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So we should discount value of future human life usine the DCF method? This is ridiculous. The DCF makes sense because receiving a dollar tomorrow doesn't have

So we should discount value of future human life usine the DCF method? This is ridiculous. The DCF makes sense because receiving a dollar tomorrow doesn't have the same value as receiving one today because in the second case I could invest it in the risk free asset and get more than one dollar tomorrow. This doesn't apply to human life. I understand the feeling of the author regarding designing policy aimed at future people but the argument is just plain wrong. I'm sure there is a non fallacious argument supporting this point though. Maybe a risk / black swan based one?

gautamcgoel 5y ago
"I don't agree with this argument but have no substantive criticism, so I'll call it ridiculous. Also, I'm sure there is a good argument against longtermism, I just don't know what it is. Maybe something involving <buzzword>?"
- adamisom 5y ago
  The substantive criticism is clear: discounting is questionable when it comes to human lives.
- randallsquared 5y ago
  "No substantive criticism" seems to be filling the same role as "ridiculous". Applying DCF doesn't seem ridiculous, but there is still an argument to be made about whether humans that exist now are each more important to our current plans than humans that (may) exist in two hundred, two thousand, or two million years.
csdvrx 5y ago
> This doesn't apply to human life. Yes it does, as the certainty even for someone healthy and alive today that they will remain alive as time goes can only decrease. Look at how the best plans go to trash for people saving when they're young, with grand plans to retire early and gorge on leisure/travel/etc, when they suddenly find out they have a terminal disease or some other health problem that at best reduce their ability to travel or enjoy their leisure (trekking in the desert on a wheelchair at 70? Or on painkillers? Might be possible, but certainly not as fun as doing that same thing at 20, if only because you'll find fewer people of your same age group willing to join in on the adventure)
- adamisom 5y ago
  Good point yet the appropriate discount rate has gone over time with better medicine and technology. So it comes down to: do you believe medicine and tech will keep advancing and if so, doesn’t that mean the discount rate will get ever smaller over time? I think it does.
  - csdvrx 5y ago
    While I agree with you that discount rate should decrease, I also believe that eventually we all get sick then die. Nothing short of a few radical breakthroughts can fix a strictly decreasing function.
    - jacobr1 5y ago
      And even if we have some breakthroughs for things like aging in general or cancer, attrition via accidents and other forms of physical destruction will always be a factor.
      - csdvrx 5y ago
        Physicial destruction for my software installs is no longer a problem with backups - so even that is not a given with sufficient technological breakthroughs!
- satellite2 5y ago
  First, it seems you didn't read the article, the comparison is not between various ages of a given person but between a bunch of human life now and a bunch of other life in the future. To make it even simpler, the DCF arises because you can simply show that receiving a dollar now is preferable to a dollar in the future. Can you even claim that about human life? If you cannot even find a good explanation for your theory how can you claim you can come with an equation for it? The DCF is a very precise way to compare mesurable quantities. How would you even define the value of a human life? You cannot randomly pick known equations and apply them to unrelated topics because there is a vague resemblance. This is supermarket philosophy. That's why it's ridiculous.
notahacker 5y ago
> The DCF makes sense because receiving a dollar tomorrow doesn't have the same value as receiving one today because in the second case I could invest it in the risk free asset and get more than one dollar tomorrow. This doesn't apply to human life. Sure it does, since it's Effective Altruism we're talking about, so it's (i) literally about socially investing money and (ii) it's choosing between spending it on things anticipated to generate compounding returns like economic growth or carbon control or health and education (all likely to have indirect long term benefits to solving whatever humanity's future challenges are too) versus spending it on stuff which serves no purpose in the foreseeable future but is hypothetically critical to the hypothetical risks faced by hypothetical humans in the hypothesised future. And also because even if cash couldn't be invested [risk free], humans would still apply a discount rate to the future because of uncertainty and time preference the author discusses. Needless to say, there's a lot of uncertainty about the needs of future generations, and just as it's pretty normal to care more about your own child than kids in a faraway land, it's pretty normal to consider hypothetical third millenium transhumans on Alpha Centurai essentially irrelevant to your priorities. (I mean, trying to avoid human extinction is pretty worthwhile for its own sake anyway; invoking billions upon billions of future humans spread across the galaxy because everyone thinks your project has an astronomically small chance of actually saving humanity is just Pascal's Wager in scifi form)
99_00 5y ago
You're right, the authors argument doesn't make sense. We should put off problems now because they will be cheaper and easier to solve in the future because technology would have improved. Putting resources into technology now instead of solving problems that can be put off will help to ensure that.

