“Should we expect the future to be good?” by Neil Crawford

Audio note: this article contains 54 uses of latex notation, so the narration may be difficult to follow. There's a link to the original text in the episode description.

1. Introduction

'Should we expect the future to be good? This is an important question for many reasons. One such reason is that the answer to this question has implications for what our intermediate goals should be. If we should expect the future to be good, then it would be relatively more important for us to focus on ensuring that we survive long into the future, e.g. by working on mitigating extinction risks. If we should not expect the future to be good, then it would be relatively more important for us to focus on mitigating risks of astronomical suffering.

In this paper, I critique Paul Christiano's (2013) argument that the future will be good. In Section 2 [...]

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Outline:

(00:21) 1. Introduction

(02:34) 2. Christianos argument

(02:51) 2.1 First premise

(03:46) 2.2 Second premise

(04:38) 2.3 Third premise and conclusion

(05:25) 2.4 Simplifying assumptions

(07:08) 3. Model

(08:46) 4. Assuming that longtermists are all aligned

(11:50) 5. Fanatical values

(17:52) 6. Different levels of influence

(19:58) Aligned longtermists versus shorttermists

(23:56) 8. Confidence in aligned longtermists

(24:59) 9. Conclusion

(26:34) Acknowledgements

(27:07) Appendix A

(27:10) Theorem

(27:47) Proof

(29:12) Appendix B

The original text contained 17 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
April 30th, 2025

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/j2HaibJEqjs38Rv2n/should-we-expect-the-future-to-be-good

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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