On your second bullet point what I would add to Carl’s and Ben’s posts you link to is that suffering is not the only type of disvalue or at least “nonvalue” (e.g. meaninglessness comes to mind). Framing this in Haidt’s moral foundations theory, suffering is only addressing the care/harm foundation.
Also, I absolutely value positive experiences! More so for making existing people happy, but also somewhat for creating happy people. I think I just prioritise it a bit less than the longtermists around me compared to avoiding misery.
I will try to respond to the s-risk point elsewhere.
Thanks! I’m not very familiar with Haidt’s work, so this could very easily be misinformed, but I imagine that other moral foundations / forms of value could also give us some reasons to be quite concerned about the long term, e.g.:
We might be concerned with degrading—or betraying—our species / traditions / potential.
You mention meaninglessness—a long, empty future strikes me as a very meaningless one.
(This stuff might not be enough to justify strong longtermism, but maybe it’s enough to justify weak longtermism—seeing the long term as a major concern.)
Also, I absolutely value positive experiences! [...] I think I just prioritise it a bit less
Oh, interesting! Then (with the additions you mentioned) you might find the arguments compelling?
We might be concerned with degrading—or betraying—our species / traditions / potential.
Yeah this is a major motivation for me to be a longtermist. As far as I can see a Haidt/conservative concern for a wider range of moral values, which seem like they might be lost ‘by default’ if we don’t do anything, is a pretty longtermist concern. I wonder if I should write something long up on this.
On your second bullet point what I would add to Carl’s and Ben’s posts you link to is that suffering is not the only type of disvalue or at least “nonvalue” (e.g. meaninglessness comes to mind). Framing this in Haidt’s moral foundations theory, suffering is only addressing the care/harm foundation.
Also, I absolutely value positive experiences! More so for making existing people happy, but also somewhat for creating happy people. I think I just prioritise it a bit less than the longtermists around me compared to avoiding misery.
I will try to respond to the s-risk point elsewhere.
Thanks! I’m not very familiar with Haidt’s work, so this could very easily be misinformed, but I imagine that other moral foundations / forms of value could also give us some reasons to be quite concerned about the long term, e.g.:
We might be concerned with degrading—or betraying—our species / traditions / potential.
You mention meaninglessness—a long, empty future strikes me as a very meaningless one.
(This stuff might not be enough to justify strong longtermism, but maybe it’s enough to justify weak longtermism—seeing the long term as a major concern.)
Oh, interesting! Then (with the additions you mentioned) you might find the arguments compelling?
Yeah this is a major motivation for me to be a longtermist. As far as I can see a Haidt/conservative concern for a wider range of moral values, which seem like they might be lost ‘by default’ if we don’t do anything, is a pretty longtermist concern. I wonder if I should write something long up on this.
I would be interested to read this!
Me too.
My recent post on Scheffler discusses some of these themes:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NnYrFzXiTWerhTTkK/link-post-sam-scheffler-conservatism-temporal-bias-and
Curious if you happen to have written this up since?