As we approach the end of the year, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for your ongoing support of CRS and our research.
Tobias Baumann Appears on the Sentientism Podcast
CRS co-founder and researcher, Tobias Baumann, has appeared on the Sentientism Podcast for a discussion with host Jamie Woodhouse.
2022 Financial Report
As part of our commitment to transparency and accountability, CRS is pleased to share details of our budget and finances. We are grateful for our donors’ support, which helps us to continue our work and implement our Strategic Plan.
Should you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us, or use our anonymous feedback form. [...]
Avoiding the Worst Audiobook Available Now
CRS Co-Founder Tobias Baumann’s introduction to s-risks, Avoiding the Worst: How to Prevent a Moral Catastrophe is now available as an audiobook.
Professionally voiced by Adrian Nelson, the full audio can be listened to on Audible or there is a free video version now available on the new CRS YouTube channel. [...]
Tobias Baumann Discusses S-Risks & Avoiding the Worst on FLI Podcast
Center for Reducing Suffering Researcher and Co-Founder Tobias Baumann has appeared on the Future of Life Institute podcast to discuss S-Risks (risks of astronomical future suffering), suffering-focused ethics, and his book Avoiding the Worst: How to Prevent a Moral Catastrophe.
In the first part of a wide-ranging conversation with the podcast’s host Gus Docker, Tobias explained what S-Risks are and discussed some of the challenges associated with reducing suffering now and in the far-future. [...]
Popular views of population ethics imply a priority on preventing worst-case outcomes
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 and to briefly explore its relevance.
Asymmetric scope sensitivity
A recent study set out to investigate people’s intuitions on population ethics, exploring how people judge the value of different populations of happy and unhappy individuals (Caviola et al., 2022a). The study included a number of sub-studies, which generally found that people endorse a weak asymmetry in population ethics. That is, people tend to believe that miserable lives and suffering weigh somewhat stronger than do happy lives and happiness, even when the misery and happiness in question are claimed to be equally intense (Caviola et al., 2022a, p. 8). [...]
2022 End-of-Year Fundraiser
2022 has been an exciting year for us. It saw the release of Magnus Vinding’s book Reasoned Politics, Tobias Baumann’s book Avoiding the Worst: How to Prevent a Moral Catastrophe. In addition, we published several essays on suffering–focused ethics. We are now raising money to consolidate our financial situation.
We believe that CRS’s open-ended research programme on how to best reduce suffering fills an important gap. To help donors make informed choices, we are fully transparent about our values and our strategy. For more details on why we do what we do, see our Strategic Plan. [...]
New book on s-risks
I have just published my new book on s-risks, titled Avoiding the Worst: How to Prevent a Moral Catastrophe. You can find it on Amazon, read the PDF version, or listen to a provisional audio version.
The book is primarily aimed at longtermist effective altruists. I wrote it because I feel that s-risk prevention is a somewhat neglected priority area in the community, and because a single, comprehensive introduction to s-risks did not yet exist. My hope is that a coherent introduction will help to strengthen interest in the topic and spark further work. [...]
Reply to the “evolutionary asymmetry objection” against suffering-focused ethics
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. My aim in this post is to reply to this objection.
Stating the “evolutionary asymmetry objection” in brief
The argument I will respond to goes roughly as follows: For biologically evolved creatures such as humans, the reproductive costs of losses (e.g. deadly injury) are typically greater than the reproductive gains of successes (e.g. sex). This asymmetry is plausibly reflected in our experiences such that we tend to feel and value suffering (as an intrinsic negative) more strongly than we feel and value pleasure (as an intrinsic positive). Yet we should not expect such an asymmetry to be found at the level of possible states of suffering and pleasure. Instead, we should expect the best possible pleasure and the worst possible suffering to be equally intense, and we should therefore expect there to be an axiological and moral symmetry between them. Or at least we should expect our better informed selves to endorse such an axiological and moral symmetry (e.g. if we were fully acquainted with the utmost extremes of pleasure and suffering). [...]
Open position: Communications Manager
We’re looking for a Communications Manager to help us communicate our mission to broader audiences.
About the role
In this role, you’ll work at the heart of our organisation. You’ll help improve our online and social media presence, host high-impact events, and stay in touch with our supporters and donors. Above all, you will continually refine our strategic approach to outreach and communications. [...]
Comments on Mogensen’s “The weight of suffering”
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 and thereby reject LTNU.
My aim in this post is to raise some critical points in response to this paper. As a preliminary note, I should say that I commend Mogensen for taking up this crucial issue regarding the weight of suffering, and for exploring it in an open-ended manner. [...]
Reply to Chappell’s “Rethinking the Asymmetry”
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 equal).
“Awesome Lives”
To refute the Asymmetry, Chappell relies on the following claim as a core premise: [...]
Reply to Gustafsson’s “Against Negative Utilitarianism”
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 merits of Classical and Negative Utilitarianism” (Gustafsson, 2022, p. 1).
The aim of Gustafsson’s paper is to present novel counterexamples against NU that have no analogues in the case of CU. My aim in this post is to show that CU does face such analogous counterexamples, and that these counterexamples are worse than those facing NU. I also argue that views that give overriding importance to the reduction of extreme suffering seem uniquely plausible in light of the counterexamples reviewed here. [...]
