As early as 1896, climate scientists had a quantitative estimate of the warming that CO2 would cause. We could have been building a movement that was concerned about our carbon emissions many decades earlier than we in fact did. And I think the same is just true with respect to developments in artificial intelligence,. With respect to engineering of new viruses. Yes, this is often more speculative than other things we could be doing. But even though we're acting on somewhat more speculative evidence, these trends are actually pretty reliable.
If the human race lasts as long as a typical mammalian species and our population continues at its current size, then there are 80 trillion people yet to come. Oxford philosophy professor William MacAskill says it's up to us to protect them.
In his bold new book, "What We Owe the Future," MacAskill makes a case for longtermism. He believes that how long we survive as a species may depend on the actions we take now.
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