| the minimum hedonic capacities needed to motivate fitness. Anything more would waste resources that animals could apply to growth and reproduction. Increasing hedonic capacities is an engineering problem that could be solved with advances in neuroscience. 150 years ago, few believed that anesthesia was possible. It's now possible to undergo invasive surgery not only painlessly, but even euphorically. An entirely euphoric life is no longer implausible. Once we understand the underlying biology of happiness in the brain, people could choose to experience much higher levels of welfare than they do now.
If so, future life-years would have higher values than current life-years. Projects that ensure the existence of future lives could then be most cost-effective. In fact, these projects are cost-effective even if we assume no improvement in welfare. For instance, even if one expects no improvement in welfare, a short human future, and a constant population, projects to deflect extinction-level asteroids cost $0.20 per future human life-year. Nonhumans would also benefit from such projects, as there is an annual 1/billion probability of an asteroid impact that extinguishes all animal life. If one assumes there are now a trillion sentient nonhumans on Earth, the cost of these projects is under $0.00000001 per life-year. And asteroids seem like a small risk compared to others.
Given the range of $0.00000001 to $10,000 among plausible projects, donating an additional 10% of one's income seems much less important than choosing the most cost-effective projects. How can I make better choices?
1) I should donate my money now to the best project I can think of.
2) I should have the wisest person or persons I know donate my money now to the best project they can think of.
3) I should invest the money now and do 1 or 2 in the future when I (they) are wiser.
There are good reasons to prefer 2 over 1. It's unlikely I'm the best qualified person to make ethical decisions. I could be better off finding experts to tell me what to do. I don't second-guess my plumber, so it's not clear why I should second-guess ethicists.
One reason to prefer 3 over 2 would be if the market rate of return on an investment exceeds the social rate of return on a donation. This is unlikely. If I invest in the stock market, I should expect a 10% annual return. If I donate to a charity, it can invest my money in fundraising with a typical return of 500%. Or my donation can be spent on projects with other compounding effects. For instance, a vegetarian project produces vegetarians who promote vegetarianism to their friends. There may even be "tipping points" that accelerate success for some projects.
A better reason for 3 would be if we become sufficiently wiser over time. My donations last year were at least 100x more cost-effective than donations I made 10 years ago. Had I invested my money 10 years ago, rather than donating it, my money would have done more good today. I may get wiser in the future. If the projects I pick each year are sufficiently more cost-effective than those I would have picked the previous year (from the numbers above, at least 490% more cost-effective), then I ought to invest my money today and donate it later.
This deferral could extend well beyond my death, if I will my funds to a committee. In principle this means that I (or my committee) should defer donating until I/they have good reason to believe that an available project is not only the most cost-effective project at that time, but the most cost-effective project of all time.
Projects that reduce existential risk could be such projects - because they make possible all future projects. Whether I ought to donate to risk-reducing projects now or invest now and donate later would depend on how risky our time is compared to future ones. |
