Vidur Kapur
Bio
Forecasting (at Good Judgment, Swift Centre, Samotsvety, Sentinel, RAND and a hedge fund), biosecurity research, animal welfare, AI risk, utilitarianism. I studied medicine and public health.
Comments39
Hi Stephen. I’m also lacto-vegetarian. I take Vitamin D supplements (mainly for the reasons that they’re recommended for everyone) and an occasional Vitamin B complex or B3 supplement. I’ve considered taking algae-based Omega-3 supplements (in the form of DHA and EPA) but I don’t think the evidence is strong enough to justify the expense. My iron levels have consistently been fine without supplementation. I’ve found VeganHealth.org to be useful (I’d vouch for the quality of their evidence reviews). Ginny Messina is also worth reading (https://www.theveganrd.com/vegan-nutrition-101/vegan-nutrition-primers/recommended-supplements-a-vegan-nutrition-primer/).
In addition to Fin's considerations and the excellent post by Jacy Anthis, I find Michael Dickens' analysis to be useful and instructive. What We Owe The Future also contains a discussion of these issues.
Agree that not all EAs are utilitarians (though a majority of EAs who answer community surveys do appear to be utilitarian). I was just describing why it is that people who (as you said in many of your comments) think some capacities (like the capacity to suffer) are morally relevant still, despite this, also describe themselves as philosophically committed to some form of impartiality. I think Amber’s comment also covers this nicely.
That’s a good question, and is part of what Rethink Priorities are working on in their moral weight project! A hedonistic utilitarian would say that if fulfilment of the fish’s desire brings them greater pleasure (even after correcting for the intensity of pleasure perhaps generally being lower in fish) than the fulfilment of the human’s desire, then satisfying the fish’s desire should be prioritised. The key thing is that one unit of pleasure matters equally, regardless of the species of the being experiencing it.
Bentham’s view was that the ability to suffer means that we ought to give at least some moral weight to a being (their capacity to suffer determining how much weight they are given). Singer’s view, when he was a preference utilitarian, was that we should equally consider the comparable interests of all sentient beings. Every classical utilitarian will give equal weight to one unit of pleasure or one unit of suffering (taken on their own), regardless of the species, gender or race of the being experiencing the pleasure or suffering. This is a pretty mainstream view within EA. If it means (as MacAskill suggests it might, in his latest book) that the total well-being of fish outweighs the total well-being of humanity, then this is not an objectionable conclusion (and to think otherwise would be speciesist, on this view).
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been feeling this way, Linch. I’ve also been facing some of the difficulties that you describe. I’ll try to do the best I can but would welcome the input of people who are more knowledgeable than me!
In the professional work of the English Utilitarians, what stands out to me is perseverance. When Bentham’s Panopticon project (which was meant to be an improvement on the often cruel treatment of prisoners) failed to get off the ground, he moved on to other things such as education reform (advocating for an end to corporal punishment, for example). Similarly, when the ‘Philosophical Radicals’ (a loosely knit group of parliamentarians and writers associated with utilitarianism) split in the early 1840s, Mill took the opportunity to do some “deep work” and publish A System of Logic, which had been on the back burner for over a decade.
Friendship and companionship were also important. Mill, over the same period, deepened his companionship and collaboration with Harriet Taylor, which was to be a source of great happiness to him for the rest of his life. After her death in Avignon, he would spend six months a year working close to the cemetery where she was buried. Meanwhile, Henry Sidgwick’s efforts to improve the higher education of women — which he sometimes felt did not progress rapidly enough — were supported by his wife Eleanor, and whenever he had a crisis he would always seek the company of his friends in the Cambridge Apostles (a discussion group in which he felt he could freely express his views), particularly John Addington Symonds. Symonds happened to be gay, and so Sidgwick (who often advised Symonds about what to publish) regularly had to confront dilemmas about how quickly the established moral order should challenged. (His personal experiences here may have influenced his noticeably cautious approach to the utilitarian reform of public morality in The Methods of Ethics.) Again, friendship and open discussion were indispensable to him here.
I’d be interested to learn more about the Benthamite Edwin Chadwick’s life after he was forced to retire from the Civil Service after his stint as Commissioner of the General Board of Health (following the passage of the Public Health Act of 1848, inspired by his report on sanitation). He seems to have attracted a great deal of backlash from various interest groups. One thing he did do was correspond with Florence Nightingale, who wanted to resurrect his efforts, so he did not entirely give up (despite the direct effect of the 1848 Public Health Act, partly due to lax enforcement, being modest at best).
There has historically been some overlap between the charities that Open Phil and the Animal Welfare Fund have supported, and ACE's recommendations, which suggests that there is a degree of consensus. See also the discussion here, in which some endorse the changes that ACE has made to its methodology.
In England, secular ethics isn't really taught until Year 9 (age 13-14) or Year 10, as part of Religious Studies classes. Even then, it might be dependent on the local council, the type of school or even the exam boards/modules that are selected by the school. And by Year 10, students in some schools can opt out of taking religious studies for their GCSEs.
Anecdotally, I got into EA (at least earlier than I would have) because my high school religious studies teacher (c. 2014) could see that I had utilitarian intuitions (e.g. in discussions about animal experimentation and assisted dying) and gave me a copy of Practical Ethics to read. I then read The Life You Can Save.