The Future Matters a Lot, Right?

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Long-termism is taking the whole course of the future seriously. It means thinking about how long we might live, which I think is thousands or even billions of years. And so when you take this point of view of the universe, what do you see? Well, the universe formed 13.8 billion years ago and forms 4.5 billion years ago. First replicators, 3.8 billion, nuclear votes, 2.7 billion, first animals about 800 million years ago. But there's another possible future, which is that humanity does not get to that point of developing technologically rather than causing our own extinction. This it would be galaxies colliding over time but the universe would be

It’s always a little humbling to think about what affects your words and actions might have on other people, not only right now but potentially well into the future. Now take that humble feeling and promote it to all of humanity, and arbitrarily far in time. How do our actions as a society affect all the potential generations to come? William MacAskill is best known as a founder of the Effective Altruism movement, and is now the author of What We Owe the Future. In this new book he makes the case for longtermism: the idea that we should put substantial effort into positively influencing the long-term future. We talk about the pros and cons of that view, including the underlying philosophical presuppositions.

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William (Will) MacAskill received his D.Phil. in philosophy from the University of Oxford. He is currently an associate professor of philosophy at Oxford, as well as a research fellow at the Global Priorities Institute, director of the Forefront Foundation for Global Priorities Research, President of the Centre for Effective Altruism, and co-founder of 80,000 hours and Giving What We Can.

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