Welcome 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: My favourite arguments against person-affecting views, published by EJT on April 2, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.

1. Introduction

According to person-affecting views (PAVs) in population ethics, adding happy people to the world is morally neutral. It's neither good nor bad.

Are PAVs true? The question is important.

If PAVs are true, then the EA community is likely spending way too much time and money on reducing x-risk. After all, a supposed major benefit of reducing x-risk is that it increases the chance that lots of happy people come into existence. If PAVs are true, this 'benefit' is no benefit at all.

By contrast, if PAVs are false, then the EA community (and the world at large) is likely spending way too little time and money on reducing x-risk. After all, the future could contain a lot of happy people. So if adding happy people to the world is good, reducing x-risk is plausibly very good.

And if PAVs are false, it's plausibly very important to ensure that people believe that PAVs are false. In spreading this belief, we reduce the risk of the following non-extinction failure-mode: humanity successfully navigates the transition to advanced AI but then creates way too few happy people.

So it's important to figure out whether PAVs are true or false. The EA community has made efforts on this front, but the best-known arguments leave something to be desired. In particular, the arguments against PAVs mostly only apply to specific versions of these views.[1] Many other PAVs remain untouched.

Nevertheless, I think there are strong arguments against PAVs in general. In this post, I sketch out some of my favourites.

2. The simple argument

Before we begin, a quick terminological note. In this post, I use 'happy people' as shorthand for 'people whose lives are good overall' and 'miserable people' as shorthand for 'people whose lives are bad overall.'

With that out the way, let's start with a simple argument:

The simple argument

1. Some things are good (for example: happiness, love, friendship, beauty, achievement, knowledge, and virtue).

2. By creating happy people, we can bring more of these good things into the world.

3. And the more good things, the better.

C1. Therefore, creating happy people can be good

C2. Therefore, PAVs are false.

2.1. The classic PAV response

Advocates of PAVs reject this simple argument. The classic PAV response begins with the following two claims:[2]

The Person-Affecting Restriction

One outcome can't be better than another unless it's better for some person.

Existence Anticomparativism

Existing can't be better or worse for a person than not-existing.

Each of these two claims seems tough to deny. Consider first the Person-Affecting Restriction. How could one outcome be better than another if it's not better for anyone? Now consider Existence Anticomparativism. If existing could be better for a person than not-existing, then it seemingly must be that not-existing would be worse for that person than existing. But how can anything be better or worse for a person that doesn't exist?[3]

So each of the two claims seems plausible, and they together imply that premise 3 of the simple argument is false: sometimes, bringing more good things into the world doesn't make the world better. Here's why. By creating a happy person, we bring more good things into the world. But our action isn't better for this happy person (by Existence Anticomparativism), nor is it better for anyone else (by stipulation), and so it isn't better for the world (by the Person-Affecting Restriction).

By reasoning in this way, advocates of PAVs can defuse the simple argument and defend their claim that creating happy people isn't good.

2.2. The problem with the classic PAV response

Now for the problem. The Person-Affecting Restriction and Existence Anticomparativism don't just...