(Cross-posted from my substack The Ethical Economist: a blog covering Economics, Ethics and Effective Altruism.)
Don’t give to just one charity, there are so many good charities to give to! Also, what if the charity turns out to be ineffective? Then you just wasted all your money and did no good. Don’t worry, there’s a simple solution. Just give to multiple charities and spread risk!
Thinking along these lines is natural. Whether it’s risk aversion, or just an inherent desire to support multiple charities or causes, most of us diversify our philanthropic giving. If your goal is to do the most good however, you should fight this urge with all you’ve got.
Diversification does make... (read 774 more words →)
What assumptions are these specifically?
You're welcome to lay out your own theory of population ethics. The more I read about it though the more it seems like a minefield where no theory seems to evade counterintuitive/repungnant results.
Population ethics is the philosophical study of the ethical problems arising when our actions affect who is born and how many people are born in the future (see Wikipedia here).
In the example I gave we are judging the ethical permissibility of a change in population (one extra life) taking into account the welfare of the new person. You implied it can sometimes not be ethically permissible to bring into existence an additional life, if that life is of a poor enough quality. This quite clearly seems to me to be engaging in population ethics.
You say:
World-states are assigned value without considering, to whom and for what?
This isn't usually true. In population ethics it... (read more)
For instance, if I choose to bring one more person into the world, by having a child (which, incidentally, we just did!), that decision is primarily about what kind of life I want to have, and what commitments I am willing to make, rather than about whether I think the world, in the abstract, is better or not with one more person in it.
Would you take into account the wellbeing of the child you are choosing to have?
For example, if you knew the child was going to have a devastating illness such that they would live a life full of intense suffering, would you take that into account and perhaps rethink having that child (for the child's sake)? If you think this is a relevant consideration you're essentially engaging in population ethics.