We agree that the Torres piece is annoying and, to some extent irresponsible and unfair. And it’s certainly true that there are more sober, thoughtful, penetrating criticisms of specific aspects of longtermism.
Our reasons for including the piece anyway are: (1) It’s probably the single most well-known attack on longtermism, and it’s helpful to know what kinds of objections have made it out into the world and gotten traction outside the EA bubble. (2) It bundles together many criticisms in one place, so we don’t have to read four or five different essays. (3) We think it’s healthy to hear outside-view criticisms that don’t shy away from denouncing the whole longtermist program. (4) Although Torres focuses too much on (particular interpretations of) Bostrom as a stand-in for longtermism generally, some of his worries about Bostromism do a good job raising tricky and essential questions.
We wish there were a piece that did a similar amount of useful things without so many flaws, but we don’t know of any!
That said, we think Scott Alexander’s recent piece on longtermism is pretty good, and maybe we should read that too.
We agree that the Torres piece is annoying and, to some extent irresponsible and unfair. And it’s certainly true that there are more sober, thoughtful, penetrating criticisms of specific aspects of longtermism.
Our reasons for including the piece anyway are: (1) It’s probably the single most well-known attack on longtermism, and it’s helpful to know what kinds of objections have made it out into the world and gotten traction outside the EA bubble. (2) It bundles together many criticisms in one place, so we don’t have to read four or five different essays. (3) We think it’s healthy to hear outside-view criticisms that don’t shy away from denouncing the whole longtermist program. (4) Although Torres focuses too much on (particular interpretations of) Bostrom as a stand-in for longtermism generally, some of his worries about Bostromism do a good job raising tricky and essential questions.
We wish there were a piece that did a similar amount of useful things without so many flaws, but we don’t know of any!
That said, we think Scott Alexander’s recent piece on longtermism is pretty good, and maybe we should read that too.