Comment by cvigoe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cvigoe | Hacker News Reader

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Certainly, it is important to make efforts to be cognizant of negative ripple effects arising from even the most altruistic of endeavors, but it is also necessary to actually make decisions. The Horizon Effect[1] is unavoidable in situations like you are describing, but the most we can do is act conscientiously and avoid paralysis due to the inherent uncertainty that arises from our actions. I know this isn't the exact point you were raising, but reading in between your comment lies what I suspect is a hyper awareness of consequence, and I wanted to share my thoughts on that.

In response to the specific fear you mention, while this may be possible, I would consider it more important to successfully eliminate Malaria than to not do so for fear of the negative repercussions you raise. I think it is both more uncertain and more unlikely for those negative consequences to materialize in such a way that leaves humanity and leaders unable to respond adequately.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_effect

(edited for typos)

Good response!

It is certainly good to consider this perspective, thanks for the insight and link.

To me it seems that potential negative consequences of continued rapid population growth in Africa aren't so nebulous and beyond the horizon, we are already seeing them materialize, certainly there are other problems that need to solved as well, like certain elements of society attempting to browbeat others into thinking these societal disruptions are normal or acceptable or shouldn't be guarded against, but the population growth outside Europe is one of the prime movers of the negative effects we have already observed.

If things continue as they are the only uncertainty is the degree to which European civilization and thus European civilization's contribution to the world is negatively effected.

I harbor no affinity for Malaria or human suffering in general, but by ham handedly addressing this patch of suffering are we pulling open a larger patch somewhere else?

So what's the best way to address the suffering caused by malaria with a little more finesse and awareness?

Is there even a direct provable causal link between mosquito nets and population growth?

As mentioned, we are discussing an immensely complex system with all the surprises and non-linearity that entails.

what, if any, are other causes of African population growth?

What should be the Hippocratic Oath for philanthropy?

"First do no harm" is taken, "Secondarily no harm"?

How many steps toward the horizon should we take to determine if harm is occurring?

These are all interesting questions! I would like to mention that it is important to remember when analyzing these scenarios that the world in which we live is very much a real-time system; seldom is it necessary to make decisions for "long time horizons" without the opportunity to adapt, change or update the decisions along the way.

For example, consider the hypothetical scenario where a cure for Malaria is spontaneously discovered and rolled out in Africa. Suppose, then, that in the few years following the end of Malaria, African population economists argue that an explosion is in play, to the point where the country cannot hope to continue to support itself into the future. In this scenario, I find it hard to imagine that even the most austere and strictly enforced population control program could not match the rate at which the population would increase due to the elimination of Malaria. Moreover, I would not expect that even in the hypothesized scenario, such austere measures would need to be enforced, although I will leave that to the economists and public health experts to figure out. I would suspect that most people would prefer a reality in which Malaria does not exist, but every family in Africa is only legally permitted to have one child, than a reality in which no restrictions on family size are imposed, but Malaria remains a top killer.

The point I am making here is that this is very much a real-time system, in the sense that action can be taken as soon as it is suspected that negative effects may be growing. If such negative consequences are to arise, we are not committed to a downward spiral without intervention. Furthermore, I would consider it unlikely that the rate at which the population would grow as a result of eliminating one of the leading causes of death is so great such that no intervention by the African people can keep the "net good" of the scenario positive.

(Let us suspend, for the sake of argument, the thorny path of quantification of good - suppose we use QALYs, with some simplified metric for human quality of life that is defined in such a way that makes comparisons meaningful)

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