Philosophical Considerations Relevant to Valuing Continued Human Survival: Conceptual Analysis, Population Axiology, and Decision Theory
Andreas Mogensen (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
GPI Working Paper No. 9-2023
Many think that human extinction would be a catastrophic tragedy, and that we ought to do more to reduce extinction risk. There is less agreement on exactly why. If some catastrophe were to kill everyone, that would obviously be horrific. Still, many think the deaths of billions of people don’t exhaust what would be so terrible about extinction. After all, we can be confident that billions of people are going to die – many horribly and before their time - if humanity does not go extinct. The key difference seems to be that they will be survived by others. What’s the importance of that?
Other working papers
Crying wolf: Warning about societal risks can be reputationally risky – Lucius Caviola (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford) et al.
Society relies on expert warnings about large-scale risks like pandemics and natural disasters. Across ten studies (N = 5,342), we demonstrate people’s reluctance to warn about unlikely but large-scale risks because they are concerned about being blamed for being wrong. In particular, warners anticipate that if the risk doesn’t occur, they will be perceived as overly alarmist and responsible for wasting societal resources. This phenomenon appears in the context of natural, technological, and financial risks…
The long-run relationship between per capita incomes and population size – Maya Eden (University of Zurich) and Kevin Kuruc (Population Wellbeing Initiative, University of Texas at Austin)
The relationship between the human population size and per capita incomes has long been debated. Two competing forces feature prominently in these discussions. On the one hand, a larger population means that limited natural resources must be shared among more people. On the other hand, more people means more innovation and faster technological progress, other things equal. We study a model that features both of these channels. A calibration suggests that, in the long run, (marginal) increases in population would…
In defence of fanaticism – Hayden Wilkinson (Australian National University)
Consider a decision between: 1) a certainty of a moderately good outcome, such as one additional life saved; 2) a lottery which probably gives a worse outcome, but has a tiny probability of a far better outcome (perhaps trillions of blissful lives created). Which is morally better? Expected value theory (with a plausible axiology) judges (2) as better, no matter how tiny its probability of success. But this seems fanatical. So we may be tempted to abandon expected value theory…