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.
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.