In the past, all events with big positive impacts on the future occurred because people wanted to solve a problem or improve their circumstances, not because of longtermism.
Here’s a parallel argument.
Before effective altruism was conceived, all events that generated good consequences occurred because people wanted to solve a problem or improve their circumstances, not because of EA. Since EA was not necessary to achieve any of those good consequences, EA is irrelevant.
The problem with both arguments is that the point of an ideology like EA or longtermism is to increase the likelihood that people take actions to make big positive impacts in the future. The printing press, the wheel, and all good things of the past occurred without us having values of human rights, liberalism, etc. This is not an argument for why these beliefs don’t matter.
Yes, if the post was simply arguing that we should look beyond longtermism for opportunities to solve big problems it would have more validity. As it stands the argument is a non sequitur.
Valid—basically I was doing a two part post. First part is “longtermism isn’t a necessary condition”, because I thought there would be pushback to that. If we accept this, then we consider the second part, “longtermism may not have a positive effect as assumed”. If I knew the first part was uncontroversial I would have cut it out.
Rhetorically that just seems strange with all your examples. Human rights are also not a “necessary condition” by your standard, since good things have technically happened without them. But they are practically speaking a necessary condition for us to have strong norms of doing good things that respect human rights, such as banning slavery. So I think this is a bait-and-switch with the idea of “necessary condition”.
One of the ideas is that longtermism probably does not increase the EV of decisions made for future people. Another is that we increase the EV of future people as a side effect of normal doing things. The third is that increasing the EV of future people is something we should care about.
If all of these are true, then it should be true that we don’t need longtermism, I think?
Yes, if you showed that longtermism does not increase the EV of decisions for future people relative to normal doing things, that would be a strong argument against longtermism.
Here’s a parallel argument.
The problem with both arguments is that the point of an ideology like EA or longtermism is to increase the likelihood that people take actions to make big positive impacts in the future. The printing press, the wheel, and all good things of the past occurred without us having values of human rights, liberalism, etc. This is not an argument for why these beliefs don’t matter.
It is, however, an argument for why we should normally look beyond EA to find people/organizations/opportunities for solving big problems.
Yes, if the post was simply arguing that we should look beyond longtermism for opportunities to solve big problems it would have more validity. As it stands the argument is a non sequitur.
Valid—basically I was doing a two part post. First part is “longtermism isn’t a necessary condition”, because I thought there would be pushback to that. If we accept this, then we consider the second part, “longtermism may not have a positive effect as assumed”. If I knew the first part was uncontroversial I would have cut it out.
Rhetorically that just seems strange with all your examples. Human rights are also not a “necessary condition” by your standard, since good things have technically happened without them. But they are practically speaking a necessary condition for us to have strong norms of doing good things that respect human rights, such as banning slavery. So I think this is a bait-and-switch with the idea of “necessary condition”.
What do you think would be a good way to word it?
One of the ideas is that longtermism probably does not increase the EV of decisions made for future people. Another is that we increase the EV of future people as a side effect of normal doing things. The third is that increasing the EV of future people is something we should care about.
If all of these are true, then it should be true that we don’t need longtermism, I think?
Yes, if you showed that longtermism does not increase the EV of decisions for future people relative to normal doing things, that would be a strong argument against longtermism.