This ties into another point: Many of the framings and phrasings in Masrani’s post seem quite “loaded”, in the sense of making something sound bad partly just through strong connotations or rhetoric rather than explicit arguments in neutral terms.
E.g., the author writes “I think, however, that longtermism has the potential to destroy the effective altruism movement entirely, because by fiddling with the numbers, the above reasoning can be used to squash funding for any charitable cause whatsoever. The stakes are really high here.”
But I think that most longtermists aren’t trying to fiddle with the numbers in order to squash funding for things that are cost-effective; most of them are mostly trying to actually work out what’s true and use that info to improve the world.
E.g., the author writes “To reiterate, longtermism gives us permission to completely ignore the consequences of our actions over the next one thousand years, provided we don’t personally believe these actions will rise to the level of existential threats. In other words, the entirely subjective and non-falsifiable belief that one’s actions aren’t directly contributing to existential risks gives one carte blanche permission to treat others however one pleases. The suffering of our fellow humans alive today is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. We can “simply ignore” it—even contribute to it if we wish—because it doesn’t matter. It’s negligible. A mere rounding error.”
I do think that “inconsequential in the grand scheme of things” is indeed in some sense essentially an implication of longtermism. But that seems like a quite misleading way of framing it.
I think the spirit of the longtermist view is more along the lines of thinking that what we already thought mattered still matters a lot, but also that other things matter surprisingly and hugely much, such that there may be a strong reason to strongly prioritise those other things.
So the spirit is more like caring about additional huge things, rather than being callous about things we used to care about.
Though I do acknowledge that those different framings can reach similar conclusions in practice, and also that longtermism is sometimes framed in a way that is more callous/dismissive than I’m suggesting here.
This ties into another point: Many of the framings and phrasings in Masrani’s post seem quite “loaded”, in the sense of making something sound bad partly just through strong connotations or rhetoric rather than explicit arguments in neutral terms.
E.g., the author writes “I think, however, that longtermism has the potential to destroy the effective altruism movement entirely, because by fiddling with the numbers, the above reasoning can be used to squash funding for any charitable cause whatsoever. The stakes are really high here.”
But I think that most longtermists aren’t trying to fiddle with the numbers in order to squash funding for things that are cost-effective; most of them are mostly trying to actually work out what’s true and use that info to improve the world.
E.g., the author writes “To reiterate, longtermism gives us permission to completely ignore the consequences of our actions over the next one thousand years, provided we don’t personally believe these actions will rise to the level of existential threats. In other words, the entirely subjective and non-falsifiable belief that one’s actions aren’t directly contributing to existential risks gives one carte blanche permission to treat others however one pleases. The suffering of our fellow humans alive today is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. We can “simply ignore” it—even contribute to it if we wish—because it doesn’t matter. It’s negligible. A mere rounding error.”
I do think that “inconsequential in the grand scheme of things” is indeed in some sense essentially an implication of longtermism. But that seems like a quite misleading way of framing it.
I think the spirit of the longtermist view is more along the lines of thinking that what we already thought mattered still matters a lot, but also that other things matter surprisingly and hugely much, such that there may be a strong reason to strongly prioritise those other things.
So the spirit is more like caring about additional huge things, rather than being callous about things we used to care about.
Though I do acknowledge that those different framings can reach similar conclusions in practice, and also that longtermism is sometimes framed in a way that is more callous/dismissive than I’m suggesting here.