5 What Could The Future hold? And Why Care?
Positively influencing the long-term future is a/the moral priority
Learning Objectives
Scale of Longtermism
if you want to help people in general, your key concern should be to ensure that the future goes well in the long term
Impartiality of Longtermism
helping those that need it the most, across location, time, and species
Tractability of Longtermism
Forecasting
Predicting the future is hard, but it can be worth doing in order to make our predictions more explicit and learn from our mistakes.
Scale - Should we care about the well-being of those not-yet-existing?
Future Outlook
How good can the future be? What do you wish, a good longterm future to be like?
What problems might be solved?
How bad can the future ?
What new problems might arise?
Empathy with Future Beings
Take the perspective of you being the future generation from 200 years ago.
What did the past do, that you are benefiting from?
What did the past do, that you are suffering from?
Imagine society 200 years ago, contemplating about whether to bury toxic waste or not. Burying it would mean saving 1000 of their lives now, but causing 1000 deaths in 200 years time. Not burying it would mean causing their own death, but saving lives in 200 years time.
For the purposes of the question, assume you know with an unrealistic level of certainty that they will be life or death
Option 1: Save Present | Death later
Option 2: Save Future | Death Now
Which option would you choose & why?
Does your choice change if:
Quantity: Future beings are the same or less quantity as in the present?
Time: The future being either in 20 years time or 20000 years time?
Exercise - Research
Imagine society 100 years ago deciding whether or not to use their funds to put into cancer research or to reduce extreme poverty.
Choosing Research yields deaths from poverty but saves lives in 100 years time
Choosing Poverty saves lives of poverty but causes death in 100 years time
Exercise - Present or Future?
Scale & Moral Weight: Present vs Future
Comparing the quantity of potential sentient beings in the long-term vs the quantity in the short-term (~100a). Does this affect how to weigh the future vs the present?
Pro/Con
What are arguments for and against Longtermism?
Moral Weight
Is it morally justified, to take away resources from 'neartermist' improvements in order to invest into 'longtermist' improvements?
Should we shift our investments from alleviating short-term pain such as extreme hunger via providing food or should we invest in research that in 100 years time would solve the problem?
Uncertainty
Why should we take resources away from the now, even though we do not know what it will actually do for the future?
Neglect
Does our present civilization care for or discriminate against the future?
What examples are there, in which our current society uses their resources (time, money, materials, etc.) to benefit the present at the expense of the future?
How would a society look different, if we become more impartial to the future beings?
Solvability
Exercise: Predict the Future
Is it easy or difficult to predict the future?
What ways are there, if at all, that we can effectively influence the longterm?
In which projects should we invest, to positively influence the longterm?
What did the past do, that you are benefiting/suffering from?
What actions are already taken to positively influence the longterm?
Win-Win Scenarios: What are projects that benefit both the present & the longterm?
Reducing Neglect
Are there longtermist-areas that are less neglected than others? Why? What can we learn from that to adapt our strategy for neglected longtermist-areas?
Last updated