Longtermism

Longtermism is an ethical stance which gives priority to improving the long-term future. It is an important concept in effective altruism and serves as a primary motivation for efforts to reduce existential risks to humanity.[1]

Comparing the number of human lives in the past and present
Illustrating the potential number of future human lives

Sigal Samuel from Vox summarizes the key argument for longtermism as follows: "future people matter morally just as much as people alive today; (...) there may well be more people alive in the future than there are in the present or have been in the past; and (...) we can positively affect future peoples' lives."[2]

Definition

Philosopher William MacAskill defines longtermism as "the view that positively influencing the longterm future is a key moral priority of our time".[3] He distinguishes it from strong longtermism, "the view that positively influencing the longterm future is the key moral priority of our time".[3]

In his book The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, philosopher Toby Ord describes longtermism as follows: "longtermism (...) is especially concerned with the impacts of our actions upon the longterm future. It takes seriously the fact that our own generation is but one page in a much longer story, and that our most important role may be how we shape—or fail to shape—that story. Working to safeguard humanity's potential is one avenue for such a lasting impact and there may be others too."[4]: 52–53  In addition, Ord notes that "longtermism is animated by a moral re-orientation toward the vast future that existential risks threaten to foreclose."[4]: 52–53 

Because it is generally infeasible to use traditional research techniques such as randomized controlled trials to analyze existential risks, researchers such as Nick Bostrom have used methods such as expert opinion elicitation to estimate their importance.[5] Ord offered probability estimates for a number of existential risks in his 2020 book The Precipice.[6]

History and community

The term "longtermism" was coined around 2017 by Oxford philosophers William MacAskill and Toby Ord, and the view draws inspiration from the work of Nick Bostrom, Nick Beckstead, and others.[3]

Longtermist ideas have given rise to a community of individuals and organizations working to protect the interests of future generations.[7] Organizations working on longtermist topics include Cambridge University's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk,[8] Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute[9] and Global Priorities Institute, 80,000 Hours,[10] Open Philanthropy,[11] the Future of Life Institute,[12] and others.

Implications

Discount rate

Longtermism implies that we should use a relatively small social discount rate when considering the moral value of the far future. In the standard Ramsey model used in economics, the social discount rate is given by:

where is the elasticity of marginal utility of consumption, is the growth rate, and is a quantity combining the "catastrophe rate" (discounting for the risk that future benefits won't occur) and pure time preference (valuing future benefits intrinsically less than present ones). Ord argues that nonzero pure time preference is illegitimate, since future generations matter morally as much as the present generation. Furthermore, only applies to monetary benefits, not moral benefits, since it is based on diminishing marginal utility of consumption. Thus, the only factor that should affect the discount rate is the catastrophe rate, or the background level of existential risk.[4]: 241–245 

In contrast, Andreas Mogensen argues that a positive rate of pure time preference can be justified on the basis of kinship. That is, common-sense morality allows us to be partial to those more closely related to us, so "we can permissibly weight the welfare of each succeeding generation less than that of the generation preceding it."[13]: 9 

Existential risks and trajectory changes

Researchers studying longtermism believe that among the most valuable ways to improve the long-term future are efforts to mitigate existential risks and to bring about other positive "trajectory changes".[14]

An existential risk is "a risk that threatens the destruction of humanity’s longterm potential",[4]: 59  including risks which cause human extinction or permanent societal collapse. Examples of these risks include nuclear war, natural and engineered pandemics, extreme climate change, stable global totalitarianism, and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and nanotechnology.[4]: 213–214  Reducing any of these risks may significantly improve the future over long timescales by increasing the number and quality of future lives.[14][15]

Existential risks are extreme examples of what researchers call a "trajectory change".[14] However, there might be other ways to positively influence how the future will unfold. Economist Tyler Cowen argues that increasing the rate of economic growth is a top moral priority because it will make future generations wealthier.[16] Other researchers think that improving institutions like national governments and international governance bodies could bring about positive trajectory changes.[17]

Criticism

One objection to longtermism is that it relies on predictions of the effects of our actions over very long time horizons, which is difficult at best and impossible at worst.[18] In response to this challenge, researchers interested in longtermism have sought to identify "value lock in" events—events, such as human extinction, which we may influence in the near-term but that will have very long-lasting, predictable future effects.[19]

Another concern is that longtermism may lead to deprioritizing more immediate issues. For example, Phil Torres has argued that considering humanity's future in terms of the next 10,000 or 10 million years might lead to downplaying the short-term economic effects of climate change.[20] He also claims that by specifying the end-goal of human development as "technological maturity," or the subjugation of nature and maximization of economic productivity, the longtermist worldview could worsen the environmental crisis and justify atrocities in the name of attaining "astronomical" amounts of future value.

See also

References
  1. Moorhouse, Fin (2021-01-27). "Introduction to Longtermism". Effective Altruism. Retrieved 2021-11-13.
  2. Samuel, Sigal (2021-11-03). "Would you donate to a charity that won't pay out for centuries?". Vox. Retrieved 2021-11-13.
  3. MacAskill, William (2019-07-25). "Longtermism". Effective Altruism Forum.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  4. Ord, Toby (2020). The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 1-5266-0021-8.
  5. Rowe, Thomas; Beard, Simon (2018). "Probabilities, methodologies and the evidence base in existential risk assessments" (PDF). Working Paper, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. Archived (PDF) from the original on 27 August 2018. Retrieved 26 August 2018.
  6. Ord, Toby (2020). The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 167. ISBN 9781526600196. OCLC 1143365836.
  7. Samuel, Sigal (2021-07-02). "What we owe to future generations". Vox. Retrieved 2021-11-27.
  8. "Our Mission". www.cser.ac.uk. Retrieved 2021-11-28.
  9. "About Us: Future of Humanity Institute". The Future of Humanity Institute. Retrieved 2021-11-28.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  10. "About us: what do we do, and how can we help?". 80,000 Hours. Retrieved 2021-11-28.
  11. "Global Catastrophic Risks". Open Philanthropy. 2016-03-02. Retrieved 2021-11-28.
  12. "Team". Future of Life Institute. Retrieved 2021-11-28.
  13. Mogensen, Andreas (October 2019). "'The only ethical argument for positive 𝛿'?" (PDF). Global Priorities Institute. Retrieved 30 December 2021.
  14. Beckstead, Nick (2013). "Chapter 1.1.2: How could we affect the far future?". On The Overwhelming Importance of Shaping the Far Future. New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
  15. Bostrom, Nick (2013). "Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority". Global Policy. 4 (1): 15–31.
  16. Cowen, Tyler (2018). Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals. Stripe Press. ISBN 978-1732265134.
  17. John, Tyler M.; MacAskill, William (2021). "Longtermist institutional reform". In Cargill, Natalie; John, Tyler M. (eds.). The Long View (PDF). UK: FIRST Strategic Insight. ISBN 978-0-9957281-8-9.
  18. Tarsney, Christian (2019). "The epistemic challenge to longtermism". GPI Working Paper. No. 10-2019.
  19. MacAskill, William (2021). McMahan, Jeff; Campbell, Tim; James, Goodrich (eds.). "Are we living at the hinge of history?". Ethics and Existence: The Legacy of Derek Parfit. Oxford University Press.
  20. Torres, Phil (2021-10-19). Dresser, Sam (ed.). "Why longtermism is the world's most dangerous secular credo". Aeon. Retrieved 2021-11-02.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

Further reading
  • Longtermism.com, Online introduction and resource compilation on longtermism
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