A non-identity dilemma for person-affecting views
Elliott Thornley (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
GPI Working Paper No. 6-2024
Person-affecting views state that (in cases where all else is equal) we’re permitted but not required to create people who would enjoy good lives. In this paper, I present an argument against every possible variety of person-affecting view. The argument is a dilemma over trilemmas. Narrow person-affecting views imply a trilemma in a case that I call ‘Expanded Non-Identity.’ Wide person-affecting views imply a trilemma in a case that I call ‘Two-Shot Non-Identity.’ One plausible practical upshot of my argument is as follows: we individuals and our governments should be doing more to reduce the risk of human extinction this century.
Other working papers
Quadratic Funding with Incomplete Information – Luis M. V. Freitas (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford) and Wilfredo L. Maldonado (University of Sao Paulo)
Quadratic funding is a public good provision mechanism that satisfies desirable theoretical properties, such as efficiency under complete information, and has been gaining popularity in practical applications. We evaluate this mechanism in a setting of incomplete information regarding individual preferences, and show that this result only holds under knife-edge conditions. We also estimate the inefficiency of the mechanism in a variety of settings and show, in particular, that inefficiency increases…
Tiny probabilities and the value of the far future – Petra Kosonen (Population Wellbeing Initiative, University of Texas at Austin)
Morally speaking, what matters the most is the far future – at least according to Longtermism. The reason why the far future is of utmost importance is that our acts’ expected influence on the value of the world is mainly determined by their consequences in the far future. The case for Longtermism is straightforward: Given the enormous number of people who might exist in the far future, even a tiny probability of affecting how the far future goes outweighs the importance of our acts’ consequences…
How to neglect the long term – Hayden Wilkinson (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
Consider longtermism: the view that, at least in some of the most important decisions facing agents today, which options are morally best is determined by which are best for the long-term future. Various critics have argued that longtermism is false—indeed, that it is obviously false, and that we can reject it on normative grounds without close consideration of certain descriptive facts. In effect, it is argued, longtermism would be false even if real-world agents had promising means…