they exist, not that they be prevented from suffering or being victimized without their consent. This is cause for conflict, as exemplified by the −25 karma points or so I gathered on the Effective Altruism Forum for it at the time.
Since then, my moral circle has contracted massively, and I consider this to be a huge improvement. It now contains only me and the people who have made choices that benefit me (or at least benefit me more than they harm me). There is also a circle of negative concern now, containing all the people who have harmed me more than they benefit me. I count their harm as a positive now.
My basic mental heuristic is, how much did a being net-benefit or net-harm me through deliberate choices and intent, how much did I already reciprocate in harming or benefitting them, and how cheap or expensive is it for me to harm or benefit them further on the margin? These questions get integrated into an intuitive heuristic that shifts my indifference curves for everyday choices.
The psychological motivation for this contracted circle is based on the simple truth that the utility of others is not my utility, and the self-awareness that I have an intrinsic desire for reciprocity.
There is yet another cost to a wide circle of moral concern, and that is the discrepancy with people who have a smaller circle. If you’re my compatriot or family member or fellow present human being, and you have a small circle of concern, I can expect you to allocate more of your agency to my benefit. If you have a wide circle of concern that includes all kinds of entities who can’t reciprocate, I benefit less from having you as an ally.
When people have a wide circle of concern and advocate for its widening as a norm, this makes me nervous because it implies huge additional costs forced on me, through coercive means like taxation or regulations, or simply by spreading benevolence onto a large number of non-reciprocators instead of me and the people who’ve benefitted me. That actually makes me worse off, and people who make me worse off are more likely to receive negative reciprocity rather than positive reciprocity.
I love human rights because they’re a wonderful coordination instrument that makes us all better off, but I now see animal rights as a huge memetic mistake. Similarly, there is little reason to care about far-future generations whose existence is never going to overlap with any of us in terms of reciprocity, and yet we’re surrounded by memes that require we pay massive costs to their wellbeing.
Moralists who advocate this often use moralistic language to justify it. This gives them high social status and it serves as an excuse to impose costs on people who don’t intrinsically care, like me. If I reciprocate this harm against them, I am instantly a villain who deserves to be shunned for being a villain. This dynamic has made me understand the weird paradoxical finding that some people punish what ostensibly seems to be prosocial behavior. Moralism can really harm us, and the moralists should be forced to compensate us for this harm.
I think from a wide-circle perspective, the things you’re talking about don’t look like a cost of a wide circle, so much as just reasons the problem is hard. From a wide-circle perspective, the cost of a narrow circle is that you try to solve a problem that’s easier than the real problem, and you don’t solve the real problem, and children in Africa continue to die of malaria. It sounds like you’re telling me that I shouldn’t care about children dying of malaria because they’re far away and can’t do anything for me and I could spend that money on myself and people close to me… and my reaction is that none of that stops children from dying of malaria, which is really actually a thing I care about and don’t want to stop caring about
There is yet another cost to a wide circle of moral concern, and that is the discrepancy with people who have a smaller circle. If you’re my compatriot or family member or fellow present human being, and you have a small circle of concern, I can expect you to allocate more of your agency to my benefit. If you have a wide circle of concern that includes all kinds of entities who can’t reciprocate, I benefit less from having you as an ally.
To be precise, this seems like a cost to Alice of Bob having a wide circle, if Alice and Bob are close. If they aren’t, and especially if we bring in a veil of ignorance, then Alice is likely to benefit somewhat from Bob having a wide circle. Not definite, but this still seems like a thing to note.
To be precise, this seems like a cost to Alice of Bob having a wide circle, if Alice and Bob are close. If they aren’t, and especially if we bring in a veil of ignorance, then Alice is likely to benefit somewhat from Bob having a wide circle.
Yes, but Alice doesn’t benefit from Bob’s having a circle so wide it contains nonhuman animals, far future entities or ecosystems/biodiversity for their own sake.
and my reaction is that none of that stops children from dying of malaria, which is really actually a thing I care about and don’t want to stop caring about
The OP asks us to reexamine our moral circle. Having done that, I find that nonhuman animals and far future beings are actually a thing I don’t care about and don’t want to start caring about.
When people have a wide circle of concern and advocate for its widening as a norm, this makes me nervous because it implies huge additional costs forced on me, through coercive means like taxation or regulations
At the moment I (and many others on LW) are experiencing the opposite. We would prefer to give money to people in Africa, but instead we are forced by taxes to give to poor people in the same country as us. Since charity to Africa is much more effective, this means that (from our point of view) 99% of the taxed money is being wasted.
Yes, it certainly cuts both ways. Of course, your country’s welfare system is also available to you and your family if you ever need it, and you benefit more directly from social peace and democracy in your country, which is helped by these transfers. It is hard to see how you could have a functioning democracy without poor people voting for some transfers, so unless you think democracy has no useful function for you, that’s a cost in your best interest to pay.
Really, the fact that different sizes of moral circle can incentivize coercion is just a trivial corollary of the fact that value differences in general can incentivize coercion.
But an expanding circle of moral concern increases value differences. If I have to pay for a welfare system, or else pay for a welfare system and also biodiversity maintainance and also animal protection and also development aid and also a Mars mission without a business model and also far-future climate change prevention, I’d rather just pay for the welfare system. Other ideological conflicts would also go away, such as the conflict between preventing animal suffering and maintaining pristine nature, ethical natalism vs. ethical anti-natalism, and so on.