gautamcgoel 5y ago

"I don't agree with this argument but have no substantive criticism, so I'll call it ridiculous. Also, I'm sure there is a good argument against longtermism, I just don't know what it is. Maybe something involving <buzzword>?"

adamisom 5y ago
The substantive criticism is clear: discounting is questionable when it comes to human lives.
randallsquared 5y ago
"No substantive criticism" seems to be filling the same role as "ridiculous". Applying DCF doesn't seem ridiculous, but there is still an argument to be made about whether humans that exist now are each more important to our current plans than humans that (may) exist in two hundred, two thousand, or two million years.

csdvrx 5y ago

> This doesn't apply to human life. Yes it does, as the certainty even for someone healthy and alive today that they will remain alive as time goes can only decrease. Look at how the best plans go to trash for people saving when they're young, with grand plans to retire early and gorge on leisure/travel/etc, when they suddenly find out they have a terminal disease or some other health problem that at best reduce their ability to travel or enjoy their leisure (trekking in the desert on a wheelchair at 70? Or on painkillers? Might be possible, but certainly not as fun as doing that same thing at 20, if only because you'll find fewer people of your same age group willing to join in on the adventure)

adamisom 5y ago
Good point yet the appropriate discount rate has gone over time with better medicine and technology. So it comes down to: do you believe medicine and tech will keep advancing and if so, doesn’t that mean the discount rate will get ever smaller over time? I think it does.
- csdvrx 5y ago
  While I agree with you that discount rate should decrease, I also believe that eventually we all get sick then die. Nothing short of a few radical breakthroughts can fix a strictly decreasing function.
  - jacobr1 5y ago
    And even if we have some breakthroughs for things like aging in general or cancer, attrition via accidents and other forms of physical destruction will always be a factor.
    - csdvrx 5y ago
      Physicial destruction for my software installs is no longer a problem with backups - so even that is not a given with sufficient technological breakthroughs!
satellite2 5y ago
First, it seems you didn't read the article, the comparison is not between various ages of a given person but between a bunch of human life now and a bunch of other life in the future. To make it even simpler, the DCF arises because you can simply show that receiving a dollar now is preferable to a dollar in the future. Can you even claim that about human life? If you cannot even find a good explanation for your theory how can you claim you can come with an equation for it? The DCF is a very precise way to compare mesurable quantities. How would you even define the value of a human life? You cannot randomly pick known equations and apply them to unrelated topics because there is a vague resemblance. This is supermarket philosophy. That's why it's ridiculous.

notahacker 5y ago

> The DCF makes sense because receiving a dollar tomorrow doesn't have the same value as receiving one today because in the second case I could invest it in the risk free asset and get more than one dollar tomorrow. This doesn't apply to human life. Sure it does, since it's Effective Altruism we're talking about, so it's (i) literally about socially investing money and (ii) it's choosing between spending it on things anticipated to generate compounding returns like economic growth or carbon control or health and education (all likely to have indirect long term benefits to solving whatever humanity's future challenges are too) versus spending it on stuff which serves no purpose in the foreseeable future but is hypothetically critical to the hypothetical risks faced by hypothetical humans in the hypothesised future. And also because even if cash couldn't be invested [risk free], humans would still apply a discount rate to the future because of uncertainty and time preference the author discusses. Needless to say, there's a lot of uncertainty about the needs of future generations, and just as it's pretty normal to care more about your own child than kids in a faraway land, it's pretty normal to consider hypothetical third millenium transhumans on Alpha Centurai essentially irrelevant to your priorities. (I mean, trying to avoid human extinction is pretty worthwhile for its own sake anyway; invoking billions upon billions of future humans spread across the galaxy because everyone thinks your project has an astronomically small chance of actually saving humanity is just Pascal's Wager in scifi form)

99_00 5y ago

You're right, the authors argument doesn't make sense. We should put off problems now because they will be cheaper and easier to solve in the future because technology would have improved. Putting resources into technology now instead of solving problems that can be put off will help to ensure that.