I didn’t see the discussion I expected about the question in the title, so I shall provide it:
whether “extra lives lived” are as good as “deaths prevented”
Beyond counting lives, there are certain benefits to a world in which a higher proportion of untimely deaths are prevented. Fewer people will be hit with unexpected grief; parents can be more confident that their children will survive them; friends will lose fewer friends before old age; individuals can expect (more confidently) to live into old age and plan accordingly. I suspect there are knock-on effects of the form “fewer people get messed up by grief/orphanhood/etc., reducing the pain that messed-up people cause to others”.
On the other hand, one could say there are benefits to having more lives lived even if they’re plagued by more untimely deaths. More youngsters bringing in ideas; more rapid turnover of lifelong dictators; also consider Planck’s “science progresses one funeral at a time”. (Though, actually, the body of the post talks about having more lives lived via preventing existential risk, which strikes me as very different from “having a few more lives on the margin by e.g. persuading more people to become parents”. For one thing, as outlined in the post, estimates of how many lives might be saved have error bars spanning many orders of magnitude; it’s not really possible to do sane quantitative reasoning except maybe about the conservative lower bounds.) One can also argue that reducing child mortality so low has caused many parents to become hypersensitive to the remaining dangers and to over-shelter their kids.
On the other other hand, there are benefits to longer lives and longer careers. Depending on what stage of life the “untimely deaths” you’re targeting occur in—many brilliant creators died in their 30s or even younger, and some others were seriously crippled by grief for a loved one. (And, of course, it’s possible that preventing some of these deaths would have accelerated the progress of technology, which might factor into preventing more deaths, or into enabling more births, or both.)
One can make an argument for either, but I think the “not-just-life-count” benefits generally look like they make “saving existing lives” a better idea than “enabling more future lives”. The question might then become “How much should one be preferred over the other? At what ratio?”
I see the notes to assume that the abstract choice is as stated, to avoid “actually, in real life” concerns, etc. I’m not sure if this is supposed to apply to most or all of the above considerations. If it is, then the question seems to me like “Is it better to save your children’s lives or enable future births? Ignore the grief, disruption, failed hopes, etc. that would make you prefer to save your children’s lives”—it’s assuming away what may be the whole point. Which is a problem if you intend to then apply the conclusions to real-world decisions like where to donate.
[...] I think the “not-just-life-count” benefits generally look like they make “saving existing lives” a better idea than “enabling more future lives”. The question might then become “How much should one be preferred over the other? At what ratio?”
[...] then the question seems to me like “Is it better to save your children’s lives or enable future births? Ignore the grief, disruption, failed hopes, etc. that would make you prefer to save your children’s lives”—it’s assuming away what may be the whole point.
(Agreed!) I find it very counterintuitive how the standard framework of population ethics recommends that we ignore all the instrumental (or extrinsic / relational / non-independent) value of various lives and experiences.
After all, I would argue that our practical intuition is mostly tracking the positive roles of those things, which may in part explain our intuitive disagreement with thought experiments that attempt to draw sharp boundaries around the supposedly fundamental bits.
(I also explored this in the context of population ethics here. Those essays are framed in suffering-focused and minimalist terms respectively, but the main points seem applicable to all impartial consequentialist views, so perhaps people would find them useful more broadly.)
I didn’t see the discussion I expected about the question in the title, so I shall provide it:
Beyond counting lives, there are certain benefits to a world in which a higher proportion of untimely deaths are prevented. Fewer people will be hit with unexpected grief; parents can be more confident that their children will survive them; friends will lose fewer friends before old age; individuals can expect (more confidently) to live into old age and plan accordingly. I suspect there are knock-on effects of the form “fewer people get messed up by grief/orphanhood/etc., reducing the pain that messed-up people cause to others”.
On the other hand, one could say there are benefits to having more lives lived even if they’re plagued by more untimely deaths. More youngsters bringing in ideas; more rapid turnover of lifelong dictators; also consider Planck’s “science progresses one funeral at a time”. (Though, actually, the body of the post talks about having more lives lived via preventing existential risk, which strikes me as very different from “having a few more lives on the margin by e.g. persuading more people to become parents”. For one thing, as outlined in the post, estimates of how many lives might be saved have error bars spanning many orders of magnitude; it’s not really possible to do sane quantitative reasoning except maybe about the conservative lower bounds.) One can also argue that reducing child mortality so low has caused many parents to become hypersensitive to the remaining dangers and to over-shelter their kids.
On the other other hand, there are benefits to longer lives and longer careers. Depending on what stage of life the “untimely deaths” you’re targeting occur in—many brilliant creators died in their 30s or even younger, and some others were seriously crippled by grief for a loved one. (And, of course, it’s possible that preventing some of these deaths would have accelerated the progress of technology, which might factor into preventing more deaths, or into enabling more births, or both.)
One can make an argument for either, but I think the “not-just-life-count” benefits generally look like they make “saving existing lives” a better idea than “enabling more future lives”. The question might then become “How much should one be preferred over the other? At what ratio?”
I see the notes to assume that the abstract choice is as stated, to avoid “actually, in real life” concerns, etc. I’m not sure if this is supposed to apply to most or all of the above considerations. If it is, then the question seems to me like “Is it better to save your children’s lives or enable future births? Ignore the grief, disruption, failed hopes, etc. that would make you prefer to save your children’s lives”—it’s assuming away what may be the whole point. Which is a problem if you intend to then apply the conclusions to real-world decisions like where to donate.
(Agreed!) I find it very counterintuitive how the standard framework of population ethics recommends that we ignore all the instrumental (or extrinsic / relational / non-independent) value of various lives and experiences.
After all, I would argue that our practical intuition is mostly tracking the positive roles of those things, which may in part explain our intuitive disagreement with thought experiments that attempt to draw sharp boundaries around the supposedly fundamental bits.
(I also explored this in the context of population ethics here. Those essays are framed in suffering-focused and minimalist terms respectively, but the main points seem applicable to all impartial consequentialist views, so perhaps people would find them useful more broadly.)