Toby Ord

The Reversal Test: Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied Ethics*

Suppose that we develop a medically safe and affordable means of enhancing human intelligence. For concreteness, we shall assume that the technology is genetic engineering (either somatic or germ line), although the argument we will present does not depend on the technological implementation. For simplicity, we shall speak of enhancing “intelligence” or “cognitive capacity,” but we do not presuppose that intelligence is best conceived of as a unitary attribute. Our considerations could be applied to specific cognitive abilities such as verbal fluency, memory, abstract reasoning, social intelligence, spatial cognition, numerical ability, or musical talent. It will emerge that the form of argument that we use can be applied much more generally to help assess other kinds of enhancement technologies as well as other kinds of reform. However, to give a detailed illustration of how the argument form works, we will focus on the prospect of cognitive enhancement. Many ethical questions could be asked with regard to this prospect, but we shall address only one: do we have reason to believe that the long-term consequences of human cognitive enhancement would be, on balance, good? This may not be the only morally relevant question—

The scourge: moral implications of natural embryo loss.

It is often claimed that from the moment of conception embryos have the same moral status as adult humans. This claim plays a central role in many arguments against abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem cell research. In what follows, I show that this claim leads directly to an unexpected and unwelcome conclusion: that natural embryo loss is one of the greatest problems of our time and that we must do almost everything in our power to prevent it. I examine the responses available to those who hold that embryos have full moral status and conclude that they cannot avoid the force of this argument without giving up this key claim.

Probing the improbable: methodological challenges for risks with low probabilities and high stakes

Some risks have extremely high stakes. For example, a worldwide pandemic or asteroid impact could potentially kill more than a billion people. Comfortingly, scientific calcultions often put very low probabilities on the occurrence of such catastrophes. In this paper, we argue that there are important new methodological problems which arise when assessing global catastrophic risks and we focus on a problem regarding probability estimation. When an expert provides a calculation of the probability of an outcome, they are really providing the probability of the outcome occurring, given that their argument is watertight. However, their argument may fail for a number of reasons, such as a flaw in the underlying theory, a flaw in the modelling of the problem or a mistake in the calculations. If the probability estimate given by an argument is dwarfed by the chance that the argument itself is flawed, then the estimate is suspect. We develop this idea formally, explaining how it differs from the related distinction between model and parameter uncertainty. Using the risk estimates from the Large Hadron Collider as a test case, we show how serious the problem can be when it comes to catastrophic risks and how best to address it.

Universal health coverage and intersectoral action for health: key messages from Disease Control Priorities, 3rd edition

The World Bank is publishing nine volumes of Disease Control Priorities, 3rd edition (DCP3) between 2015 and 2018. Volume 9, Improving Health and Reducing Poverty, summarises the main messages from all the volumes and contains cross-cutting analyses. This Review draws on all nine volumes to convey conclusions. The analysis in DCP3 is built around 21 essential packages that were developed in the nine volumes. Each essential package addresses the concerns of a major professional community (eg, child health or surgery) and contains a mix of intersectoral policies and health-sector interventions. 71 intersectoral prevention policies were identified in total, 29 of which are priorities for early introduction. Interventions within the health sector were grouped onto five platforms (population based, community level, health centre, first-level hospital, and referral hospital). DCP3 defines a model concept of essential universal health coverage (EUHC) with 218 interventions that provides a starting point for country-specific analysis of priorities. Assuming steady-state implementation by 2030, EUHC in lower-middle-income countries would reduce premature deaths by an estimated 4·2 million per year. Estimated total costs prove substantial: about 9·1% of (current) gross national income (GNI) in low-income countries and 5·2% of GNI in lower-middle-income countries. Financing provision of continuing intervention against chronic conditions accounts for about half of estimated incremental costs. For lower-middle-income countries, the mortality reduction from implementing the EUHC can only reach about half the mortality reduction in non-communicable diseases called for by the Sustainable Development Goals. Full achievement will require increased investment or sustained intersectoral action, and actions by finance ministries to tax smoking and polluting emissions and to reduce or eliminate (often large) subsidies on fossil fuels appear of central importance. DCP3 is intended to be a model starting point for analyses at the country level, but country-specific cost structures, epidemiological needs, and national priorities will generally lead to definitions of EUHC that differ from country to country and from the model in this Review. DCP3 is particularly relevant as achievement of EUHC relies increasingly on greater domestic finance, with global developmental assistance in health focusing more on global public goods. In addition to assessing effects on mortality, DCP3 looked at outcomes of EUHC not encompassed by the disability-adjusted life-year metric and related cost-effectiveness analyses. The other objectives included financial protection (potentially better provided upstream by keeping people out of the hospital rather than downstream by paying their hospital bills for them), stillbirths averted, palliative care, contraception, and child physical and intellectual growth. The first 1000 days after conception are highly important for child development, but the next 7000 days are likewise important and often neglected.

