EA - Common-sense cases where "hypothetical future people" matter by levin

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Common-sense cases where "hypothetical future people" matter, published by levin on August 12, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Motivation A few weeks ago, I was speaking with a student (call him Josh) who was skeptical of the importance of existential risk and the validity of longtermism. He said something like, "What matters to me is kids going hungry today, not hypothetical future people." I found this to be a moving, sincere objection, so I thought about where it seemed to go wrong and offered Josh a version of Case 1 below, and he seemed pretty convinced. Josh's skepticism echoes the dismissal of "merely possible people" expressed by critics who hold presentist person-affecting views — that is, they believe that "an act can only be bad [or good] if it is bad [or good] for someone," where "someone" is a person who exists at the time of the act. The current non-existence of future people is a common objection to taking their well-being into moral consideration, and it would be good for longtermists to have cases ready to go that illustrate the weaknesses of this view. I developed a couple more cases in Twitter threads and figured I'd combine them into a linkable forum post. Case 1: The Reformer You work in a department of education. You spend a full year working on a report on a new kindergarten curriculum that makes kids happier and learn better. It takes a few years for this to circulate and get approved, and a few more for teachers to learn it. By the time it's being taught, 6 years have passed since your work. I think your work, 6 years ago, was morally significant because of the happier, better-educated students now. But these kindergarteners are (mostly) 5 years old. They didn't even exist at the time of your work. You remember a conversation you had, while working on the curriculum, with your friend who thinks that "hypothetical future people can't have interests" (and who is familiar with the turnaround times of education reform). The friend shook her head. "I don't know why you're working on this kindergarten curriculum for future people," she said. "You could be helping real people who are alive today. Why not switch to working on a second-grade curriculum?" Indeed, if only already-existing people matter, you'd be in the weird position where your work would've been morally valuable if you'd written a 2nd grade curriculum but your kindergarten curriculum is morally worthless. Why should the birth year of beneficiaries affect this evaluation? Case 2: The Climate Resiliency Project After finishing architecture school, you choose to work at a firm that designs climate resiliency projects. The government of Bangladesh has contracted that firm to design sea walls, on the condition that the work be expedited. You could have worked at a commercial firm for more pay and shorter hours, but you choose to work at the climate-focused firm. The team works for a year on the sea walls project. The Bangladeshi government builds it over the next 20 years. In 2042, a typhoon strikes, and the walls save thousands of lives. Now, you consider how your choice to work at the climate resiliency firm compared to its alternatives. You think your work on the sea walls accounted for, say, 1% of the impact, saving dozens of lives. But maybe you could have donated a big share of your larger salary to Against Malaria and saved dozens of lives that way instead. If "nonexistent future people" don't matter, we are again in the absurd position of asking, "Well, how many of the lives saved were over the age of 20?" After all, those under 20 didn't exist yet, so you should not have taken their non-existent interests into consideration. As the decades progress, the sea walls save more lives, as the effects of climate change get worse. But the "future people don't matter" view holds that ...