80,000 Hours Podcast
#136 – Will MacAskill on what we owe the future
Episode guests
Podcast summary created with Snipd AI
Quick takeaways
- Positively influencing the future is a moral responsibility rooted in recognizing significant stakes.
- Addressing existential risks like pandemics and AI threats is crucial for civilization's continuity.
- Investing in clean energy technologies yields wide-ranging benefits for health, environment, and economy.
- Historical examples highlight altruistic practices in military philosophy and conflict prevention strategies.
- Building a community focused on morality, truth, and altruism can have a positive collective impact.
Deep dives
Long-Termism: Prioritizing Humanity's Future
Long-termism emphasizes positively influencing the future as a key moral responsibility. The belief is rooted in recognizing the vast stakes involved in humanity's future and working to navigate civilization towards a better path over ages. While strong arguments exist for long-termism being the top societal priority, a more cautious approach focuses on viewing it as one of several important considerations, given uncertainties in current societal resource allocations.
The Importance of Preventing Existential Risks
The podcast delves into the urgency of addressing existential risks such as catastrophic pandemics and advanced artificial intelligence. These risks pose significant threats to the continuity of civilization and underscore the need to focus on prevention strategies. By prioritizing actions that reduce the likelihood of global catastrophes, individuals and organizations can contribute to safeguarding the future of humanity.
Robust Effective Altruism: Advocating for Clean Energy Investments
Exploring the concept of robust effective altruism, the discussion highlights the benefits of investing in clean energy technologies. By shifting towards sustainable energy sources, societies can address immediate health and environmental concerns, accelerate technological progress, promote economic development, mitigate resource conflicts, and foster a more equitable global distribution of power. Clean energy investments emerge as a multi-faceted solution with far-reaching positive impacts.
Historical Examples of Effective Altruism in the Ancient Chinese Military Philosophy
One key point from the podcast discusses effective altruism in historical contexts, such as the military philosophy of ancient China. The example of the ancient Moists highlights their moral philosophy advocating defensive warfare to stop wars, demonstrating a form of altruistic action in military strategies.
Reducing the Risk of War Through Ethical Philosophy and Altruistic Action
Another significant insight delves into the importance of reducing the risk of war through ethical philosophy and altruistic practices. The podcast emphasizes the benefits of promoting peace and cooperation, comparing it to past scenarios where defensive warfare was used to protect cities under siege, showcasing altruistic approaches in conflict prevention.
Building a Community Committed to Morality and Truth in Altruism Movements
The podcast explores the concept of building a community focused on morality, truth, and altruism. By fostering a collective movement of morally motivated individuals willing to update their beliefs based on evidence, the discussion highlights the potential positive impact of nurturing a community committed to ethical values and continuous self-improvement.
Importance of Balancing Shortening Life Expectancy with Quality of Life
Balancing shortening life expectancy with an improvement in quality of life is essential. While certain drugs can decrease life expectancy, they enhance the well-being of individuals during their lifetime. The podcast highlights the significance of considering factors that improve well-being, even if they may reduce the number of years lived.
Concerns about Long Termism and Feedback Loops
Long termism faces challenges regarding feedback loops for assessing the impact of actions on future outcomes. Critics argue that the lack of immediate feedback makes evaluating effectiveness difficult. The podcast discusses the complexities of long term decision-making and the challenges associated with pursuing actions that aim to benefit future generations while navigating present concerns and uncertainties.
Potential Technological Stagnation Due to Diminishing Returns on Innovation
The podcast discusses the possibility of technological and economic stagnation over the next century or two due to diminishing returns on innovation. Historically, technological ideas have become increasingly harder to find, leading to slower progress despite the exponential increase in research and development efforts. The balance between the harder-to-find ideas and the growing population involved in research poses a challenge, with predictions pointing towards a potential long-term stagnation in innovation.
