I’m not especially familiar with the history—I came to EA after the term “longtermism” was coined so that’s just always been the vocabulary for me. But you seem to be equating an idea being chronologically old with it already being well studied and explored and the low hanging fruit having been picked. You seem to think that old → not neglected. And that does not follow. I don’t know how old the idea of longtermism is. I don’t particularly care. It is certainly older than the word. But it does seem to be pretty much completely neglected outside EA, as well as important and, at least with regard to x-risks, tractable. That makes it an important EA cause area.
Wow, this makes me feel old, haha! (Feeling old feels much better than I thought it would. It’s good to be alive.)
There was a lot of scholarship on existential risks and global catastrophic risks going back to the 2000s. There was Nick Bostrom and the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, the Global Catastrophic Risks Conference (e.g. I love this talk from the 2008 conference), the Global Catastrophic Risks anthology published in 2008, and so on. So, existential risk/global catastrophic risk was an idea about which there had already been a lot of study even going back about a decade before the coining of “longtermism”. Imagine my disappointment when I hear about this hot new idea called longtermism — I love hot new ideas! — and it just turns out to be rewarmed existential risk.
I agree that it might be perfectly fine to re-brand old, good ideas, and give them a fresh coat of paint. Sure, go for it. But I’m just asking for a little truth in advertising here.
I’m not especially familiar with the history—I came to EA after the term “longtermism” was coined so that’s just always been the vocabulary for me. But you seem to be equating an idea being chronologically old with it already being well studied and explored and the low hanging fruit having been picked. You seem to think that old → not neglected. And that does not follow. I don’t know how old the idea of longtermism is. I don’t particularly care. It is certainly older than the word. But it does seem to be pretty much completely neglected outside EA, as well as important and, at least with regard to x-risks, tractable. That makes it an important EA cause area.
Wow, this makes me feel old, haha! (Feeling old feels much better than I thought it would. It’s good to be alive.)
There was a lot of scholarship on existential risks and global catastrophic risks going back to the 2000s. There was Nick Bostrom and the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, the Global Catastrophic Risks Conference (e.g. I love this talk from the 2008 conference), the Global Catastrophic Risks anthology published in 2008, and so on. So, existential risk/global catastrophic risk was an idea about which there had already been a lot of study even going back about a decade before the coining of “longtermism”. Imagine my disappointment when I hear about this hot new idea called longtermism — I love hot new ideas! — and it just turns out to be rewarmed existential risk.
I agree that it might be perfectly fine to re-brand old, good ideas, and give them a fresh coat of paint. Sure, go for it. But I’m just asking for a little truth in advertising here.