I was listening to the 80,000 Hours podcast today and heard Ben Todd say, “The issue is [longtermism is] a new idea.”
I’ve seen this view around EA a few times. It might be true about a certain narrow form of longtermism. It’s NOT true of longtermism broadly.
The first time I was introduced to long-termist ideas was in a university Native Studies class, discussing the traditional teaching that the current generation should focus on the well-being of seven generations in the future.
There’s even a specific term I can’t recall for intentional changes in the environment that a social group would make to domesticate a landscape and provide services for future. It will take me some time to find it.
On the other hand, besides the specifics of strong longtermism, I guess that the conjugation of these ideas is pretty recent: a) concern for humanity as a whole, b) a scope longer than 150 years, c) the existence of a trade-off between present and future welfare, d) the balance is tipped in favor of the long-term. [epistemic status: just an insight, would take me too long to look for a counter-example)
I was listening to the 80,000 Hours podcast today and heard Ben Todd say, “The issue is [longtermism is] a new idea.”
I’ve seen this view around EA a few times. It might be true about a certain narrow form of longtermism. It’s NOT true of longtermism broadly.
The first time I was introduced to long-termist ideas was in a university Native Studies class, discussing the traditional teaching that the current generation should focus on the well-being of seven generations in the future.
Cool. Any special reason for 7?
There’s even a specific term I can’t recall for intentional changes in the environment that a social group would make to domesticate a landscape and provide services for future. It will take me some time to find it.
On the other hand, besides the specifics of strong longtermism, I guess that the conjugation of these ideas is pretty recent: a) concern for humanity as a whole, b) a scope longer than 150 years, c) the existence of a trade-off between present and future welfare, d) the balance is tipped in favor of the long-term. [epistemic status: just an insight, would take me too long to look for a counter-example)