Impact of Human Activity on Extinction of Mega Fauna
The episode delves into the impact of early human activities on the extinction of mega fauna species globally. Humans, adept at persistent hunting practices, led to the extinction of numerous large animal species as they migrated out of Africa. The spread of humanity across the globe resulted in the systematic extinction of these mega fauna, showcasing the profound environmental impact of human presence on biodiversity and ecosystem stability.
- People who exist in the future deserve some degree of moral consideration.
- The future could be very big, very long, and/or very good.
- We can reasonably hope to influence whether people in the future exist, and how good or bad their lives are.
- So trying to make the world better for future generations is a key priority of our time.
This is the simple four-step argument for 'longtermism' put forward in What We Owe The Future, the latest book from today's guest — University of Oxford philosopher and cofounder of the effective altruism community, Will MacAskill.
Links to learn more, summary and full transcript.
From one point of view this idea is common sense. We work on breakthroughs to treat cancer or end use of fossil fuels not just for people alive today, but because we hope such scientific advances will help our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren as well.
Some who take this longtermist idea seriously work to develop broad-spectrum vaccines they hope will safeguard humanity against the sorts of extremely deadly pandemics that could permanently throw civilisation off track — the sort of project few could argue is not worthwhile.
But Will is upfront that longtermism is also counterintuitive. To start with, he's willing to contemplate timescales far beyond what's typically discussed.
A natural objection to thinking millions of years ahead is that it's hard enough to take actions that have positive effects that persist for hundreds of years, let alone “indefinitely.” It doesn't matter how important something might be if you can't predictably change it.
This is one reason, among others, that Will was initially sceptical of longtermism and took years to come around. He preferred to focus on ending poverty and preventable diseases in ways he could directly see were working.
But over seven years he gradually changed his mind, and in *What We Owe The Future*, Will argues that in fact there are clear ways we might act now that could benefit not just a few but *all* future generations.
The idea that preventing human extinction would have long-lasting impacts is pretty intuitive. If we entirely disappear, we aren't coming back.
But the idea that we can shape human values — not just for our age, but for all ages — is a surprising one that Will has come to more recently.
In the book, he argues that what people value is far more fragile and historically contingent than it might first seem. For instance, today it feels like the abolition of slavery was an inevitable part of the arc of history. But Will lays out that the best research on the topic suggests otherwise.
If moral progress really is so contingent, and bad ideas can persist almost without end, it raises the stakes for moral debate today. If we don't eliminate a bad practice now, it may be with us forever. In today's in-depth conversation, we discuss the possibility of a harmful moral 'lock-in' as well as:
• How Will was eventually won over to longtermism
• The three best lines of argument against longtermism
• How to avoid moral fanaticism
• Which technologies or events are most likely to have permanent effects
• What 'longtermists' do today in practice
• How to predict the long-term effect of our actions
• Whether the future is likely to be good or bad
• Concrete ideas to make the future better
• What Will donates his money to personally
• Potatoes and megafauna
• And plenty more
Chapters:
- Rob’s intro (00:00:00)
- The interview begins (00:01:36)
- What longtermism actually is (00:02:31)
- The case for longtermism (00:04:30)
- What longtermists are actually doing (00:15:54)
- Will’s personal journey (00:22:15)
- Strongest arguments against longtermism (00:42:28)
- Preventing extinction vs. improving the quality of the future (00:59:29)
- Is humanity likely to converge on doing the same thing regardless? (01:06:58)
- Lock-in scenario vs. long reflection (01:27:11)
- Is the future good in expectation? (01:32:29)
- Can we actually predictably influence the future positively? (01:47:27)
- Tiny probabilities of enormous value (01:53:40)
- Stagnation (02:19:04)
- Concrete suggestions (02:34:27)
- Where Will donates (02:39:40)
- Potatoes and megafauna (02:41:48)
Producer: Keiran Harris
Audio mastering: Ben Cordell
Transcriptions: Katy Moore
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