On the desire to make a difference
Hilary Greaves, William MacAskill, Andreas Mogensen and Teruji Thomas (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
GPI Working Paper No. 16-2022, forthcoming in Philosophical Studies
True benevolence is, most fundamentally, a desire that the world be better. It is natural and common, however, to frame thinking about benevolence indirectly, in terms of a desire to make a difference to how good the world is. This would be an innocuous shift if desires to make a difference were extensionally equivalent to desires that the world be better. This paper shows that at least on some common ways of making a “desire to make a difference” precise, this extensional equivalence fails. Where it fails, “difference-making preferences” run counter to the ideals of benevolence. In particular, in the context of decision making under uncertainty, coupling a “difference-making” framing in a natural way with risk aversion leads to preferences that violate stochastic dominance, and that lead to a strong form of collective defeat, from the point of view of betterness. Difference-making framings and true benevolence are not strictly mutually inconsistent, but agents seeking to implement true benevolence must take care to avoid the various pitfalls that we outline.
Other working papers
Welfare and felt duration – Andreas Mogensen (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
How should we understand the duration of a pleasant or unpleasant sensation, insofar as its duration modulates how good or bad the experience is overall? Given that we seem able to distinguish between subjective and objective duration and that how well or badly someone’s life goes is naturally thought of as something to be assessed from her own perspective, it seems intuitive that it is subjective duration that modulates how good or bad an experience is from the perspective of an individual’s welfare. …
What power-seeking theorems do not show – David Thorstad (Vanderbilt University)
Recent years have seen increasing concern that artificial intelligence may soon pose an existential risk to humanity. One leading ground for concern is that artificial agents may be power-seeking, aiming to acquire power and in the process disempowering humanity. A range of power-seeking theorems seek to give formal articulation to the idea that artificial agents are likely to be power-seeking. I argue that leading theorems face five challenges, then draw lessons from this result.
Three mistakes in the moral mathematics of existential risk – David Thorstad (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
Longtermists have recently argued that it is overwhelmingly important to do what we can to mitigate existential risks to humanity. I consider three mistakes that are often made in calculating the value of existential risk mitigation: focusing on cumulative risk rather than period risk; ignoring background risk; and neglecting population dynamics. I show how correcting these mistakes pushes the value of existential risk mitigation substantially below leading estimates, potentially low enough to…