Making decisions under moral uncertainty

Abstract

While working on an (upcoming) post about a new way to think about moral uncertainty, I unexpectedly discovered that, as best I could tell: There was no single post on LessWrong or the EA Forum that very explicitly (e.g., with concrete examples) overviewed what seem to be the most prominent approaches to making decisions under moral uncertainty (more specifically, those covered in Will MacAskill’s 2014 thesis). There was no (easily findable and explicit) write-up of how to handle simultaneous moral and empirical uncertainty. (What I propose is arguably quite obvious, but still seems worth writing up explicitly.) There was no (easily findable and sufficiently thorough) write-up of applying sensitivity analysis and value of information analysis to situations of moral uncertainty. I therefore decided to write a series of three posts, each of which addressed one of those apparent “gaps”. My primary aim is to synthesise and make accessible various ideas that are currently mostly buried in the philosophical literature, but I also think it’s plausible that some of the ideas in some of the posts (though not this first one) haven’t been explicitly explored before. I expect that these posts are most easily understood if read in order, but each post should also have value if read in isolation, especially for readers who are already familiar with key ideas from work on moral uncertainty.