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
In search of a biological crux for AI consciousness – Bradford Saad (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
Whether AI systems could be conscious is often thought to turn on whether consciousness is closely linked to biology. The rough thought is that if consciousness is closely linked to biology, then AI consciousness is impossible, and if consciousness is not closely linked to biology, then AI consciousness is possible—or, at any rate, it’s more likely to be possible. A clearer specification of the kind of link between consciousness and biology that is crucial for the possibility of AI consciousness would help organize inquiry into…
The structure of critical sets – Walter Bossert (University of Montreal), Susumu Cato (University of Tokyo) and Kohei Kamaga (Sophia University)
The purpose of this paper is to address some ambiguities and misunderstandings that appear in previous studies of population ethics. In particular, we examine the structure of intervals that are employed in assessing the value of adding people to an existing population. Our focus is on critical-band utilitarianism and critical-range utilitarianism, which are commonly-used population theories that employ intervals, and we show that some previously assumed equivalences are not true in general. The possible discrepancies can be…
Time Bias and Altruism – Leora Urim Sung (University College London)
We are typically near-future biased, being more concerned with our near future than our distant future. This near-future bias can be directed at others too, being more concerned with their near future than their distant future. In this paper, I argue that, because we discount the future in this way, beyond a certain point in time, we morally ought to be more concerned with the present well- being of others than with the well-being of our distant future selves. It follows that we morally ought to sacrifice…