Thank you for writing this! This helped me understand my negative feelings towards long-termist arguments so much better.
In talking to many EA University students and organizers, so many of them have serious reservations about long-termism as a philosophy, but not as a practical project because long-termism as a practical project usually means don’t die in the next 100 years, which is something we can pretty clearly make progress on (which is important since the usual objection is that maybe we can’t influence the long-term future).
I’ve been frustrated that in the intro fellowship and in EA conversations we must take such a strange path to something so intuitive: let’s try to avoid billions of people dying this century.
Thank you for writing this! This helped me understand my negative feelings towards long-termist arguments so much better.
In talking to many EA University students and organizers, so many of them have serious reservations about long-termism as a philosophy, but not as a practical project because long-termism as a practical project usually means don’t die in the next 100 years, which is something we can pretty clearly make progress on (which is important since the usual objection is that maybe we can’t influence the long-term future).
I’ve been frustrated that in the intro fellowship and in EA conversations we must take such a strange path to something so intuitive: let’s try to avoid billions of people dying this century.