Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio.
This is:Shelly Kagan - readings for Ethics and the Future seminar (spring 2021) , published by velutvulpes on the LessWrong.
This is a linkpost for
This is a list of the readings from Shelly Kagan's seminar, “Ethics and the Future,” taught at Yale in Spring 2021.
See the original linked Google Doc for full introduction.
Background on Existential Risks:
1. Toby Ord, The Precipice, Chapters 3-6 and Appendices C and D (about 124 pages)
The Basic Case for Longtermism:
1. Perhaps start with this very brief overview: Todd, “Future Generations and Their Moral Significance” (about 7 pages), which can be found online at:/
2. Then look at the somewhat longer (but still breezy) exposition in Ord, The Precipice, Intro and Chapters 1-2, and Appendix E (65 pgs.)
3. Then read Chapters 1 and 3 from Nick Beckstead’s dissertation, On the Overwhelming Importance of Shaping the Far Future (about 44 pages)
4. Finally, Greaves and MacAskill, “The Case for Strong Longtermism” (about 25).
That will come to about 140 pages, most of which reads fairly quickly. If you want even more (consider what is listed next as recommended but not required)--look at:
5. Bostrom, “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority” (17 pages), and also
6. Bostrom, “Astronomical Waste” (10 pages)
7. Finally, there is a passage from Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, that is quoted regularly in the longtermist literature (for example, by Beckstead). If you would like to see it in its original context, it is on pp. 453-4 (2 pages).
All of these things can be found in the Files folder for the class, other than the Todd, the Ord, and the Parfit.
The Social Discount Rate:
1. Start with Cowen, Discount Rates Table, a short passage from his Stubborn Attachments, which gives a quick sense of how even a “modest” discount rate effectively wipes out the significance of the long term future (1 page).
2. Then Parfit, Reasons and Persons, Appendix F (7 pages), for arguments against the social discount rate.
3. Cowen and Parfit, “Against the Social Discount Rate,” (from Peter Laslett & James S. Fishkin (eds.) Justice between age groups and generations, Yale University Press: New Haven, 1992, pp. 144–161) repeats much of the Parfit but gives some additional arguments. To (mostly) avoid the repetition, only read the two introductory pages (pp. 144-145) and the section on “economic arguments” (pp. 150-158). Though the first such economic argument (on opportunity costs) very closely follows the earlier Parfit, it does add some extra details. (11 pages.)
4. Then Ord, The Precipice, Appendix A (6 pages) for further discussion.
5. Next, read Greaves, “Discounting for Public Policy,” section 7, which is pages 404-409 (5 pages). That’s the bit on the “pure” discount rate. (The rest of the paper isn’t required, but is recommended for anyone who would like a thorough (though a bit technical) survey of some of the economics debates on the discount rate.)
6. Finally, Mogensen, “The Only Ethical Argument for Positive Delta” (33 pages).
That’s about 62 pages.
7. If you are interested in further discussion of the discount rate from an economist’s perspective, you could take a look at Broome, “Discounting the Future,” (29 pages) though this is primarily on discounting with regard to future resources, not pure discounting of future welfare, so it is only recommended.
Population Ethics I:
Parfit, Reasons and Persons, Chapters 16-18, and Appendix G (70 pages).
Population Ethics II:
1. Start with Boonin, “How to Solve the Non-Identity Problem” (30 pages)
2. Next, Harman, “Can We Harm and Benefit in Creating?” (25 pages)
3. Then McMahan, “Climate Change, War, and the Non-Identity Problem” (27)
4. Beckstead, Overwhelming Importance, Chapter 4 (23 pages)
5. Ord, The Precipice, Appendix B (6 pages)
6. Finally, a few pages from Kagan, “Singer on Killing Animals...
view more