Point-by-point critique of Ord’s “Why I’m Not a Negative Utilitarian”
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 in Ord’s essay that have not yet been properly criticized. For example, the essay does not only make misleading and problematic claims about negative utilitarianism, but also about the moral and political views of Karl Popper. Thus, I feel a thorough point-by-point reply is called for. Quotes from Ord’s essay are written in a blue font. [...]
Five recommendations for better political discourse
Introduction
Political decisions arguably represent the linchpin of human decision-making, constraining and influencing every choice we make. And our political system is currently operating far from ideally, to put it mildly. This renders it uniquely important that we do better.
From a longtermist perspective, what matters most is that we advance politics over the long term. Rather than focusing on any specific near-term issue, we are interested in improvements in governance and political norms that can plausibly result in a lasting impact on the long-term future. For instance, the intellectual originators of liberalism have arguably had outsized impact, and are perhaps among the most impactful people ever. [...]
2021 Year in Review and Our Plans for 2022
Now that 2021 is over, we thought this would be a good time to reflect on what we accomplished during the last year, and what our goals are for 2022.
Our Work in 2021
Accomplishments
The following are some of the things we achieved during 2021: [...]
Magnus Vinding Discusses Upcoming Book on the Utilitarian Podcast
CRS researcher and co-founder Magnus Vinding made a recent appearance on the Utilitarian Podcast hosted by Gus Docker.
Magnus begins by presenting a number of arguments in favor of suffering-focused views and then proceeds to discuss their practical implications. In particular, he explores how we can best reduce suffering for people, animals, and potentially even artificial sentient beings in the future. [...]
Comparing repugnant conclusions: Response to the “near-perfect paradise vs. small hell” objection
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 against negative utilitarianism and similar minimalist views is that they would (supposedly) imply the wrong choice between the following populations: [...]
Tobias Baumann on the Sentience Institute Podcast
CRS researcher and co-founder Tobias Baumann recently appeared as a guest on the Sentience Institute Podcast. The podcast, hosted by researcher Jamie Harris, typically focuses on moral circle expansion and animal welfare. Tobias was featured in two episodes.
The first episode covers moral circle expansion, cause prioritization, and s-risks. In particular, Tobias explains what moral circle expansion is and presents arguments for and against prioritizing it. He then gives his take on longtermism, transformative AI, and whether we’re currently living at the hinge of history. Jamie and Tobias also consider the implications of accepting both longtermism and a focus on moral circle expansion, including what beings to advocate for and how to do it most effectively. Finally, Tobias argues that we should focus on reducing risks of astronomical suffering known as s-risks. [...]
We’re Hiring!
We’re now hiring for remote roles, including but not limited to operations, growth, and research.
S-risk impact distribution is double-tailed
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 that we should try to pursue interventions that are robust across both tails, and it tentatively suggests that, for a wide range of impartial value systems, it is safest to focus mostly on improving the quality of our future.
Introduction
What is the distribution of future expected suffering caused by human civilization? [...]
2020 End-of-Year Fundraiser
2020 has been an exciting year for us. We officially set up the Center for Reducing Suffering (CRS) as an organisation, launched this website, and published articles on suffering–focused ethics, s-risks, and cause prioritisation. We are now raising money to consolidate our financial situation.
We believe that CRS’s open-ended research programme on how to best reduce suffering fills an important gap. To help donors make informed choices, we are fully transparent about our values and our strategy — for more details on why we do what we do, see our Strategic Plan. [...]
On fat-tailed distributions and s-risks
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 lot less obvious than it seems at first sight. Specifically, a fat-tailed distribution need not imply that a single or even a few sources of suffering account for most future suffering in expectation, let alone that we should mostly prioritize a single or a few sources of suffering.
Introduction
In his post Is most expected suffering due to worst-case outcomes?, Tobias Baumann explores how skewed the distribution of future sources of suffering might be. His conclusion, in short, is that worst-case outcomes may well dominate, but that it is unclear to what degree we should expect future suffering to be concentrated in worst-case outcomes. [...]
Longtermism and animal advocacy
There is a common tendency among effective altruists to think of animal advocacy as having little value for improving the long-term future. Similarly, animal advocates often assume that longtermism has little relevance to their work. Yet this seems misguided: sufficient concern for nonhuman sentient beings is a key ingredient in how well the long-term future will go.
In this post, I will discuss whether animal advocacy – or, more generally, expanding the moral circle – should be a priority for longtermists, and outline implications of a longtermist perspective on animal advocacy. My starting point is a moral view that rejects speciesism and gives equal weight to the interests and well-being of future individuals. [...]
Note on Pummer’s “Worseness of nonexistence”
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 of Pummer’s argument
The primary aim of Pummer’s essay is to defend comparativism, the view that things can be better or worse for merely possible persons. I agree with Pummer that we should accept some version of comparativism — for example, it seems obvious to me that a state of affairs in which a single person is brought into existence only to be tortured for their entire life is worse than a state of affairs in which no individual is brought into existence (non-comparativists cannot say this, as they hold that the two states of affairs are not comparable). [...]