The Case Against Cognitive Enhancement: Responding to the Reversal Test
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Effective Altruism William Macaskill and Theron Pummer
1 Effective Altruism William MacAskill and Theron Pummer Climate change is on course to cause millions of deaths and cost the world economy trillions of dollars. Nearly a billion people live in extreme poverty, millions of them dying each year of easily preventable diseases. Just a small fraction of the thousands of nuclear weapons on hair‐trigger alert could easily bring about global catastrophe. New technologies like synthetic biology and artificial intelligence bring unprece dented risks. Meanwhile, year after year billions and billions of factory‐farmed ani mals live and die in misery. Given the number of severe problems facing the world today, and the resources required to solve them, we may feel at a loss as to where to even begin. The good news is that we can improve things with the right use of money, time, talent, and effort. These resources can bring about a great deal of improvement, or very little, depending on how they are allocated. The effective altruism movement consists of a growing global community of peo ple who use reason and evidence to assess how to do as much good as possible, and who take action on this basis. Launched in 2011, the movement now has thousands of members, as well as influence over billions of dollars. The movement has substan tially increased awareness of the fact that some altruistic activities are much more cost‐effective than others, in the sense that they do much more good than others per unit of resource expended. According to the nonprofit organization GiveWell, it costs around $3,500 to prevent someone from dying of malaria by distributing bed nets. -
Apocalypse Now? Initial Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic for the Governance of Existential and Global Catastrophic Risks
journal of international humanitarian legal studies 11 (2020) 295-310 brill.com/ihls Apocalypse Now? Initial Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic for the Governance of Existential and Global Catastrophic Risks Hin-Yan Liu, Kristian Lauta and Matthijs Maas Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] Abstract This paper explores the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic through the framework of exis- tential risks – a class of extreme risks that threaten the entire future of humanity. In doing so, we tease out three lessons: (1) possible reasons underlying the limits and shortfalls of international law, international institutions and other actors which Covid-19 has revealed, and what they reveal about the resilience or fragility of institu- tional frameworks in the face of existential risks; (2) using Covid-19 to test and refine our prior ‘Boring Apocalypses’ model for understanding the interplay of hazards, vul- nerabilities and exposures in facilitating a particular disaster, or magnifying its effects; and (3) to extrapolate some possible futures for existential risk scholarship and governance. Keywords Covid-19 – pandemics – existential risks – global catastrophic risks – boring apocalypses 1 Introduction: Our First ‘Brush’ with Existential Risk? All too suddenly, yesterday’s ‘impossibilities’ have turned into today’s ‘condi- tions’. The impossible has already happened, and quickly. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, both directly and as manifested through the far-reaching global societal responses to it, signal a jarring departure away from even the © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/18781527-01102004Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 12:13:00AM via free access <UN> 296 Liu, Lauta and Maas recent past, and suggest that our futures will be profoundly different in its af- termath. -
Imposing Genetic Diversity
IMPOSING GENETIC DIVERSITY Associate Professor Robert Sparrow Australian Research Council Future Fellow Philosophy Program, School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies and, Adjunct Associate Professor, Centre for Human Bioethics Monash University Victoria 3800 Australia WORKING PAPER: NOT FOR CITATION OR DISTRIBUTION WITHOUT PERMISSION A version of this paper was accepted to The American Journal of Bioethics on October 28, 2014. Please cite that version. ABSTRACT: The idea that a world in which everyone was born “perfect” would be a world in which something valuable was missing often comes up in debates about the ethics of technologies of prenatal testing and Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD). This thought plays an important role in the “disability critique” of prenatal testing. However, the idea that human genetic variation is an important good with significant benefits for society at large is also embraced by a wide range of figures writing in the bioethics literature, including some who are notoriously hostile to the idea that we should not select against disability. By developing a number of thought experiments wherein we are to contemplate increasing genetic diversity from a lower baseline in order to secure this value I argue that this powerful intuition is more problematic than is generally recognised, especially where the price of diversity is the well-being of particular individuals. KEYWORDS: PGD; ethics; prenatal testing; disability; diversity; human enhancement 1 IMPOSING GENETIC DIVERSITY INTRODUCTION The idea that a world in which everyone was born “perfect” would be a world in which something valuable — a certain richness that flows from diversity – was missing often comes up in debates about the ethics of technologies of prenatal testing and Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD). -
