Offsetting makes no sense in terms of utility maximisation.
Donating less than 100% of your non-essential income also makes no sense in terms of utility maximization, and yet pretty much everybody is guilty of it, what’s up with that?
As it happens, people just aren’t particularly good at this utility maximization thing, so they need various crutches (like the GWWC pledge) to do at least better than most, and offsetting seems like a not-obviously-terrible crutch.
To frame it as a crutch for our irredeemably fallen nature is to accept the all-demandingness narrative of utility maximisation. We must but we can’t, we can’t but we must. I prefer to reject the demand entirely.
But that’s why offsetting makes sense. In the world as it is, people make deals with themselves that have causal influence. The factors are emotional, but those are real. We can’t do everything, so what we do is dependent on emotional factors—like an offsetting self-deal.
Offsetting makes perfect sense outside of unrealistic utilitarian absolutism.
I agree, and yet it does seem to me that self-identified EAs are better people, on average. If only there was a way to harness that goodness without skirting Wolf-Insanity quite this close...
Donating less than 100% of your non-essential income also makes no sense in terms of utility maximization, and yet pretty much everybody is guilty of it, what’s up with that?
As it happens, people just aren’t particularly good at this utility maximization thing, so they need various crutches (like the GWWC pledge) to do at least better than most, and offsetting seems like a not-obviously-terrible crutch.
To frame it as a crutch for our irredeemably fallen nature is to accept the all-demandingness narrative of utility maximisation. We must but we can’t, we can’t but we must. I prefer to reject the demand entirely.
But that’s why offsetting makes sense. In the world as it is, people make deals with themselves that have causal influence. The factors are emotional, but those are real. We can’t do everything, so what we do is dependent on emotional factors—like an offsetting self-deal.
Offsetting makes perfect sense outside of unrealistic utilitarian absolutism.
I agree, and yet it does seem to me that self-identified EAs are better people, on average. If only there was a way to harness that goodness without skirting Wolf-Insanity quite this close...