William MacAskill: belief

Transcript context

…St. Petersburg paradox. Exactly, yes. We’re getting into all sorts of messes there. Then, in this case, it’s not an example of very low probabilities, very large amounts of value. Then your view would have to argue that, “Well, the future, as it is, is like close to the upper bound of value,” in order to make sense of the idea that you shouldn’t flip 50/50. I think, actually, that position would be pretty hard to defend, is my guess. My thought is that, probably, within a situation where any view you say ends up having pretty bad, implausible consequences. Your response sounds very ad hoc to me. Why not just say, in matters of the very large, utilitarian kinds of moral reasoning just don’t apply. They’re always embedded in some degree of partiality. The 51 percent–49 percent bet is not great for our partiality toward ourselves, and we just can’t go there. It’s not that there’s some other theory that’s going to tie up all the conundrums in a nice bundle, but simply that there are limits to moral reasoning, and we cannot fully transcend the notion of being partial because moral reasoning is embedded in that context of being partial about some things.…

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