Existential Risk and Existential Hope: Definitions
Future of Humanity Institute – Technical Report #2015-1 Existential Risk and Existential Hope: Definitions Owen Cotton-Barratt* & Toby Ord† We look at the strengths and weaknesses of two existing definitions of existential risk, and suggest a new definition based on expected value. This leads to a parallel concept: ‘existential hope’, the chance of something extremely good happening. An existential risk is a chance of a terrible event occurring, such as an asteroid striking the earth and wiping out intelligent life – we could call such events existential catastrophes. In order to understand what should be thought of as an existential risk, it is necessary to understand what should be thought of as an existential catastrophe. This is harder than it first seems to pin down. 1. The simple definition One fairly crisp approach is to draw the line at extinction: Definition (i): An existential catastrophe is an event which causes the end of existence of our descendants. This has the virtue that it is a natural division and is easy to understand. And we certainly want to include all extinction events. But perhaps it doesn’t cast a wide enough net. Example A: A totalitarian regime takes control of earth. It uses mass surveillance to prevent any rebellion, and there is no chance for escape. This regime persists for thousands of years, eventually collapsing when a supervolcano throws up enough ash that agriculture is prevented for decades, and no humans survive. In Example A, clearly the eruption was bad, but the worst of the damage was done earlier. After the totalitarian regime was locked in, it was only a matter of time until something or other finished things off. -
UC Santa Barbara Other Recent Work
UC Santa Barbara Other Recent Work Title Geopolitics, History, and International Relations Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/29z457nf Author Robinson, William I. Publication Date 2009 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE ASSOCIATION • NEW YORK Geopolitics, History, and International Relations VOLUME 1(2) • 2009 ADDLETON ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS • NEW YORK Geopolitics, History, and International Relations 1(2) 2009 An international peer-reviewed academic journal Copyright © 2009 by the Contemporary Science Association, New York Geopolitics, History, and International Relations seeks to explore the theoretical implications of contemporary geopolitics with particular reference to territorial problems and issues of state sovereignty, and publishes papers on contemporary world politics and the global political economy from a variety of methodologies and approaches. Interdisciplinary and wide-ranging in scope, Geopolitics, History, and International Relations also provides a forum for discussion on the latest developments in the theory of international relations and aims to promote an understanding of the breadth, depth and policy relevance of international history. Its purpose is to stimulate and disseminate theory-aware research and scholarship in international relations throughout the international academic community. Geopolitics, History, and International Relations offers important original contributions by outstanding scholars and has the potential to become one of the leading journals in the field, embracing all aspects of the history of relations between states and societies. Journal ranking: A on a seven-point scale (A+, A, B+, B, C+, C, D). Geopolitics, History, and International Relations is published twice a year by Addleton Academic Publishers, 30-18 50th Street, Woodside, New York, 11377. -
Whether and Where to Give1 (Forthcoming in Philosophy and Public Affairs)
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by St Andrews Research Repository 1 Whether and Where to Give1 (Forthcoming in Philosophy and Public Affairs) Theron Pummer University of St Andrews 1. The Ethics of Giving and Effective Altruism The ethics of giving has traditionally focused on whether, and how much, to give to charities helping people in extreme poverty.2 In more recent years, the discussion has increasingly focused on where to give, spurred by an appreciation of the substantial differences in cost- effectiveness between charities. According to a commonly cited example, $40,000 can be used either to help 1 blind person by training a seeing-eye dog in the United States or to help 2,000 blind people by providing surgeries reversing the effects of trachoma in Africa.3 Effective altruists recommend that we give large sums to charity, but by far their more central message is that we give effectively, i.e., to whatever charities would do the most good per dollar donated.4 In this paper, I’ll assume that it’s not wrong not to give bigger, but will explore to what extent it may well nonetheless be wrong not to give better. The main claim I’ll argue for here is that in many cases it would be wrong of you to give a sum of money to charities that do less good than others you could have given to instead, even if 1 I am extremely grateful to Derek Parfit, Roger Crisp, Jeff McMahan, and Peter Singer for extremely helpful feedback and encouragement. -
