I'm fairly confident that giving to certain health charities is an effective way of reducing child mortality. One thing, though, that makes me uncertain about giving to them are questions about the consequences for the number of people who will be born in future. If the net result is fewer lives overall being lived to adulthood (because, for example, of lower fertility), then there is a decision to be made about whether this matters and how to make any trade-offs involved. I find the ethical questions involved very difficult to answer with any confidence. So, I'm wondering how any aspiring effective altruists here have dealt with them.

I would break this down into 4 questions (not exhaustive, but the ones I find most pressing):
1) What are the consequences for future population growth of giving to health charities like the Against Malaria Foundation?
2) If their work leads to fewer people ever being born, does that have to be weighed against the positive effects of their work? (lives saved now, more of those being born in future surviving infancy, less illness, less bereavement, perhaps parents being able to care more about their children when there is less danger that they will die, perhaps faster economic development etc) If so, how?
3) If the number of people to be born does matter, is it better to give money instead to charities working on reducing the chances that some catastrophic event will kill a large proportion of or all humans?
4) How about animal population ethics? How will the work of this charity affect the number of animals that will live, as well as the conditions they live in, and how should this be factored in to deciding whether or not to give to the charity?

To be honest, I think I already know the conclusions I would like to get to – I would like to believe that giving to charities like the AMF is a very positive use of money, and that improving their effectiveness would be very worthwhile. It would be good to believe that their work, whose immediate effects are well-evidenced and measurable, allows me to do a lot of good with my donations. But I hope this won't get in the way of me thinking it all through in a sincere and open-minded way.

So, have any of you wrestled with these questions? How did you deal with them? I'm particularly interested in question (1), which I haven't seen looked at much, and question (2) as far as it relates to this concrete decision (giving or not) rather than a more abstract population ethics; there's already quite a bit to read about questions (3) and (4). Anyway, I'd very much like to know how you have brought it all together in making your decisions.

Welcome, Benjamin!

I think humans are a rounding error in the calculations because there are so many fewer of them than animals. Therefore, while points 1-3 are certainly a concern for human population questions, I think human-population issues aren't the most important.

As far as animals, I think it's best to reduce populations of small wild animals as much as possible, because I think the lives of small animals aren't worth living. This is especially true when you consider that almost all offspring of small animals die (potentially painfully) shortly after birth.


In the short term, this means that measures to reduce insect populations without causing too much short-term suffering are probably good, but in the longer term, the most important thing we can do to reduce wild-animal suffering is not to spread it further. Therefore, I think we should build concern for wild-animal suffering with an eye toward influencing the future. There's a new organization called Animal Ethics with this aim, and I'd be glad to give you more details on this if you're interested.

Anyway, I've sort of derailed the thread. But unless you give humans a lot more weight than animals, it seems implausible that focusing on present-day humans would be an optimal use of money except possibly through the indirect effects.

One possible view:

1) self-aware beings having options is good (the more there are, the better); there should be a big future for intelligent minds who can decide what kinds of experiences they will accept and what kinds they won't

2) the number of other beings (who cannot make such choices for themselves) should be reduced as much as possible, especially if we expect them to suffer (this includes nonhuman animals -> develop in-vitro meat, don't spread/simulate animal minds unnecessarily etc.)

There could be exceptions, e.g. if you program a self-aware mind specifially to accept suffering, as a form of compulsion. Or you could have minds incapable of choice, but practically completely free from suffering. But with the exception of such speculative outliers, this should lead to net-positive outcomes and reduce self-serving paternalistic biases.

It is very speculative how charities like AMF affect the total number of humans/other beings in the future, and nunhuman animals are underrepresented and their numbers are high.

If you also value the welfare of nonhuman animals, the poor meat eater problem is definitely another interesting thing to consider when thinking about the long-term effects of human development.

I think population ethics is some thing very sophisticated for antispeciescist Utilitarians who deal with expected value. We should take in mind that a higher/lower world population might affect our Utilitarian Future. It might have influence on x-risk or on humankind's ability or will to colonize the space. Overpopulation might cause poverty and therefore obstruct space colonization or a greater population will also increase the amount of scientists working towards it. May be Overpopulation will create so much complexe problems that there will be more technical research in order to solve them. So Overpopulation might push Singularity forwards. To me, the latter would be not a good idea because of Dystopian Future Scenarios. I think, you should have a certain opinion on many other things before you occupy yourself with population ethics.

I agree with Humphrey that a dominant consideration will be how population affects colonization chances (where I think higher likelihood of colonization is worse). However, the sign isn't at all obvious to me. Bigger population means faster tech progress, but does that increase or decrease chances for colonization? It means tech-enabled threats to humanity will come faster, but so will the solutions. I have no idea in which direction the total impact lies. Similar things apply for poverty, education, etc.: The dominant impacts are through their effects on colonization likelihood, but I don't know in which direction the effects are stronger.