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A big chunk of my current best-guess political philosophy is somewhat libertarian, the rough intuition being that in many important respects, things very often go better when people make their own choices, especially about how much things are worth to them.

This is a helpful framework when the agents in your economy / political system are relatively static entities. But as far as I know it doesn't really have anything to say about cases where one agent might mold another agent's preferences, or decide which agents to bring into existence.

Some examples include:

  • having children
  • many aspects of how children are raised
  • building AI agents
in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun

Daniel Filan
Daniel Filan
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This suggests that if we want to figure out a liberal philosophy of building AI, we should look to find liberal philosophies of child-rearing.
in reply to Daniel Filan

Daniel Filan
Daniel Filan
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Also have I tried to sell you on the book "Rationalism, pluralism, and freedom" yet?
in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun

Daniel Filan
Daniel Filan
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It's one of these books where there's one idea and the rest of the book is not super interesting once you're sold on the idea but: academic.oup.com/book/2889
in reply to Daniel Filan

Daniel Filan
Daniel Filan
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It doesn't answer your worries as far as I know, but feels like it offers conceptual vocabulary that's relevant.
in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun

Kevin Gibbons
Kevin Gibbons
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Population ethics is the ~one area where my moral intuitions bottom out at "there is no actual answer here". Most questions of morality intuitively feel like there is a right answer but thinking about population ethics consistently leaves me with no solid foundations and nowhere to get foundations.

(Related: how should we think about farming animals for meat, given that mostly they wouldn't exist otherwise?)

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