Why Maximize Expected Choice-Worthiness?1 WILLIAM MACASKILL and TOBY ORD University of Oxford
NOUSˆ 00:00 (2018) 1–27 doi: 10.1111/nous.12264 Why Maximize Expected Choice-Worthiness?1 WILLIAM MACASKILL AND TOBY ORD University of Oxford This paper argues in favor of a particular account of decision-making under nor- mative uncertainty: that, when it is possible to do so, one should maximize expected choice-worthiness. Though this position has been often suggested in the literature and is often taken to be the ‘default’ view, it has so far received little in the way of positive argument in its favor. After dealing with some preliminaries and giving the basic motivation for taking normative uncertainty into account in our decision- making, we consider and provide new arguments against two rival accounts that have been offered—the accounts that we call ‘My Favorite Theory’ and ‘My Fa- vorite Option’. We then give a novel argument for comparativism—the view that, under normative uncertainty, one should take into account both probabilities of different theories and magnitudes of choice-worthiness. Finally, we further argue in favor of maximizing expected choice-worthiness and consider and respond to five objections. Introduction Normative uncertainty is a fact of life. Suppose that Michael has £20 to spend. With that money, he could eat out at a nice restaurant. Alternatively, he could eat at home and pay for four long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets that would protect eight children against malaria. Let’s suppose that Michael knows all the morally relevant empirical facts about what that £20 could do. Even so, it might be that he still doesn’t know whether he’s obligated to donate that money or whether it’s permissible for him to pay for the meal out, because he just doesn’t know how strong his moral obligations to distant strangers are. -
1 Introduction to the Enhancement Debate
Notes 1 Introduction to the Enhancement Debate 1. Here, it is taken that the human condition is not the same as human nature. The term ‘human condition’ is not only a simple collection of basic features characterising humans, nor implies an essence that remains identical from birth to death; rather, the term implies something dynamic and in a process of continuous development and negotiation. For more on this see Arendt, The Human Condition (1998), and Carnevale and Battaglia, ‘A Reflexive Approach to Human Enhancement’ (2014). 2. Consider for example that nowadays people sometimes talk about them- selves in terms that in the past we only used for our creations, such as updating and even upgrading ourselves. 3. Here and in what follows, the term ‘individualistic’ will be used as a view resulting from holding the concept of the liberal individual. 4. According to the report it is a ‘non-medical’ typology since there is no spe- cific definition of health involved. However, it is plausible to argue that by including the term ‘therapeutical’, they are indirectly referring back to a biomedical-based definition. 5. In the rest of this book, science and technology will be referred to inter- changeably, even though it is acknowledged that there are differences between them. For the purpose of this work it is enough to understand that both science and technology have affected and shaped the material condi- tion of our lives as well as the way we understand ourselves as humans and social beings. 6. Here, the term ‘nanoscale’ is used to refer to the nanometre scale. -
The Definition of Effective Altruism
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/08/19, SPi 1 The Definition of Effective Altruism William MacAskill There are many problems in the world today. Over 750 million people live on less than $1.90 per day (at purchasing power parity).1 Around 6 million children die each year of easily preventable causes such as malaria, diarrhea, or pneumonia.2 Climate change is set to wreak environmental havoc and cost the economy tril- lions of dollars.3 A third of women worldwide have suffered from sexual or other physical violence in their lives.4 More than 3,000 nuclear warheads are in high-alert ready-to-launch status around the globe.5 Bacteria are becoming antibiotic- resistant.6 Partisanship is increasing, and democracy may be in decline.7 Given that the world has so many problems, and that these problems are so severe, surely we have a responsibility to do something about them. But what? There are countless problems that we could be addressing, and many different ways of addressing each of those problems. Moreover, our resources are scarce, so as individuals and even as a globe we can’t solve all these problems at once. So we must make decisions about how to allocate the resources we have. But on what basis should we make such decisions? The effective altruism movement has pioneered one approach. Those in this movement try to figure out, of all the different uses of our resources, which uses will do the most good, impartially considered. This movement is gathering con- siderable steam. There are now thousands of people around the world who have chosen -
