Effective altruism 1: QALYs, longtermism, Jeremy Bentham’s embalmed corpse, and ethical elitism
Matters of Life and Death
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The Quality Adjusted Life Year
Every life, every individual has an equal value. A good act is one which maximizes the total amount of pleasure in the world. Jeremy Bentham's big idea was that the purpose of life was to maximize pleasure and to minimize suffering. And so this led to the idea of what was sometimes called the hedonic calculus. But does it stop at the world? Do we include other beings? What happens if robots turn out to be sentient? So there's a real problem about the extent.
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