Critical-set views, biographical identity, and the long term

Elliott Thornley (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)

GPI Working Paper No. 7-2024, forthcoming in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy

PDF download

Critical-set views avoid the Repugnant Conclusion by subtracting some constant from the welfare score of each life in a population. These views are thus sensitive to facts about biographical identity: identity between lives. In this paper, I argue that questions of biographical identity give us reason to reject critical-set views and embrace the total view. I end with a practical implication. If we shift our credences towards the total view, we should also shift our efforts towards ensuring that humanity survives for the long term.

Other working papers

Moral uncertainty and public justification – Jacob Barrett (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford) and Andreas T Schmidt (University of Groningen)

Moral uncertainty and disagreement pervade our lives. Yet we still need to make decisions and act, both in individual and political contexts. So, what should we do? The moral uncertainty approach provides a theory of what individuals morally ought to do when they are uncertain about morality…

Existential risk and growth – Leopold Aschenbrenner (Columbia University)

Human activity can create or mitigate risks of catastrophes, such as nuclear war, climate change, pandemics, or artificial intelligence run amok. These could even imperil the survival of human civilization. What is the relationship between economic growth and such existential risks? In a model of directed technical change, with moderate parameters, existential risk follows a Kuznets-style inverted U-shape. …

Evolutionary debunking and value alignment – Michael T. Dale (Hampden-Sydney College) and Bradford Saad (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)

This paper examines the bearing of evolutionary debunking arguments—which use the evolutionary origins of values to challenge their epistemic credentials—on the alignment problem, i.e. the problem of ensuring that highly capable AI systems are properly aligned with values. Since evolutionary debunking arguments are among the best empirically-motivated arguments that recommend changes in values, it is unsurprising that they are relevant to the alignment problem. However, how evolutionary debunking arguments…