Yes, this is an argument people have made. Longtermists tend to reject it. First off, applying a discount rate on the moral value of lives in order to account for the uncertainty of the future is...not a good idea. These two things are totally different, and shouldn’t be conflated like that imo. If you want to apply a discount rate to account for the uncertainty of the future, just do that directly. So, for the rest of the post I’ll assume a discount rate on moral value actually applies to moral value.
So, that leaves us with the moral argument.
A fairly good argument, and the one I subscribe to, is this:
Let’s say we apply a conservative discount rate, say, 1% per year, to the moral value of future lives.
Given that, one life now is worth approximately 500 million lives two millenia from now. (0.99^2000 = approximately 2e-9)
But would that have been reasonably true in the past? Would it have been morally correct to save a life in 0 BC at the cost of 500 million lives today?
If the answer is “no” to that, it should also be considered “no” in the present.
This is, again, different from a discount rate on future lives based on uncertainty. It’s entirely reasonable to say “If there’s only a 50% chance this person ever exists, I should treat it as 50% as valuable.” I think that this is a position that wouldn’t be controversial among longtermists.
Yes, this is an argument people have made. Longtermists tend to reject it. First off, applying a discount rate on the moral value of lives in order to account for the uncertainty of the future is...not a good idea. These two things are totally different, and shouldn’t be conflated like that imo. If you want to apply a discount rate to account for the uncertainty of the future, just do that directly. So, for the rest of the post I’ll assume a discount rate on moral value actually applies to moral value.
So, that leaves us with the moral argument.
A fairly good argument, and the one I subscribe to, is this:
Let’s say we apply a conservative discount rate, say, 1% per year, to the moral value of future lives.
Given that, one life now is worth approximately 500 million lives two millenia from now. (0.99^2000 = approximately 2e-9)
But would that have been reasonably true in the past? Would it have been morally correct to save a life in 0 BC at the cost of 500 million lives today?
If the answer is “no” to that, it should also be considered “no” in the present.
This is, again, different from a discount rate on future lives based on uncertainty. It’s entirely reasonable to say “If there’s only a 50% chance this person ever exists, I should treat it as 50% as valuable.” I think that this is a position that wouldn’t be controversial among longtermists.
Thanks!