I agree we should care about future people who we think are probably going to exist, for example caring about climate change as it will affect future people who we know will exist.
Where longtermism might go wrong is when one says there is a moral obligation to bring more people into existence. For example under total utilitarianism one might argue that we have an obligation to bring an enormous number of people into existence. I think this is wrong. I’ve seen longtermists argue that extinction is bad not just because of the harm it might do to present people but because of the 10^n future people who don’t get to exist. I see this as wrong. There’s no harm done by not having children. This is a very dangerous pro-life type argument. It says there is essentially infinite value in all these potential future people and would justify torturing everyone alive today if it guaranteed the existence of these future people.
While I don’t necessarily agree with Matty’s view that total utilitarianism is wrong, I think this comment highlights a key distinction between a) improving the lives of future people and b) bringing lives into existance.
The examples in this post are really useful to show that future people matter, but they don’t show that we should bring people into existance. For example, if future people were going to live unhappy lives, it would still be good to do things that prevent their lives from being worse (e.g. improve education, prevent climate change, pick up glass), but this doesn’t necessarily imply we should try to bring those unhappy people into existance (which may have been Josh’s concern, if I understand correctly).
I agree we should care about future people who we think are probably going to exist, for example caring about climate change as it will affect future people who we know will exist.
Where longtermism might go wrong is when one says there is a moral obligation to bring more people into existence. For example under total utilitarianism one might argue that we have an obligation to bring an enormous number of people into existence. I think this is wrong. I’ve seen longtermists argue that extinction is bad not just because of the harm it might do to present people but because of the 10^n future people who don’t get to exist. I see this as wrong. There’s no harm done by not having children. This is a very dangerous pro-life type argument. It says there is essentially infinite value in all these potential future people and would justify torturing everyone alive today if it guaranteed the existence of these future people.
While I don’t necessarily agree with Matty’s view that total utilitarianism is wrong, I think this comment highlights a key distinction between a) improving the lives of future people and b) bringing lives into existance.
The examples in this post are really useful to show that future people matter, but they don’t show that we should bring people into existance. For example, if future people were going to live unhappy lives, it would still be good to do things that prevent their lives from being worse (e.g. improve education, prevent climate change, pick up glass), but this doesn’t necessarily imply we should try to bring those unhappy people into existance (which may have been Josh’s concern, if I understand correctly).