I’m not actually talking about “a person being tortured today” versus “a person being tortured tomorrow”. I agree those are equivalent, from some hypothetical external viewpoint and assuming that various types of uncertainty are declared by fiat to be absent.
It’s about “a person who actually exists getting to continue their life that would otherwise be terminated” versus “a person being able to come to exist in the future versus not ever existing”. I have serious doubts that these are morally equivalent, and am inclined to believe that they are not even on a comparable scale. In particular, I think using the term “saving a life” for the latter is not only unjustified, but wilfully deceptive.
Even if there does turn out to be a strong argument for the two outcomes being comparable on some numerical scale, I expect to still strongly disfavour any use of terminology that equates them as this post does.
Ah, thanks for the clarification, this is very helpful. I made a few updates including changing the title of the piece and adding a note about this in the assumptions. Here is the assumption and footnote I added, which I think explains my views on this:
Whenever I say “lives saved” this is shorthand for “future lives saved from nonexistence.” This is not the same as saving existing lives, which may cause profound emotional pain for people left behind, and some may consider more tragic than future people never being born.[6]
Here is footnote 6, created for brevity of the main piece:
This post originally used the “term lives” saved without mentioning nonexistence, but JBlack on LessWrong pointed out that the term “lives saved” could be misleading in that it equates saving present lives with creating new future lives. While I take the total view and so feel these are relatively equivalent (if we exclude the flow-through effects, including the emotional pain caused to those left behind by the deceased), those who take other views such as the person-effecting view may feel very differently about this.
Here is a related assumption I added based on an EA Forum comment:
I assume a zero-discount rate for the value of future lives, meaning I assume the value of a life is not dependent on when that life occurs.
I hope this shows why I think the term is not unjustified, I certainly was not intending to be willfully deceptive and apologize if it seemed this way. I believe in the equal value of all conscious experience quite strongly, and this includes future people, so for me “lives saved” or “lives saved from nonexistence” carries the correct emotional tone and moral connotations from my point of view. I can definitely respect that other people may feel differently.
I am curious whether this clarifies our difference in intuitions, or if there is some other reason you see the ending of a life as worse than the non-existence of life.
I’m not actually talking about “a person being tortured today” versus “a person being tortured tomorrow”. I agree those are equivalent, from some hypothetical external viewpoint and assuming that various types of uncertainty are declared by fiat to be absent.
It’s about “a person who actually exists getting to continue their life that would otherwise be terminated” versus “a person being able to come to exist in the future versus not ever existing”. I have serious doubts that these are morally equivalent, and am inclined to believe that they are not even on a comparable scale. In particular, I think using the term “saving a life” for the latter is not only unjustified, but wilfully deceptive.
Even if there does turn out to be a strong argument for the two outcomes being comparable on some numerical scale, I expect to still strongly disfavour any use of terminology that equates them as this post does.
Ah, thanks for the clarification, this is very helpful. I made a few updates including changing the title of the piece and adding a note about this in the assumptions. Here is the assumption and footnote I added, which I think explains my views on this:
Whenever I say “lives saved” this is shorthand for “future lives saved from nonexistence.” This is not the same as saving existing lives, which may cause profound emotional pain for people left behind, and some may consider more tragic than future people never being born.[6]
Here is footnote 6, created for brevity of the main piece:
This post originally used the “term lives” saved without mentioning nonexistence, but JBlack on LessWrong pointed out that the term “lives saved” could be misleading in that it equates saving present lives with creating new future lives. While I take the total view and so feel these are relatively equivalent (if we exclude the flow-through effects, including the emotional pain caused to those left behind by the deceased), those who take other views such as the person-effecting view may feel very differently about this.
Here is a related assumption I added based on an EA Forum comment:
I assume a zero-discount rate for the value of future lives, meaning I assume the value of a life is not dependent on when that life occurs.
I hope this shows why I think the term is not unjustified, I certainly was not intending to be willfully deceptive and apologize if it seemed this way. I believe in the equal value of all conscious experience quite strongly, and this includes future people, so for me “lives saved” or “lives saved from nonexistence” carries the correct emotional tone and moral connotations from my point of view. I can definitely respect that other people may feel differently.
I am curious whether this clarifies our difference in intuitions, or if there is some other reason you see the ending of a life as worse than the non-existence of life.