The strongest objection to longtermism is skepticism about the extent of our knowledge. Would the world today be better if people centuries ago had been able and willing to shape our present? I'm inclined to say no; moral and scientific progress has made us, the people of today, better at guiding today's world than Ghenghis Khan, Queen E…
The strongest objection to longtermism is skepticism about the extent of our knowledge. Would the world today be better if people centuries ago had been able and willing to shape our present? I'm inclined to say no; moral and scientific progress has made us, the people of today, better at guiding today's world than Ghenghis Khan, Queen Elizabeth, or whoever would have been from their temporal position. Similarly, I suspect people hundreds of years from now will rightly think the same of us. As we are better qualified to shape our present than our distant ancestors, so will our descendants centuries down the road be better qualified to shape their present.
I agree that's a good reason to be skeptical of efforts to narrowly shape the far future. But I don't know of any longtermist projects that would fall afoul of that. The projects I'm aware of are either (i) broad efforts to advance (esp. moral) progress, or (ii) narrowly targeted at efforts in the coming few years and decades to protect against global catastrophic risks. (For a recent historical example: we'd presumably be in a much better place re: climate and pandemics now if my parents' generation had been more guided by longtermist lights!)
Those two classes of project strike me as very worthwhile, and not undermined by the extent of our knowledge. But I guess someone more skeptical than I am might instead try to implement longtermism by (literally) investing resources for future use, Ben Franklin style. So I don't really see any objection to longtermism *per se* here, as opposed to one narrowly-imagined implementation of it.
Why should we think our notion of what constitutes moral progress won't age similarly to "The White Man's Burden," Manifest Destiny, or any of the other horribles of the last few centuries, other than hubris? Like a nature reserve, we should focus on not wrecking it without trying to garden.
I'm not sure what that means. If an asteroid is on track to wipe us out, does deflecting it count as "gardening", or could sitting back and doing nothing count as a form of "wrecking"?
In any case, I think a sensible degree of epistemic humility doesn't entail full-blown moral skepticism (as if we should be unsure whether to bother saving innocent lives), but just calls for things like (i) avoiding value lock-in, (ii) encouraging Millian "experiments in living", and (iii) preferring *robustly* good options (e.g. increase human knowledge and capacities) over morally *risky* ones (e.g. trapping humanity in experience machines). These are all standard longtermist ideas: https://rychappell.substack.com/p/review-of-what-we-owe-the-future#%C2%A7improving-values-and-institutions
The strongest objection to longtermism is skepticism about the extent of our knowledge. Would the world today be better if people centuries ago had been able and willing to shape our present? I'm inclined to say no; moral and scientific progress has made us, the people of today, better at guiding today's world than Ghenghis Khan, Queen Elizabeth, or whoever would have been from their temporal position. Similarly, I suspect people hundreds of years from now will rightly think the same of us. As we are better qualified to shape our present than our distant ancestors, so will our descendants centuries down the road be better qualified to shape their present.
I agree that's a good reason to be skeptical of efforts to narrowly shape the far future. But I don't know of any longtermist projects that would fall afoul of that. The projects I'm aware of are either (i) broad efforts to advance (esp. moral) progress, or (ii) narrowly targeted at efforts in the coming few years and decades to protect against global catastrophic risks. (For a recent historical example: we'd presumably be in a much better place re: climate and pandemics now if my parents' generation had been more guided by longtermist lights!)
Those two classes of project strike me as very worthwhile, and not undermined by the extent of our knowledge. But I guess someone more skeptical than I am might instead try to implement longtermism by (literally) investing resources for future use, Ben Franklin style. So I don't really see any objection to longtermism *per se* here, as opposed to one narrowly-imagined implementation of it.
Why should we think our notion of what constitutes moral progress won't age similarly to "The White Man's Burden," Manifest Destiny, or any of the other horribles of the last few centuries, other than hubris? Like a nature reserve, we should focus on not wrecking it without trying to garden.
I'm not sure what that means. If an asteroid is on track to wipe us out, does deflecting it count as "gardening", or could sitting back and doing nothing count as a form of "wrecking"?
In any case, I think a sensible degree of epistemic humility doesn't entail full-blown moral skepticism (as if we should be unsure whether to bother saving innocent lives), but just calls for things like (i) avoiding value lock-in, (ii) encouraging Millian "experiments in living", and (iii) preferring *robustly* good options (e.g. increase human knowledge and capacities) over morally *risky* ones (e.g. trapping humanity in experience machines). These are all standard longtermist ideas: https://rychappell.substack.com/p/review-of-what-we-owe-the-future#%C2%A7improving-values-and-institutions