The moral circle is not ever expanding, and I consider that a good thing.
A very wide moral circle is actually very costly to a person. Not only can it cause a lot of stress to think of the suffering of beings in the far future or nonhuman animals in farming or in the wild, but it also requires a lot of self-sacrifice to actually live up to this expanded circle.
In addition, it can put you at odds with other well-meaning people who care about the same beings, but in a different way. For example, when I still cared about future generations, I mostly cared about them in terms of preventing their nonconsensual suffering and victimization. However, the common far-future altruism narrative is that we ought to make sure they exist, not that they be prevented from suffering or being victimized without their consent. This is cause for conflict, as exemplified by the −25 karma points or so I gathered on the Effective Altruism Forum for it at the time.
Since then, my moral circle has contracted massively, and I consider this to be a huge improvement. It now contains only me and the people who have made choices that benefit me (or at least benefit me more than they harm me). There is also a circle of negative concern now, containing all the people who have harmed me more than they benefit me. I count their harm as a positive now.
My basic mental heuristic is, how much did a being net-benefit or net-harm me through deliberate choices and intent, how much did I already reciprocate in harming or benefitting them, and how cheap or expensive is it for me to harm or benefit them further on the margin? These questions get integrated into an intuitive heuristic that shifts my indifference curves for everyday choices.
The psychological motivation for this contracted circle is based on the simple truth that the utility of others is not my utility, and the self-awareness that I have an intrinsic desire for reciprocity.
There is yet another cost to a wide circle of moral concern, and that is the discrepancy with people who have a smaller circle. If you’re my compatriot or family member or fellow present human being, and you have a small circle of concern, I can expect you to allocate more of your agency to my benefit. If you have a wide circle of concern that includes all kinds of entities who can’t reciprocate, I benefit less from having you as an ally.
When people have a wide circle of concern and advocate for its widening as a norm, this makes me nervous because it implies huge additional costs forced on me, through coercive means like taxation or regulations, or simply by spreading benevolence onto a large number of non-reciprocators instead of me and the people who’ve benefitted me. That actually makes me worse off, and people who make me worse off are more likely to receive negative reciprocity rather than positive reciprocity.
I love human rights because they’re a wonderful coordination instrument that makes us all better off, but I now see animal rights as a huge memetic mistake. Similarly, there is little reason to care about far-future generations whose existence is never going to overlap with any of us in terms of reciprocity, and yet we’re surrounded by memes that require we pay massive costs to their wellbeing.
Moralists who advocate this often use moralistic language to justify it. This gives them high social status and it serves as an excuse to impose costs on people who don’t intrinsically care, like me. If I reciprocate this harm against them, I am instantly a villain who deserves to be shunned for being a villain. This dynamic has made me understand the weird paradoxical finding that some people punish what ostensibly seems to be prosocial behavior. Moralism can really harm us, and the moralists should be forced to compensate us for this harm.
I think from a wide-circle perspective, the things you’re talking about don’t look like a cost of a wide circle, so much as just reasons the problem is hard. From a wide-circle perspective, the cost of a narrow circle is that you try to solve a problem that’s easier than the real problem, and you don’t solve the real problem, and children in Africa continue to die of malaria. It sounds like you’re telling me that I shouldn’t care about children dying of malaria because they’re far away and can’t do anything for me and I could spend that money on myself and people close to me… and my reaction is that none of that stops children from dying of malaria, which is really actually a thing I care about and don’t want to stop caring about
To be precise, this seems like a cost to Alice of Bob having a wide circle, if Alice and Bob are close. If they aren’t, and especially if we bring in a veil of ignorance, then Alice is likely to benefit somewhat from Bob having a wide circle. Not definite, but this still seems like a thing to note.
Yes, but Alice doesn’t benefit from Bob’s having a circle so wide it contains nonhuman animals, far future entities or ecosystems/biodiversity for their own sake.
The OP asks us to reexamine our moral circle. Having done that, I find that nonhuman animals and far future beings are actually a thing I don’t care about and don’t want to start caring about.
At the moment I (and many others on LW) are experiencing the opposite. We would prefer to give money to people in Africa, but instead we are forced by taxes to give to poor people in the same country as us. Since charity to Africa is much more effective, this means that (from our point of view) 99% of the taxed money is being wasted.
Yes, it certainly cuts both ways. Of course, your country’s welfare system is also available to you and your family if you ever need it, and you benefit more directly from social peace and democracy in your country, which is helped by these transfers. It is hard to see how you could have a functioning democracy without poor people voting for some transfers, so unless you think democracy has no useful function for you, that’s a cost in your best interest to pay.
Really, the fact that different sizes of moral circle can incentivize coercion is just a trivial corollary of the fact that value differences in general can incentivize coercion.
But an expanding circle of moral concern increases value differences. If I have to pay for a welfare system, or else pay for a welfare system and also biodiversity maintainance and also animal protection and also development aid and also a Mars mission without a business model and also far-future climate change prevention, I’d rather just pay for the welfare system. Other ideological conflicts would also go away, such as the conflict between preventing animal suffering and maintaining pristine nature, ethical natalism vs. ethical anti-natalism, and so on.