The Moral Imperative Toward Cost-Effectiveness in Global Health Toby Ord March 2013
center for global development essay The Moral Imperative toward Cost-Effectiveness in Global Health Toby Ord March 2013 www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/1427016 abstract Getting good value for the money with scarce resources is a substantial moral issue for global health. This claim may be surprising to some, since conversations on the ethics of global health often focus on moral concerns about justice, fairness, and freedom. But outcomes and consequences are also of central moral importance in setting priorities. In this essay, Toby Ord explores the moral relevance of cost-effectiveness, a major tool for capturing the relationship between resources and outcomes, by illustrating what is lost in moral terms for global health when cost-effectiveness is ignored. For example, the least effective HIV/AIDS intervention produces less than 0.1 percent of the value of the most effective. In practical terms, this can mean hundreds, thousands, or millions of additional deaths due to a failure to prioritize. Ultimately, the author suggests that creating an active process of reviewing and analyzing global health interventions to deliver the bulk of global health funds to the very best. Toby Ord is the founder of Giving What We Can and a James Martin Fellow in the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology, Oxford University. The Center for Global Development is an independent, nonprofit policy research organization that is dedicated to reducing global poverty and inequality and to making globalization work for the poor. CGD is grateful for contributions from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in support of this work. -
Risks of Space Colonization
Risks of space colonization Marko Kovic∗ July 2020 Abstract Space colonization is humankind's best bet for long-term survival. This makes the expected moral value of space colonization immense. However, colonizing space also creates risks | risks whose potential harm could easily overshadow all the benefits of humankind's long- term future. In this article, I present a preliminary overview of some major risks of space colonization: Prioritization risks, aberration risks, and conflict risks. Each of these risk types contains risks that can create enormous disvalue; in some cases orders of magnitude more disvalue than all the potential positive value humankind could have. From a (weakly) negative, suffering-focused utilitarian view, we there- fore have the obligation to mitigate space colonization-related risks and make space colonization as safe as possible. In order to do so, we need to start working on real-world space colonization governance. Given the near total lack of progress in the domain of space gover- nance in recent decades, however, it is uncertain whether meaningful space colonization governance can be established in the near future, and before it is too late. ∗[email protected] 1 1 Introduction: The value of colonizing space Space colonization, the establishment of permanent human habitats beyond Earth, has been the object of both popular speculation and scientific inquiry for decades. The idea of space colonization has an almost poetic quality: Space is the next great frontier, the next great leap for humankind, that we hope to eventually conquer through our force of will and our ingenuity. From a more prosaic point of view, space colonization is important because it represents a long-term survival strategy for humankind1. -
Ethics of Emerging Technologies PHI 350/CHV 356 | Spring 2021 | Fridays 1:30-4:20Pm ET
Ethics of Emerging Technologies PHI 350/CHV 356 | Spring 2021 | Fridays 1:30-4:20pm ET Johann Frick Michal Masny [email protected] [email protected] Brief description This course examines key technological developments and challenges of the 21st century from an ethical perspective. We will discuss some of the following topics: Self-driving cars and autonomous weapons systems; surveillance and the value of privacy; the use of predictive algorithms in the criminal justice system and the question of algorithmic unfairness; the impact of technology on employment and the promise of unconditional basic income schemes; human enhancement and genetic testing; and the risk of human extinction. Office hours We will be hosting joint office hours on Tuesdays, 5:30-6:50pm. Please sign-up for a 20-minute slot using our WASE calendar. Course requirements and assessment This course will be held in a seminar format. You will read and watch the assigned materials in advance of the meeting, and then we will discuss them together during the seminar. Assessment for this course has a number of different components: (i) Once during the semester Oral presentation 10% (ii) 01 March at 11:59pm ET First paper (1000 words) 15% (iii) 22 March at 11:59pm ET Second paper (1000-1500 words) 15% (iv) 05 May at 11:59pm ET Third paper (2500 words) 30% (v) Whole semester Class participation 30% Class participation As you can see, class participation is very important for this course. We are asking you do two things. a) Post a reaction to at least one of the assigned materials on the Canvas discussion board by 11:59pm ET on the day before the seminar.