The Significance, Persistence, Contingency Framework
William MacAskill, Teruji Thomas (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford) and Aron Vallinder (Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Institute)
GPI Technical Report No. T1-2022
The world, considered from beginning to end, combines many different features, or states of affairs, that contribute to its value. The value of each feature can be factored into its significance—its average value per unit time—and its persistence—how long it lasts. Sometimes, though, we want to ask a further question: how much of the feature’s value can be attributed to a particular agent’s decision at a particular point in time (or to some other originating event)? In other words, to what extent is the feature’s value contingent on the agent’s choice? For this, we must also look at the counterfactual: how would things have turned out otherwise?
Other working papers
On the desire to make a difference – Hilary Greaves, William MacAskill, Andreas Mogensen and Teruji Thomas (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
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.
A non-identity dilemma for person-affecting views – Elliott Thornley (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
Person-affecting views in population ethics 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 takes the form of a dilemma. Narrow person-affecting views must embrace at least one of three implausible verdicts in a case that I call ‘Expanded Non- Identity.’ Wide person-affecting views run into trouble in a case that I call ‘Two-Shot Non-Identity.’ …
Tough enough? Robust satisficing as a decision norm for long-term policy analysis – Andreas Mogensen and David Thorstad (Global Priorities Institute, Oxford University)
This paper aims to open a dialogue between philosophers working in decision theory and operations researchers and engineers whose research addresses the topic of decision making under deep uncertainty. Specifically, we assess the recommendation to follow a norm of robust satisficing when making decisions under deep uncertainty in the context of decision analyses that rely on the tools of Robust Decision Making developed by Robert Lempert and colleagues at RAND …