Magnus Vinding, Author at Center for Reducing Suffering

Popular views of population ethics imply a priority on preventing worst-case outcomes

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 23:53:22 +0000

A wide variety of views can support a focus on preventing worst-case outcomes. More than that, it appears that the views of population ethics held by the general population also, on average, imply a priority on preventing futures with large numbers of miserable beings. My aim in this post is to elaborate on this point […]

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Reply to the “evolutionary asymmetry objection” against suffering-focused ethics

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 15:45:27 +0000

An objection that is sometimes raised against suffering-focused ethics is that our intuitions about the relative value of suffering and happiness are skewed toward the negative for evolutionary reasons, and hence we cannot trust our intuition that says that the reduction of suffering is more valuable and more morally important than the creation of happiness. […]

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Comments on Mogensen’s “The weight of suffering”

Sat, 23 Jul 2022 09:17:03 +0000

Andreas Mogensen’s paper “The weight of suffering” presents an interesting argument in favor of the axiological position that “there exists some depth of suffering that cannot be compensated for by any measure of well-being” — a position he calls “LTNU” (Mogensen, 2022, abstract). Mogensen then proceeds to explore how one might respond to that argument […]

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Reply to Chappell’s “Rethinking the Asymmetry”

Mon, 13 Jun 2022 17:09:22 +0000

My aim in this post is to respond to the arguments presented in Richard Yetter Chappell’s “Rethinking the Asymmetry”. Chappell argues against the Asymmetry in population ethics, which roughly holds that the addition of bad lives makes the world worse, whereas the addition of good lives does not make the world better (other things being […]

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Reply to Gustafsson’s “Against Negative Utilitarianism”

Tue, 07 Jun 2022 17:57:22 +0000

This post is a reply to Johan Gustafsson’s draft paper “Against Negative Utilitarianism”. Gustafsson acknowledges that for many common objections raised against negative utilitarianism (NU), there are corresponding objections that can be raised against classical utilitarianism (CU) (see e.g. Knutsson, 2021a). Hence, as he writes, “these objections have little force when we assess the relative […]

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Point-by-point critique of Ord’s “Why I’m Not a Negative Utilitarian”

Mon, 30 May 2022 19:46:11 +0000

The following is a reply to Toby Ord’s “Why I’m Not a Negative Utilitarian” (2013). Ord’s essay seems to have been quite influential, and is often cited as an essay that makes strong points against negative utilitarianism. While a number of critical replies have already been written, I still think there are many problematic things […]

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Comparing repugnant conclusions: Response to the “near-perfect paradise vs. small hell” objection

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 22:36:47 +0000

Minimalist views of value hold that “the less of a given bad, the better”, and further hold that the only form of positive value that exists is the reduction of bads (e.g. unmet needs). Negative utilitarianism is an example of a minimalist view, which specifically says “the less suffering, the better”. An objection sometimes raised […]

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S-risk impact distribution is double-tailed

Fri, 19 Feb 2021 13:36:25 +0000

Summary Discussions about s-risks often rest on a single-tailed picture, focused on how much suffering human civilization could risk causing. But when we consider the bigger picture, including s-risks from alien civilizations, we see that human civilization’s expected impact on s-risks is in fact double-tailed. This likely has significant implications. For instance, it might mean […]

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On fat-tailed distributions and s-risks

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 21:40:35 +0000

Summary It is sometimes suggested that since the severity of many kinds of moral catastrophes (e.g. wars and natural disasters) fall along a power-law distribution, efforts to reduce suffering should focus on “a few rare scenarios where things go very wrong”. While this argument appears quite plausible on its face, it is in fact a […]

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Note on Pummer’s “Worseness of nonexistence”

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 10:38:08 +0000

Summary In “The Worseness of Nonexistence”, Theron Pummer makes an interesting argument that suggests that a failure to create new people can be as bad as cutting an existing person’s life short. I here briefly sketch out a reply to Pummer that can be made, in some version, from a variety of different views. Outline […]

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