I don’t remember the concern that you highlight coming up very much if at all. I did note “Please focus on the core argument of the video — either ‘We can make future lives go better’, or the framework for prioritising pressing problems (from ~2mins onwards in either video)”, but I still would have expected this objection to come up a bunch if it was a particularly prevalent concern. For example, I got quite a lot of answers commenting that people didn’t believe it was fair/good/right/effective/etc to prioritise issues that affect the future when there are people alive suffering today, even though this isn’t a particularly relevant critique to the core argument of either of the videos.
If someone wanted to read through the dataset and categorise responses or some such, I’d be happy to provide the anonymised responses. I did that with my answers from last year, which were just on the MacAskill video and didn’t have the additional prompt about focusing on the core argument, but probably won’t do it this year.
(This was as part of the application process to Leaf’s Changemakers Fellowship, so the answers were all from smart UK-based teenagers.)
To add in some ‘empirical’ evidence: Over the past few months, I’ve read 153 answers to the question “What is your strongest objection to the argument(s) and claim(s) in the video?” in response to “Can we make the future a million years from now go better?” by Rational Animations, and 181 in response to MacAskill’s TED talk, “What are the most important moral problems of our time?”.
I don’t remember the concern that you highlight coming up very much if at all. I did note “Please focus on the core argument of the video — either ‘We can make future lives go better’, or the framework for prioritising pressing problems (from ~2mins onwards in either video)”, but I still would have expected this objection to come up a bunch if it was a particularly prevalent concern. For example, I got quite a lot of answers commenting that people didn’t believe it was fair/good/right/effective/etc to prioritise issues that affect the future when there are people alive suffering today, even though this isn’t a particularly relevant critique to the core argument of either of the videos.
If someone wanted to read through the dataset and categorise responses or some such, I’d be happy to provide the anonymised responses. I did that with my answers from last year, which were just on the MacAskill video and didn’t have the additional prompt about focusing on the core argument, but probably won’t do it this year.
(This was as part of the application process to Leaf’s Changemakers Fellowship, so the answers were all from smart UK-based teenagers.)
Thanks! That question seems like it might exclude the worry I outlined, but this is still something of an update.