Richard Y Chappell🔸

Associate Professor of Philosophy @ University of Miami
6999 karmaJoined Working (6-15 years)South Miami, FL 33146, USA
www.goodthoughts.blog/
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Academic philosopher, co-editor of utilitarianism.net, writes goodthoughts.blog

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Just to clarify: Spears & Geruso's argument is that average (and not just total) quality of life will be significantly worse under depopulation relative to stabilization. (See especially the "progress comes from people" section of my review.)

The authors discuss this a bit. They note that even "higher fertility" subcultures are trending down over time, so it's not sufficiently clear that anyone is going to remain "above replacement" in the long run. That said, this does seem the weakest point for thinking it an outright extinction risk. (Though especially if the only sufficiently high-fertility subcultures are relatively illiberal and anti-scientific ones - Amish, etc. - the loss of all other cultures could still count as a significant loss of humanity's long-term potential! I hope it's OK to note this; I know the mods are wary that discussion in this vicinity can often get messy.)

I wrote "perhaps the simplest and most probable extinction risk". There's room for others to judge another more probable. But it's perfectly reasonable to take as most probable the only one that is currently on track to cause extinction. (It's hard to make confident predictions about any extinction risks.) I think it would be silly to dismiss this simply due to uncertainty about future trends.

What reason is there to think that demographic trends will suddenly reverse? If it isn't guaranteed to reverse, then it is an extinction risk.

I'd guess that (for many readers of the book) less air travel outweighs "buying more" furniture and kids toys, at least. But the larger point isn't that the change is literally zero, but that it doesn't make a sufficiently noticeable change to near-term emissions to be an effective strategy. It would be crazy to recommend a DINK lifestyle specifically in order to reduce emissions in the next 25 years. Like boycotting plastic straws or chatgpt.

Updated to add the figure from this paper, which shows no noticeable difference by 2050 (and little difference even after that): Image

As a general rule, it isn't necessary to agree on the ideal target in order to agree directionally about what to do on present margins. For example, we can agree that it would be good to encourage more effective giving in the population, without committing to the view (that many people would "personally disagree" with) that everyone ought to give to the point of marginal utility, where they are just as desperate for their marginal dollar as their potential beneficiaries are.

The key claim of After the Spike is that we should want to avoid massive depopulation. Whether you'd ideally prefer stabilization, gradual population growth, or growth as fast as we can sustainably maintain without creating worse problems, isn't something that needs to be adjudicated -- and in fact seems a distraction from the more universally agreeable verdict that massive depopulation is bad and worth avoiding.

Everyone has fundamental assumptions. You could imagine someone who disagrees with yours calling them "just vibes" or "presuppositions", but that doesn't yet establish that there's anything wrong with your assumptions. To show an error, the critic would need to put forward some (disputable) positive claims of their own.

The level of agreement just shows that plenty of others share my starting assumptions.

If you take arguments to be "circular" whenever a determined opponent could dispute them, I have news for you: there is no such thing as an argument that lacks this feature. (See my note on the limits of argumentation.)

I agree it's often helpful to make our implicit standards explicit. But I disagree that that's "what we're actually asking". At least in my own normative thought, I don't just wonder about what meets my standards. And I don't just disagree with others about what does or doesn't meet their standards or mine. I think the most important disagreement of all is over which standards are really warranted. 

On your view, there may not be any normative disagreement, once we all agree about the logical and empirical facts. I think it's key to philosophy that there is more we can wonder about than just that. (There may not be any tractable disagreement once we get down to bedrock clashing standards, but I think there is still a further question over which we really disagree, even if we have no way to persuade the other of our position.)

It's interesting to consider the meta question of whether one of us is really right about our present metaethical dispute, or whether all you can say is that your position follows from your epistemic standards and mine follows from mine, and there is no further objective question about which we even disagree.

Actually have high integrity, which means not being 100% a utilitarian/consequentialist

Sorry for the necro-reply, but just saw this and wanted to register that I think a 100% utilitarian/consequentialist can still genuinely have high integrity. (I think people are generally quite confused about what a fitting consequentialist mindset looks like. It absolutely is not: "do whatever I naively estimate will maximize expected value, without regard for trustworthiness etc.") See, e.g., NaĂŻve Instrumentalism vs Principled Proceduralism.

Would you like to suggest a recommended reading that best advances your general perspective here while seriously addressing the charge of uncritical vibes and bias?

From my perspective, it seems like you're just flatly ignoring my concerns (simply asserting that you "do not indulge in 'uncritical vibes and bias'" doesn't allay my concerns, any more than my simply asserting, without further explanation, that impartial moral theorists of my ilk do not ignore questions about power, democracy, etc., would allay yours). One reason I'm inclined to ignore certain academic literatures is that the participants in those literatures seem to take for granted certain misguided foundational assumptions that I take to undermine their entire enterprise. Given my starting perspective, it's not clear why I should expect to learn anything from reading people who strike me as deeply confused and don't say anything that addresses my fundamental concerns about their approach.

I would like to see more productive engagement between the two perspectives. But that requires both sides to make some effort to understand and address the other's concerns. 

(I may write more about the substance of your paper at some point, but something that annoyed me a lot when reading it was that you largely seemed to be uncritically laundering the complaints of public critics like Emile Torres, without any apparent understanding of - and engagement with - why longtermists disagree. The suggestion that our approach is "fundamentally conservative" strikes me as particularly groundless, and indicative of unprincipled, vibes-based criticism. But if nothing else, I guess it's at least helpful to have the criticisms collated in one place, and maybe if I take a stab at addressing them at some point that would be a step towards more mutual engagement. You may also be interested in the final section of my paper, 'Why Not Effective Altruism?' where I respond to the "political" critiques of Srinivasan and others.)

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