I mostly-agree, except that question 1 shouldn’t say:
“In a least convenient world, would you utterly forgo all interest in return for making some small difference to global utility”.
It should say: “… is there any extent to which impact on strangers’ well-being would influence your choices? For example, if you were faced with a choice between reading a chapter of a kind-of-interesting book with no external impact, or doing chores for an hour and thereby saving a child’s life, would you sometimes choose the latter?”
If the answer to that latter question is yes—if expected impact on others’ well-being can potentially sway your actions at some margin—then it is worth looking into the empirical details, and seeing what bundles of global well-being and personal well-being can actually be bought, and how attractive those bundles are.
I object to this being framed as primarily about others versus self. I pursue FAI for the perfectly selfish reason that it maximizes my expected life span and quality. I think the conflict being discussed is about near interest conflicting with far interest, and how near interest creates more motivation.
I mostly-agree, except that question 1 shouldn’t say:
“In a least convenient world, would you utterly forgo all interest in return for making some small difference to global utility”.
It should say: “… is there any extent to which impact on strangers’ well-being would influence your choices? For example, if you were faced with a choice between reading a chapter of a kind-of-interesting book with no external impact, or doing chores for an hour and thereby saving a child’s life, would you sometimes choose the latter?”
If the answer to that latter question is yes—if expected impact on others’ well-being can potentially sway your actions at some margin—then it is worth looking into the empirical details, and seeing what bundles of global well-being and personal well-being can actually be bought, and how attractive those bundles are.
I object to this being framed as primarily about others versus self. I pursue FAI for the perfectly selfish reason that it maximizes my expected life span and quality. I think the conflict being discussed is about near interest conflicting with far interest, and how near interest creates more motivation.