Population Ethics: What World Do We Want?

A niche, seemingly overly technical and abstract field in academic philosophy--population ethics--may have enormous implications for philanthropy, diet, career choice, and many other issues dedicated people grapple with.

Charity A provides contraception and family planning services to the very poor, allowing them to have substantially lower birth rates. There are less individuals per family, but each of them are somewhat happier.

Charity B provides educational and health interventions to improve the lives of the very poor. It does not affect their number, but improves their lives.

Charity C primarily provides health interventions that "saves" newborn's lives--preventing 0-12month olds from dying. If fully funded, families will be larger. Less babies will die unnecessarily, but each of the remaining children would have less happy lives than if they had less siblings.

Which charity is more effective? Well, unless we have more numbers, it seems impossible to tell with just qualitative information. But do all three charities do any good? Intuitively the answer is clearly "yes" for all three, but this answer may lead to a contradiction.

Annie is trying to decide whether she wants to be vegetarian. She concludes that she does not like the way chickens live and die in factory farms, so she stops buying meat. But she also knows that the alternative to chickens raised for meat isn't happy, free-range chickens, but instead, chickens that would otherwise have not existed. Did Annie act correctly in her decision?

Suppose Annie later learns that cows (of the kind she's otherwise likely to buy) live net positive lives. Should she start eating beef again? If not, has Annie acted wrongly in preventing the lives of happy animals?

Yacob is deciding whether to do deep research on climate change, or to work on an immediate problem like malaria. He knows that his comparative advantage is clearly in researching climate change. But he also guesses that the largest impact of his research will not come into play until 200 years in the future, far after any specific person he currently cares about has died. Should Yacob do research that only helps people in the distant future? If he chooses otherwise, who, exactly, has he harmed?

Population Ethics is a philosophical attempt to answer all of these questions in a reasonably cohesive manner. Prepare to have your intuitions challenged, probed, attacked, possibly reaffirmed, and maybe rebuilt!

Tentative Schedule:

7:15PM-7:30PM: Meet up, mingle,network, order food if applicable.

7:30PM-8:30PM: Split off into discussion groups to talk about population ethics.

8:30PM-9:00PM: Hang out, mingle, eat food if ordered.

https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/2/d/c/4/600_462071716.jpeg