EA Talks Virtual EAG 2020: Representing future generations (Tyler John)
Politics is a notoriously short-termist enterprise. Political institutions generally operate on 2-to-4-year timescales (as the issue of climate change has shown). But this is not necessary or inevitable. In principle, the immense wealth, influence, and coercive authority of national governments could be used to vastly improve the long-term future. In this talk, Tyler analyzes major sources of political short-termism and describes high-priority institutional reforms that could improve alignment between the incentives of present governments and the interests of future generations.
Tyler John is a PhD Student in Philosophy at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and a Global Priorities Fellow at the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research.
Tyler’s research focuses on longtermist political philosophy and animal moral, legal, and political philosophy. His current constellation of projects is focused on normative arguments for the State to consider the very long-term future, and empirical research into how it could do so effectively.
Before coming to Rutgers, Tyler was a fellow at the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. He is also the Education Advisor on the Board of Directors of Faunacción, and he has co-authored a book on chimpanzee legal rights.
View Tyler’s slides here.
Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.