It seems like if the issue is Benjamin Franklin’s endowment wasn’t used well enough, maybe he should have thought more about setting conditions on how it would be used most helpfully. That seems like a useful data point that can be used to do better the next time someone tries to improve the future rather than that it’s too difficult to even try.
If you are going to say communist revolution is an example of a longtermist movement because some people involved cared about the future, don’t you have to say the same for democratic revolutions? Or any revolution?
Also, is caring about the future really enough to meaningfully equate movements with vastly different ideas about how to improve the world?
If it does, then does focus on the present connect all movements meaningfully? I think communists and democrats and basically every movement that failed or succeeded to some extent was concerned with the effects of problems like the distribution of power on the world today, but I’m not sure that means focusing on today is bad and it didn’t seem to lock them into the same outcomes as each other.
I do think Communism was on average a more longtermist movement than democratic revolutions. Maybe the typical revolutionary in all revolutions had similar goals, but Marx and many of his followers had a vision for how history was supposed to play out, and envisioned an intermediate form of society, between the revolution and an eventual classless society.
In contrast, a lot of democratic revolutions were more like “King George bad.” I don’t think the American founding fathers were utopian in the same sense as a lot of Marxists.
You don’t think the Russian revolution was like “Tsar Nicholas bad”?
I mean, “liberty and justice for all” sounds like a pretty strong vision of the future to me.
I guess I’d like to see more evidence that 1) there were significant differences in caring about the future between movements and 2) how these differences contributed to movement failures concretely.
If I had to guess, I’d hypothesize that there’s something else that is the main factor(s), like social dominance orientation of leaders and the presence or absence of group mechanisms to resist that or channel it in less destructive ways.
is caring about the future really enough to meaningfully equate movements with vastly different ideas about how to improve the world?
Given that longtermism is literally defined as a focus on improving the long-term future, I think yes? You can come up with many vastly different ways to improve the long-term future, but we should think of the category as “all movements to improve the long term future” and not “all movements to improve the long term future focusing on AI and bio risk and value lock in”.
Let me rephrase: is focus on improving the long-term future enough to equate movements with vastly different ideas about how to improve the world, such that if one of those ideas turns out poorly, all ideas that similarly focus on the long-term future are just as risky or tainted by association?
It seems like if the issue is Benjamin Franklin’s endowment wasn’t used well enough, maybe he should have thought more about setting conditions on how it would be used most helpfully. That seems like a useful data point that can be used to do better the next time someone tries to improve the future rather than that it’s too difficult to even try.
If you are going to say communist revolution is an example of a longtermist movement because some people involved cared about the future, don’t you have to say the same for democratic revolutions? Or any revolution?
Also, is caring about the future really enough to meaningfully equate movements with vastly different ideas about how to improve the world?
If it does, then does focus on the present connect all movements meaningfully? I think communists and democrats and basically every movement that failed or succeeded to some extent was concerned with the effects of problems like the distribution of power on the world today, but I’m not sure that means focusing on today is bad and it didn’t seem to lock them into the same outcomes as each other.
I do think Communism was on average a more longtermist movement than democratic revolutions. Maybe the typical revolutionary in all revolutions had similar goals, but Marx and many of his followers had a vision for how history was supposed to play out, and envisioned an intermediate form of society, between the revolution and an eventual classless society.
In contrast, a lot of democratic revolutions were more like “King George bad.” I don’t think the American founding fathers were utopian in the same sense as a lot of Marxists.
You don’t think the Russian revolution was like “Tsar Nicholas bad”?
I mean, “liberty and justice for all” sounds like a pretty strong vision of the future to me.
I guess I’d like to see more evidence that 1) there were significant differences in caring about the future between movements and 2) how these differences contributed to movement failures concretely.
If I had to guess, I’d hypothesize that there’s something else that is the main factor(s), like social dominance orientation of leaders and the presence or absence of group mechanisms to resist that or channel it in less destructive ways.
Given that longtermism is literally defined as a focus on improving the long-term future, I think yes? You can come up with many vastly different ways to improve the long-term future, but we should think of the category as “all movements to improve the long term future” and not “all movements to improve the long term future focusing on AI and bio risk and value lock in”.
Let me rephrase: is focus on improving the long-term future enough to equate movements with vastly different ideas about how to improve the world, such that if one of those ideas turns out poorly, all ideas that similarly focus on the long-term future are just as risky or tainted by association?