I am largely sympathetic to the main thrust of your argument (borrowing from your own title: I am probably a negative utilitarian), but I have 2 disagreements that ultimately lead me to a very different conclusion on longtermism and global priorities:
Why do you assume we cannot effect the future further than 100 years? There are numerous examples of humans doing just that: in science (inventing the wheel, electricity or gunpowder), government (the US constitution), religion (the Buddhist Pali cannon, the Bible, the Quran), philosophy (utilitarianism), and so on. One can even argue that the works of Shakespeare have had an effect on people for hundreds of years.
Though humanity is not inherently awesome, it does not inherently suck either. Humans have the potential to do amazing things, for good or evil. If we can build a world with a lot less war and crime and a lot more collaboration and generosity, isn’t it worth a try? In Parfit’s beautiful words: “Life can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine. In Nietzsche’s words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon, and such an open sea … Some of our successors might live lives and create worlds that, though failing to justify past suffering, would give us all, including some of those who have suffered, reasons to be glad that the Universe exists.”
I’m not Denise, but I agree that we can and will all affect the long-term future. The children we have or don’t have, the work we do, the lives we save, will all effect future generations.
What I’m more skeptical about is the claim that we can decide /how/ we want to affect future generations. The Bible has certainly had a massive influence on world history, but it hasn’t been exclusively good, and the apostle Paul would have never guessed how his writing would influence people even a couple hundred years after his death.
If by “decide” you mean control the outcome in any meaningful way I agree, we cannot. However I think it is possible to make a best effort attempt to steer things towards a better future (in small and big ways). Mistakes will be made, progress is never linear and we may even fail altogether, but the attempt is really all we have, and there is reason to believe in a non-trivial probability that our efforts will bear fruit, especially compared to not trying or to aiming towards something else (like maximum power in the hands of a few).
For a great exploration of this topic I refer to this talk by Nick Bostrom: http://www.stafforini.com/blog/bostrom. The tl;dr is that we can come up with evaluation functions for states of the world that, while not yet being our desired outcome, are indications that we are probably moving in the right direction. We can then figure out how we get to the very next state, in the near future. Once there, we will jot a course for the next state, and so on. Bostrom signals out technology, collaboration and wisdom as traits humanity will need a lot of in the better future we are envisioning, so he suggests can measure them with our evaluation function.
To me that doesn’t sound very different from “I want a future with less suffering, so I’m going to evaluate my impact based on how far humanity gets towards eradicating malaria and other painful diseases”. Which I guess is consistent with my views but doesn’t sound like most long-termists I’ve met.
Well, it wouldn’t work if you said “I want a future with less suffering, so I am going to evaluate my impact based on how many paper clips exist in the world at a given time”. Bostrom selects collaboration, technology and wisdom because he thinks they are the most important indicators of a better future and reduced x-risk. You are welcome to suggest other parameters for the evaluation function of course, but not every parameter works. If you read the analogy to chess in the link I posted it will become much more clear how Bostrom is thinking about this.
(if anyone reading this comment knows of evolutions in Bostrom’s thought since this lecture I would very much appreciate a reference)
I am largely sympathetic to the main thrust of your argument (borrowing from your own title: I am probably a negative utilitarian), but I have 2 disagreements that ultimately lead me to a very different conclusion on longtermism and global priorities:
Why do you assume we cannot effect the future further than 100 years? There are numerous examples of humans doing just that: in science (inventing the wheel, electricity or gunpowder), government (the US constitution), religion (the Buddhist Pali cannon, the Bible, the Quran), philosophy (utilitarianism), and so on. One can even argue that the works of Shakespeare have had an effect on people for hundreds of years.
Though humanity is not inherently awesome, it does not inherently suck either. Humans have the potential to do amazing things, for good or evil. If we can build a world with a lot less war and crime and a lot more collaboration and generosity, isn’t it worth a try? In Parfit’s beautiful words: “Life can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine. In Nietzsche’s words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon, and such an open sea … Some of our successors might live lives and create worlds that, though failing to justify past suffering, would give us all, including some of those who have suffered, reasons to be glad that the Universe exists.”
I’m not Denise, but I agree that we can and will all affect the long-term future. The children we have or don’t have, the work we do, the lives we save, will all effect future generations.
What I’m more skeptical about is the claim that we can decide /how/ we want to affect future generations. The Bible has certainly had a massive influence on world history, but it hasn’t been exclusively good, and the apostle Paul would have never guessed how his writing would influence people even a couple hundred years after his death.
Hi Khorton,
If by “decide” you mean control the outcome in any meaningful way I agree, we cannot. However I think it is possible to make a best effort attempt to steer things towards a better future (in small and big ways). Mistakes will be made, progress is never linear and we may even fail altogether, but the attempt is really all we have, and there is reason to believe in a non-trivial probability that our efforts will bear fruit, especially compared to not trying or to aiming towards something else (like maximum power in the hands of a few).
For a great exploration of this topic I refer to this talk by Nick Bostrom: http://www.stafforini.com/blog/bostrom. The tl;dr is that we can come up with evaluation functions for states of the world that, while not yet being our desired outcome, are indications that we are probably moving in the right direction. We can then figure out how we get to the very next state, in the near future. Once there, we will jot a course for the next state, and so on. Bostrom signals out technology, collaboration and wisdom as traits humanity will need a lot of in the better future we are envisioning, so he suggests can measure them with our evaluation function.
To me that doesn’t sound very different from “I want a future with less suffering, so I’m going to evaluate my impact based on how far humanity gets towards eradicating malaria and other painful diseases”. Which I guess is consistent with my views but doesn’t sound like most long-termists I’ve met.
Well, it wouldn’t work if you said “I want a future with less suffering, so I am going to evaluate my impact based on how many paper clips exist in the world at a given time”. Bostrom selects collaboration, technology and wisdom because he thinks they are the most important indicators of a better future and reduced x-risk. You are welcome to suggest other parameters for the evaluation function of course, but not every parameter works. If you read the analogy to chess in the link I posted it will become much more clear how Bostrom is thinking about this.
(if anyone reading this comment knows of evolutions in Bostrom’s thought since this lecture I would very much appreciate a reference)