All else isn’t equal, though. It’s not a comparison between pleasant life and unpleasant life, it’s a comparison between a comparatively unpleasant life and oblivion.
Some people might attach negative utility to an unpleasant life, but, like people who mischaracterize how unhappy a debilitating injury will make them, they’re probably overestimating the relationship between their current life and their current level of happiness.
That’s not where the misunderstanding lies, though. If we take the sentence:
“people in third world countries have unpleasant lives, therefore we should discount the value of donating to the charities helping them accordingly”
It is very much true, almost trivially so. The value of the donation gets reduced by a factor proportional to the unpleasantness of the life versus some other, more pleasant life in a high-prosperity region. So if saving either life costs the same, or if the difference in cost does not cover the difference in unpleasantness, then it is better to save the pleasant life with this money.
However, what seems to be the issue here is that “discount” and “accordingly” are being charged with connotation, rather than taken as mathematical factors in an equation. It is true that in the current state of the current world we live in, the E.U. of saving a life in a third-world country is better than saving a life in a first-world one, because it is much cheaper, and because it doesn’t correlate that well with life-pleasantness anyway. This may be where the objections are coming from.
So what’s being said is that you should calculate the expected utility of a post-apocalypse (or third-world) life as lower than that of a modern life. Then, calculate the costs as normal. Then, calculate the probabilities as normal. Then, calculate expected utility in proper fashion, having accounted for the difference in value.
It’s all very much straightforward to me and implied by most utilitarian calculus I’ve seen, so I’m somewhat baffled by the presence of so many objections to that claim.
Suppose the fallout shelter would guarantee your survival. Suppose furthermore that the massive meteor storm or whatever it is guaranteed to save your life from is guaranteed to hit the planet (or whatever) in five years. How do you feel about your discount rate in this scenario, with the other variables stripped away?
Suppose furthermore that fallout shelters are expensive enough that you either spend the five years living a very spartan existence, which will continue after the fact, or living it up with every luxury you’ve ever denied yourself in the five years you’re going to get.
All else isn’t equal, though. It’s not a comparison between pleasant life and unpleasant life, it’s a comparison between a comparatively unpleasant life and oblivion.
Some people might attach negative utility to an unpleasant life, but, like people who mischaracterize how unhappy a debilitating injury will make them, they’re probably overestimating the relationship between their current life and their current level of happiness.
That’s not where the misunderstanding lies, though. If we take the sentence:
It is very much true, almost trivially so. The value of the donation gets reduced by a factor proportional to the unpleasantness of the life versus some other, more pleasant life in a high-prosperity region. So if saving either life costs the same, or if the difference in cost does not cover the difference in unpleasantness, then it is better to save the pleasant life with this money.
However, what seems to be the issue here is that “discount” and “accordingly” are being charged with connotation, rather than taken as mathematical factors in an equation. It is true that in the current state of the current world we live in, the E.U. of saving a life in a third-world country is better than saving a life in a first-world one, because it is much cheaper, and because it doesn’t correlate that well with life-pleasantness anyway. This may be where the objections are coming from.
So what’s being said is that you should calculate the expected utility of a post-apocalypse (or third-world) life as lower than that of a modern life. Then, calculate the costs as normal. Then, calculate the probabilities as normal. Then, calculate expected utility in proper fashion, having accounted for the difference in value.
It’s all very much straightforward to me and implied by most utilitarian calculus I’ve seen, so I’m somewhat baffled by the presence of so many objections to that claim.
Suppose the fallout shelter would guarantee your survival. Suppose furthermore that the massive meteor storm or whatever it is guaranteed to save your life from is guaranteed to hit the planet (or whatever) in five years. How do you feel about your discount rate in this scenario, with the other variables stripped away?
Suppose furthermore that fallout shelters are expensive enough that you either spend the five years living a very spartan existence, which will continue after the fact, or living it up with every luxury you’ve ever denied yourself in the five years you’re going to get.