I think being left slightly confused about the long reflection after reading these quotes is quite understandable. These quotes don’t add up to a sufficiently detailed treatment of the topic.
Luckily, since I posted this, Toby Ord gave a somewhat more detailed treatment in Chapter 7 of The Precipice, as well as in his 80k interview. These sources provide Ord’s brief thoughts on roughly the questions you raise. Though I still think more work needs to be done here, including on matters related to your question (b). I’ve got some drafts coming up which will discuss similar matters, and hopefully MacAskill’s book on longtermism will go into more detail on the topic as a whole.
On (a): I don’t think everyone should be working on these questions, nor does Ord. I’d guess MacAskill doesn’t, though I’m not sure. He might mean something like “the 10 billion people interested and suited to this work, out of the 20+ billion people alive per generation at that point”, or “this is one of the major tasks being undertaken by humanity, with 10 billion people per generation thus contributing at least indirectly, e.g. by keeping the economy moving”.
I also suspect we should, or at least will, spend under 10,000 years on this (even if we get our act together regarding existential risks).
Ord writes in The Precipice:
It is unclear [exactly how] long such a period of reflection would need to be. My guess is that it would be worth spending centuries (or more) before embarking on major irreversible changes to our future—committing ourselves to one vision or another. This may sound like a long time from our perspective, but life and progress in most areas would not be put on hold. Something like the Renaissance may be a useful example to bear in mind, with intellectual projects spanning several centuries and many fields of endeavour. If one is thinking about extremely longterm projects, such as whether and how we should settle other galaxies (which would take millions of years to reach), then I think we could stand to spend even longer making sure we are reaching the right decision.
I think being left slightly confused about the long reflection after reading these quotes is quite understandable. These quotes don’t add up to a sufficiently detailed treatment of the topic.
Luckily, since I posted this, Toby Ord gave a somewhat more detailed treatment in Chapter 7 of The Precipice, as well as in his 80k interview. These sources provide Ord’s brief thoughts on roughly the questions you raise. Though I still think more work needs to be done here, including on matters related to your question (b). I’ve got some drafts coming up which will discuss similar matters, and hopefully MacAskill’s book on longtermism will go into more detail on the topic as a whole.
On (a): I don’t think everyone should be working on these questions, nor does Ord. I’d guess MacAskill doesn’t, though I’m not sure. He might mean something like “the 10 billion people interested and suited to this work, out of the 20+ billion people alive per generation at that point”, or “this is one of the major tasks being undertaken by humanity, with 10 billion people per generation thus contributing at least indirectly, e.g. by keeping the economy moving”.
I also suspect we should, or at least will, spend under 10,000 years on this (even if we get our act together regarding existential risks).
Ord writes in The Precipice: