Definition
Longtermism is the view that positively impacting the long-term future should be a key moral priority of our time.
In other words, we have an obligation to think about how our actions will affect future generations.
The theory is grounded in the claim that future lives matter just as much as the lives of people living today.
Future Lives
Suppose that you scatter broken glass along a road, and that this glass could cut someone.
Many people would have the intuition that it does not matter whether the glass cuts someone tomorrow or cuts someone 100 years from now.
It also does not seem to matter whether the person cut by the glass has even been born yet.
This is because future lives, even the lives of those not yet born, matter just as much as the lives of those currently living.
Future Numbers
Consider another example.
Suppose you could either:
- Save the lives of 100 people 1,000 years from now.
- Save the lives of 200 people 2,000 years from now.
Which should you do?
Many people would say that you should save the 200 people, even though those lives are farther into the future.
In a similar way, longtermists argue that we need to take actions today that will positively affect the people of the future, because those future lives matter just as much as ours.
Questions
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One problem longtermism must deal with is that if future lives matter just as much as ours, then it may seem as though present lives do not matter very much. There could potentially be trillions of people who live in the future. Since there are more of them, perhaps we should act in ways that positively affect them, even at the expense of people who live now. This seems to indicate that the present exists only for making the future a better place. Does this seem right? How might someone who believes in longtermism respond?
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Another problem longtermism must deal with is uncertainty about the future. How great is this uncertainty? Can we still positively affect the future in the face of this uncertainty? Are there any areas of the future that we can be certain about?
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One claim that longtermists sometimes make is that the interests of the present and the interests of the future are often aligned. For instance, it is in the best interest of both the present and the future to avoid World War III and keep global warming below 1.5°C. Will this always be the case? Might there be instances where the interests of the future and the present diverge radically?
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Recently, there was a kerfuffle involving the board at OpenAI. The board attempted to oust its CEO, Sam Altman, because they worried about him moving too quickly with AI. Many of the board members were also adherents of longtermism. What do you think might be the relationship between AI, or technology in general, and longtermism? Why might somebody involved in AI think about the long-term future?
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One way to ensure that the future has lots of happy people is not just to make people happy, but to make happy people. In other words, perhaps we should do what we can to bring lots of people into the world, because then there will be much more value in the world. Does this seem odd? Is there a moral imperative to have children? Does this moral imperative exist for some people but not others?