In addition to the analyses SoGive conducted that Sanjay has listed, Rethink Priorities conducted some tests which provide further evidence for the claims made, and speak to the question Will MacAskill raised “Do younger people actually have more future-oriented views?” The samples do appear to be more presentdayist than longtermist, especially so for older respondents.
Explicit questions suggest more presentdayist preferences
In both samples we find evidence in support of the hypothesis that there is a preference for prioritising helping people now rather than considering people in the future as of equal priority. 47-61% of respondents place a greater importance on prioritising present people than they did on treating future people as equal, while 18-34% preferred treating future people as equal more than they preferred prioritising present people. The rest placed the same importance on both.
Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks test & Sign test of matched pairs find data in both samples that would be surprising given a null of no difference in the distributions or between the medians of Prioritise Present and Future Equal. Therefore, it seems pretty safe to reject the null with a 5% long run error rate, and be able to reliably detect a small effect size 80% of the time if it exists in reality. One-sided tests suggest we can reject the null hypotheses that there is no difference and that Future Equal has a larger proportion than Prioritise Present. But we cannot reject that Prioritise Present has a larger proportion than Future Equal.
Older people more presentdayist
We do not find evidence to support the claim that younger people consider future people as equally deserving of help, though we do find that older respondents prioritise present people more than younger respondents do. Older people are more likely to always prioritise present people than choose any number of future people to help, though younger people only seem willing to choose future people when there are more people in the future than the present to be helped.
We did not find any significant correlation between age and the explicit question of treating future people as equal. We found a small positive correlation (Spearman, Šidák-adjusted, r=0.17, p<0.01) between age and the explicit prioritise present question, and a regression including Future Equal, Left-Right, Age, and Mean Charity Likeliness suggests older respondents were more likely than younger respondents to Agree/Strongly Agree to prioritising helping people now, though as likely as younger respondents to Slightly Disagree/Disagree/Strongly Disagree.
Of those who gave an integer in response to the tradeoff question asking respondents to offer a number of future lives to improve instead of 1000 present lives, there were very few young respondents who gave a value of less than 1001. Very few (~7%) respondents under the age of 35 gave an answer less than 1001, while ~26% of 35s and over gave an answer less than 1001. None of the under 35s gave a response lower than one hundred, while 44% of the 35 and overs did—with 14% giving a value of 1. It is hard to know if these respondents really preferred improving the life of 1 person 500 years from now rather than 1000 people now or if they answered incorrectly.
Finally, a multinomial logistic regression (of Always Present as base, plus Always Future, 1001 or more, & Less than 1001) suggests that increases in age are negatively associated (-0.03, p<0.0001) with choosing an integer rather than Always Present i.e. older people are more likely to choose always improving lives of present people no matter the number of future lives improved than to offer any number of future people it would be better to improve.
In addition to the analyses SoGive conducted that Sanjay has listed, Rethink Priorities conducted some tests which provide further evidence for the claims made, and speak to the question Will MacAskill raised “Do younger people actually have more future-oriented views?” The samples do appear to be more presentdayist than longtermist, especially so for older respondents.
Explicit questions suggest more presentdayist preferences
In both samples we find evidence in support of the hypothesis that there is a preference for prioritising helping people now rather than considering people in the future as of equal priority. 47-61% of respondents place a greater importance on prioritising present people than they did on treating future people as equal, while 18-34% preferred treating future people as equal more than they preferred prioritising present people. The rest placed the same importance on both.
Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks test & Sign test of matched pairs find data in both samples that would be surprising given a null of no difference in the distributions or between the medians of Prioritise Present and Future Equal. Therefore, it seems pretty safe to reject the null with a 5% long run error rate, and be able to reliably detect a small effect size 80% of the time if it exists in reality. One-sided tests suggest we can reject the null hypotheses that there is no difference and that Future Equal has a larger proportion than Prioritise Present. But we cannot reject that Prioritise Present has a larger proportion than Future Equal.
Older people more presentdayist
We do not find evidence to support the claim that younger people consider future people as equally deserving of help, though we do find that older respondents prioritise present people more than younger respondents do. Older people are more likely to always prioritise present people than choose any number of future people to help, though younger people only seem willing to choose future people when there are more people in the future than the present to be helped.
We did not find any significant correlation between age and the explicit question of treating future people as equal. We found a small positive correlation (Spearman, Šidák-adjusted, r=0.17, p<0.01) between age and the explicit prioritise present question, and a regression including Future Equal, Left-Right, Age, and Mean Charity Likeliness suggests older respondents were more likely than younger respondents to Agree/Strongly Agree to prioritising helping people now, though as likely as younger respondents to Slightly Disagree/Disagree/Strongly Disagree.
Of those who gave an integer in response to the tradeoff question asking respondents to offer a number of future lives to improve instead of 1000 present lives, there were very few young respondents who gave a value of less than 1001. Very few (~7%) respondents under the age of 35 gave an answer less than 1001, while ~26% of 35s and over gave an answer less than 1001. None of the under 35s gave a response lower than one hundred, while 44% of the 35 and overs did—with 14% giving a value of 1. It is hard to know if these respondents really preferred improving the life of 1 person 500 years from now rather than 1000 people now or if they answered incorrectly.
Finally, a multinomial logistic regression (of Always Present as base, plus Always Future, 1001 or more, & Less than 1001) suggests that increases in age are negatively associated (-0.03, p<0.0001) with choosing an integer rather than Always Present i.e. older people are more likely to choose always improving lives of present people no matter the number of future lives improved than to offer any number of future people it would be better to improve.