Symmetric Decomposition of Asymmetric Games

We introduce new theoretical insights into two-population asymmetric games allowing for an elegant symmetric decomposition into two single population symmetric games. Specifically, we show how an asymmetric bimatrix game (A,B) can be decomposed into its symmetric counterparts by envisioning and investigating the payoff tables (A and B) that constitute the asymmetric game, as two independent, single population, symmetric games. We reveal several surprising formal relationships between an asymmetric two-population game and its symmetric single population counterparts, which facilitate a convenient analysis of the original asymmetric game due to the dimensionality reduction of the decomposition. The main finding reveals that if (x,y) is a Nash equilibrium of an asymmetric game (A,B), this implies that y is a Nash equilibrium of the symmetric counterpart game determined by payoff table A, and x is a Nash equilibrium of the symmetric counterpart game determined by payoff table B. Also the reverse holds and combinations of Nash equilibria of the counterpart games form Nash equilibria of the asymmetric game. We illustrate how these formal relationships aid in identifying and analysing the Nash structure of asymmetric games, by examining the evolutionary dynamics of the simpler counterpart games in several canonical examples.

A New Counterexample to Prioritarianism

Prioritarianism is the moral view that a fixed improvement in someone’s well-being matters more the worse off they are. Its supporters argue that it best captures our intuitions about unequal distributions of well-being. I show that prioritarianism sometimes recommends acts that will make things more unequal while simultaneously lowering the total well-being and making things worse for everyone ex ante. Intuitively, there is little to recommend such acts and I take this to be a serious counterexample for prioritarianism.

Response to Open Peer Commentaries on “The Scourge: Moral Implications of Natural Embryo Loss”

Many of the commentaries have made similar points regarding the nature of full moral status, so I shall begin by addressing these together. They argue that my representation of the Claim is stronger than many proponents of full moral status would accept (Ord 2008). Robert Card (2008) says that I assume that it is equally bad to lose human life at all stages. Russell DiSilvestro (2008) says that I assume a flawed principle that he calls (M). Marianne Burda (2008) says that I assume that life must be saved or prolonged at all costs. Christopher Dodsworth and colleagues (2008) say that I assume embryos have as much to lose as adults. I assume none of these things. The argument I put forward works just as well for more subdued claims about the moral status of the embryo. All that is required is to find the badness of embryo death to be at least roughly comparable to the badness of adult death, so that when a proponent of full moral status hears that 30 times more of our moral equals die of spontaneous abortion than die of cancer, their views would require urgent action if such action is possible. The comparison between the badness of adult death and of fetal or embryonic death is made routinely in the literature in support of restrictions upon abortion, in vitro fertilization (IVF) and stem cell research, and it appears to be a mainstream view worthy of serious attention.1 If a large proportion of those who claim that the embryo has full moral status are none-the-less quite sure that each embryo death is much less bad than an adult death, then they owe it to their readers to be more clear about this. Let us now consider the other points of each commentary in turn.