Astral Codex Ten

Parfit

4 min read

Parfit

Article

Parfit is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between July 15, 2022 and June 03, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “Haidt isn’t as unbelievably rigorous about this as Plantinga or Parfit”; “But Parfit says it’s B - C, because this kills not only the extra 1 billion people”; “Mill, Hare, or Parfit could be good sources here”. It most often appears alongside America, Brazil, India.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: July 15, 2022
  • Last seen: June 03, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Your Book Review: The Righteous Mind
July 15, 2022 · Original source
I’m a big fan of this. I read a lot of political or philosophical writing that seems almost designed to make it unclear what the author is trying to say, and I find it extremely wearing. I appreciate an author who will just state the claims and then try to back them up, rather than meandering about between anecdote, argument, autobiography, and rant and hoping you stitch together something out of the vague vibes. Haidt isn’t as unbelievably rigorous about this as Plantinga or Parfit, whose numbered key statements make piecing together their arguments and examining them in detail a pleasure, but the chapter summaries and clear three-part structure are great.
Book Review: What We Owe The Future
August 23, 2022 · Original source
Survival is also simple. MacAskill introduces it with a riddle of Derek Parfit’s. Assuming there are 10 billion people in the world, consider the following outcomes:
MacAskill concludes that there’s no solution besides agreeing to create as many people as possible even though they will all have happiness 0.001. He points out that happiness 0.001 might not be that bad. People seem to avoid suicide out of stubbornness or moral objections, so “the lowest threshold at which living is still slightly better than dying” doesn’t necessarily mean the level of depression we associate with most real-world suicides. It could still be a sort of okay life. Derek Parfit describes it as “listening to Muzak and eating potatoes”. He writes:
Inline links: eating potatoes
Clearly A is better than B is better than C. But which is bigger: the difference between A and B, or the difference between B and C? You might think A - B - after all, there’s a difference of 9 billion deaths, vs. a difference of only 1 billion deaths between B and C. But Parfit says it’s B - C, because this kills not only the extra 1 billion people, but also the 50 quadrillion people who will one day live in the far future. So preventing human extinction is really important.
Open Thread 332
June 03, 2024 · Original source
3: Lyman Stone has responded to my response to him. I think it just doubles down on the same points he made the first time, so I might not get around to writing a full response. I’ll just say that first, I think it could benefit from better understanding of the distinctions between virtue ethics, rule utilitarianism, two-level utilitarianism - Mill, Hare, or Parfit could be good sources here, or even just some of the blog posts I linked. Second, Stone seems confused that I’ve blocked him on Twitter. I want to stress that I never block people just because I disagree with them; the only reason I block people is because of a history of doxxing, which Stone has, and which angers me for personal reasons. I think in an ideal world this would merit a permaban from Twitter, but all I can do on my own is block him from reading my stuff.
Inline links: has responded to