MODULE 2: More people

 AGENDA

1. Toby Ord
2. Get ready for debate Monday -- we'll decide on the topic at the end of class
3. Return quizzes

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Toby Ord, "Underpopulation or overpopulation?"

• ethicist at Oxford
• wrote a book called The Precipice about the major threats facing humanity
• article draws on an area of philosophy called "population ethics"

He is addressing people who worry about overpopulation

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Recap: two sets of worries

1960s concerns about overpopulation

Jan 11, 1960

1. Focus: high birthrate in very poor countries
2. Famine relief coming from rich countries
3. Resources will be depleted as a result (like the pasture)
4. Garrett Hardin, Paul Ehrlich, Kenneth Boulding, ZPG, etc.

2000s concerns about overpopulation

The overpopulation project

1. Focus: population in affluent countries
2. High consuming people, high consuming offspring

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Ord: all these worriers are thinking about population in the wrong way

We should look at COSTS of more people but also BENEFITS

• Intrinsic benefits of additional population -- value of the extra lives themselves
• Instrumental benefits of additional population -- value added in other ways

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Instrumental benefits

1. Material goods (a hammer, a donut)--"each hammer benefits a single user, so its value is roughly independent of the world's population" (Ord p. 3)
2. Information goods (song, book) -- "the value of an information good often increases with the size of the global population" (Ord p. 3)

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Intrinsic benefits of more people

• adding a person to the world is adding the good stuff that will constitute the person's life, and most lives are net positive
• bigger population, bigger total amount of life-value 

An argument that extra people do add extra value

• Would it be good if the world's population were still 7 billion instead of 8 billion?
• The British Isles thought experiment -- read on p. 5

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The plot thickens: what should we aim for, highest total value or highest average?

Problems with aiming for the highest average

1. What if people in cold countries are a little less happy.  
• They increase the total by reproducing
• But they bring down the average
2. On the average view they shouldn't reproduce
• which seems absurd

Problems with aiming for the highest total

1. If we keep doing that we could have this series--
• 8 billion ..... ave 7
• 9 billion ... ave 6
• 10 billion ... ave 5
• 11 billion ... ave 4
• 12 billion ... ave 3
2. On the total view we should keep going, even to the point of a huge population that's just barely happy
• which seems absurd

These are hard problems in population ethics!

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Our debate topic: Canvas