Giving Compass' Take:

• Understanding how individuals and groups weight expected and normative goods and bads can help to prioritize social projects. 

• What are the practical applications of this theory? How can it be used to create effective change? 

• Learn the basics of effective altruism.

Descriptive ethics is the empirical study of people's values and ethical views, e.g. via a survey or questionnaire. This overview focuses on beliefs about population ethics and exchange rates between goods (e.g. happiness) and bads (e.g. suffering). Two variables seem particularly important and action-guiding in this context, especially when trying to make informed choices about how to best shape the long-term future: 1) One’s normative goods-to-bads ratio (N-ratio) and 2) one’s expected bads-to-goods ratio (E-ratio).

Some interventions increase both the quality of future civilization as well as its probability. Promoting international cooperation, for instance, likely reduces extinction risks as well as s-risks. However, it seems implausible for one single intervention to be optimally cost-effective at accomplishing both types of objectives at the same time. To the extent to which there is a tradeoff between different goals relating to shaping the long-term future, we should make a well-considered choice about how to prioritize among them.

I suggest that this choice can be informed by two important variables: One’s normative bads-to-goods ratio (N-ratio) and one’s empirically expected goods-to-bads ratio (E-ratio). Taken together, these variables can serve as a framework for choosing between different options to shape the long-term future.

Read the source article at on descriptive population ethics by David Althaus Effective Altruism Forum