I think it would be helpful to talk about exactly what quantities one is risk averse about. If we can agree on a toy example, it should be easy to resolve the argument using math.
For instance, I am (reflectively) somewhat risk averse about the amount of money I have. I am not, on top of that, risk averse about the amount of money I gain or lose from a particular action.
Now how about human lives?
I’m not sure if I am risk averse about the amount of human life in all of spacetime.
I think I am risk averse about the number of humans living at once; if you added a second Earth to the solar system, complete with 6.7 billion humans, I don’t think that makes the universe twice as good.
I think death events might be even more bad than you would predict from the reduction in human capital, but I am not risk averse about them; 400 deaths sound about twice as bad as 200 deaths if there are 6.7 billion people total.
Nor am I risk averse about the size of my personal contribution to preventing deaths. If I personally save 400 people, that is about twice as good as if I save 200 people.
I’d like to hear how you (and other commenters) feel about each of these measures.
I’m an ethical egoist—so my opinions here are likely to be off topic. Perhaps that makes non-utilitarian preferences seem less unreasonable to me, though.
If someone prefers saving 9 lives at p = 0.1 to 1 life with certainty—well, maybe they just want to make sure that somewhere in the multiverse is well-populated. It doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t care—just that they don’t care in a strictly utilitarian way.
If you are risk-neutral, I agree that there is no reason to diversify.
I think it would be helpful to talk about exactly what quantities one is risk averse about. If we can agree on a toy example, it should be easy to resolve the argument using math.
For instance, I am (reflectively) somewhat risk averse about the amount of money I have. I am not, on top of that, risk averse about the amount of money I gain or lose from a particular action.
Now how about human lives?
I’m not sure if I am risk averse about the amount of human life in all of spacetime.
I think I am risk averse about the number of humans living at once; if you added a second Earth to the solar system, complete with 6.7 billion humans, I don’t think that makes the universe twice as good.
I think death events might be even more bad than you would predict from the reduction in human capital, but I am not risk averse about them; 400 deaths sound about twice as bad as 200 deaths if there are 6.7 billion people total.
Nor am I risk averse about the size of my personal contribution to preventing deaths. If I personally save 400 people, that is about twice as good as if I save 200 people.
I’d like to hear how you (and other commenters) feel about each of these measures.
I’m an ethical egoist—so my opinions here are likely to be off topic. Perhaps that makes non-utilitarian preferences seem less unreasonable to me, though.
If someone prefers saving 9 lives at p = 0.1 to 1 life with certainty—well, maybe they just want to make sure that somewhere in the multiverse is well-populated. It doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t care—just that they don’t care in a strictly utilitarian way.
If you are risk-neutral, I agree that there is no reason to diversify.