I’m not sure what points can actually be made by this line of reasoning. What I mean is taking the naive view throws out any useful information and leaves us with the status quo.
And you conclude with boycott-itarianism + the status quo essentially with each side cancelling each other out in all other subgroups. The boycott-itarianism addition comes mainly from the assumption of utilitarianism (since we’re talking about EA and all).
Let’s use this reasoning in a different situation e.g. human population.
Whether a human life is net negative or net positive seems like a very difficult question. So naively there should be a 50⁄50 split (minus any arguments for a better prior).
50% we should reduce the human population
50% we should increase the human population
we can have similar splits
with each side having its die hards (euthanasia vs octo-moms/dads)
handshakes (“I’ll kill one less person if you have one less kid” and vice versa)
welfarists (we should increase the welfare of current humans)
anything (normal 2.5 kids)
which adds up to the status quo + the welfarists.
it’ll always be the status quo + the moderates if you give them equal splits and assume the utilitarian position at the offset.
I’m not sure what points can actually be made by this line of reasoning. What I mean is taking the naive view throws out any useful information and leaves us with the status quo.
And you conclude with boycott-itarianism + the status quo essentially with each side cancelling each other out in all other subgroups. The boycott-itarianism addition comes mainly from the assumption of utilitarianism (since we’re talking about EA and all).
Let’s use this reasoning in a different situation e.g. human population.
Whether a human life is net negative or net positive seems like a very difficult question. So naively there should be a 50⁄50 split (minus any arguments for a better prior).
50% we should reduce the human population
50% we should increase the human population
we can have similar splits
with each side having its die hards (euthanasia vs octo-moms/dads)
handshakes (“I’ll kill one less person if you have one less kid” and vice versa)
welfarists (we should increase the welfare of current humans)
anything (normal 2.5 kids)
which adds up to the status quo + the welfarists.
it’ll always be the status quo + the moderates if you give them equal splits and assume the utilitarian position at the offset.