Nick—yes, absolutely. The main PR problem with longtermism and X risk is that we haven’t quite found the most effective ways to express kindness and benevolence towards future people, including our own kids, grandkids, and descendants. I agree that ‘creating a positive future for our grandchildren’ is a good start.
As a rabid pronatalist, I’ve noticed that EAs often seem quite reluctant to advocate for ‘selfish’ emphasis on kids, families, and lineages… as if that’s an unseemly shrinking of the ‘moral circle’. But most adults are parents, and most parents care deeply about the world that their kids will inhabit. I think we have to be willing to reframe X risk minimization as concrete parental protectiveness, rather than some abstract concern for generic ‘future people’.
Nick—yes, absolutely. The main PR problem with longtermism and X risk is that we haven’t quite found the most effective ways to express kindness and benevolence towards future people, including our own kids, grandkids, and descendants. I agree that ‘creating a positive future for our grandchildren’ is a good start.
As a rabid pronatalist, I’ve noticed that EAs often seem quite reluctant to advocate for ‘selfish’ emphasis on kids, families, and lineages… as if that’s an unseemly shrinking of the ‘moral circle’. But most adults are parents, and most parents care deeply about the world that their kids will inhabit. I think we have to be willing to reframe X risk minimization as concrete parental protectiveness, rather than some abstract concern for generic ‘future people’.