I think the question of “from what moral reference frame should you evaluate whether something was worth it” is a pretty tricky one. You clearly can’t say “from the perspective of whoever was there first” ... You also clearly can’t say “just evaluate the consequences from the perspective from wherever you are now”
I’d think you’d want to have a decision method about this that doesn’t give the more powerful party (with the bigger army or the better weapons, etc.) more votes. If you’re making a moral decision and you don’t think might makes right, that implies that power shouldn’t give you more influence in deciding what “right” is, after all. And it’s rather worrisome that “we decide based on how many past, present and future people vote in favour of this plan” has a strategy “so just kill your opponents so your side has many descendants and their side has none”.
I could see weighting it by the number of people affected, and how strongly they prefer or disprefer various outcomes and the methods of getting to those outcomes (potentially including counterfactual people and your best estimate of what they would say in each case). I could also see a simpler decision rule, that allows for vetoes and deontological prohibitions of certain actions (like, say, genocide) and then you have to navigate through possibility-space to an alternative that no present parties veto and doesn’t violate deontological restrictions, and then whichever alternatives pass the bar for “more benefit than harm to all those affected” are worth it. This method, as with many methods that involve vetoes, protects minority interests and doesn’t let 50%+1 of the population do whatever it feels like to 50%-1 of the population under consideration.
In any case, if you’ve got two or more parties in conflict, I think you’d want some method of deciding what’s “worth it” that is impartial.
Yep! Much has been written on things like this, here and elsewhere. We could go into a whole deconstruction of moral relativism, but I don’t think it’s the best use of either of our time. For now, I maintain the position that moral relativism poses some challenges to doing analysis like this, but IMO not too much of one, and you can overcome them, and I certainly disavow any analysis of the form “we just count the preferences of current humans, ignoring the fact that they are descendants of the victors”.
I’d think you’d want to have a decision method about this that doesn’t give the more powerful party (with the bigger army or the better weapons, etc.) more votes. If you’re making a moral decision and you don’t think might makes right, that implies that power shouldn’t give you more influence in deciding what “right” is, after all. And it’s rather worrisome that “we decide based on how many past, present and future people vote in favour of this plan” has a strategy “so just kill your opponents so your side has many descendants and their side has none”.
I could see weighting it by the number of people affected, and how strongly they prefer or disprefer various outcomes and the methods of getting to those outcomes (potentially including counterfactual people and your best estimate of what they would say in each case). I could also see a simpler decision rule, that allows for vetoes and deontological prohibitions of certain actions (like, say, genocide) and then you have to navigate through possibility-space to an alternative that no present parties veto and doesn’t violate deontological restrictions, and then whichever alternatives pass the bar for “more benefit than harm to all those affected” are worth it. This method, as with many methods that involve vetoes, protects minority interests and doesn’t let 50%+1 of the population do whatever it feels like to 50%-1 of the population under consideration.
In any case, if you’ve got two or more parties in conflict, I think you’d want some method of deciding what’s “worth it” that is impartial.
Yep! Much has been written on things like this, here and elsewhere. We could go into a whole deconstruction of moral relativism, but I don’t think it’s the best use of either of our time. For now, I maintain the position that moral relativism poses some challenges to doing analysis like this, but IMO not too much of one, and you can overcome them, and I certainly disavow any analysis of the form “we just count the preferences of current humans, ignoring the fact that they are descendants of the victors”.