I think it would be helpful to get more non-utilitarian perspectives on longtermism (or ones that don’t primarily emphasize utilitarianism).
Some questions that would be valuable to address:
What non-utilitarian worldviews support longtermism?
Under a given longtermist non-utilitarian worldview, what are the top-priority problem areas, and what should actors to do address them?
Some reasons I think this would be valuable:
We’re working under a lot of moral uncertainty, so the more ethical perspectives, the better.
Even if we fully buy into one worldview, it would be valuable to incorporate insights from other worldviews’ perspectives on the problems we are addressing.
Doing this would attract more people with worldviews different from the predominant utilitarian one.
What non-utilitarian worldviews support longtermism?
Liberalism: There are strong theoretical and empirical reasons why liberal democracy may be valuable for the long-term future; see this post and its comments. I think that certain variants of liberalism are highly compatible with longtermism, especially those focusing on:
Inclusive institutions and democracy
Civil and political rights (e.g. freedom, equality, and civic participation)
International security and cooperation
Moral circle expansion
Environmental and climate justice:Climate justice deals with climate change’s impact on the most vulnerable members of society, and it prescribes how societies ought to respond to climate change in ways that protect their most vulnerable members. We can learn a lot from it about how to respond to other global catastrophic risks.
Toby Ord has spoken about non-consequentialist arguments for existential risk reduction, which I think also work for longtermism more generally. For example, Ctlr+F for “What are the non-consequentialist arguments for caring about existential risk reduction?” in this link. I suspect relevant content is also in his book The Precipice.
Some selected quotes from the first link:
“my main approach, the guiding light for me, is really thinking about the opportunity cost, so it’s thinking about everything that we could achieve, and this great and glorious future that is open to us and that we could do”
“there are also these other foundations, which I think also point to similar things. One of them is a deontological one, where Edmund Burke, one of the founders of political conservatism, had this idea of the partnership of the generations. What he was talking about there was that we’ve had ultimately a hundred billion people who’ve lived before us, and they’ve built this world for us. And each generation has made improvements, innovations of various forms, technological and institutional, and they’ve handed down this world to their children. It’s through that that we have achieved greatness … is our generation going to be the one that breaks this chain and that drops the baton and destroys everything that all of these others have built? It’s an interesting kind of backwards-looking idea there, of debts that we owe and a kind of relationship we’re in. One of the reasons that so much was passed down to us was an expectation of continuation of this. I think that’s, to me, quite another moving way of thinking about this, which doesn’t appeal to thoughts about the opportunity cost that would be lost in the future.”
“And another one that I think is quite interesting is a virtueapproach … When you look at humanity’s current situation, it does not look like how a wise entity would be making decisions about its future. It looks incredibly juvenile and immature and like it needs to grow up. And so I think that’s another kind of moral foundation that one could come to these same conclusions through.”
Worldview diversification for longtermism
I think it would be helpful to get more non-utilitarian perspectives on longtermism (or ones that don’t primarily emphasize utilitarianism).
Some questions that would be valuable to address:
What non-utilitarian worldviews support longtermism?
Under a given longtermist non-utilitarian worldview, what are the top-priority problem areas, and what should actors to do address them?
Some reasons I think this would be valuable:
We’re working under a lot of moral uncertainty, so the more ethical perspectives, the better.
Even if we fully buy into one worldview, it would be valuable to incorporate insights from other worldviews’ perspectives on the problems we are addressing.
Doing this would attract more people with worldviews different from the predominant utilitarian one.
What non-utilitarian worldviews support longtermism?
Liberalism: There are strong theoretical and empirical reasons why liberal democracy may be valuable for the long-term future; see this post and its comments. I think that certain variants of liberalism are highly compatible with longtermism, especially those focusing on:
Inclusive institutions and democracy
Civil and political rights (e.g. freedom, equality, and civic participation)
International security and cooperation
Moral circle expansion
Environmental and climate justice: Climate justice deals with climate change’s impact on the most vulnerable members of society, and it prescribes how societies ought to respond to climate change in ways that protect their most vulnerable members. We can learn a lot from it about how to respond to other global catastrophic risks.
Also just realised that the new legal priorities research agenda touches on this with some academic citations on pages 14 and 15.
Toby Ord has spoken about non-consequentialist arguments for existential risk reduction, which I think also work for longtermism more generally. For example, Ctlr+F for “What are the non-consequentialist arguments for caring about existential risk reduction?” in this link. I suspect relevant content is also in his book The Precipice.
Some selected quotes from the first link:
“my main approach, the guiding light for me, is really thinking about the opportunity cost, so it’s thinking about everything that we could achieve, and this great and glorious future that is open to us and that we could do”
“there are also these other foundations, which I think also point to similar things. One of them is a deontological one, where Edmund Burke, one of the founders of political conservatism, had this idea of the partnership of the generations. What he was talking about there was that we’ve had ultimately a hundred billion people who’ve lived before us, and they’ve built this world for us. And each generation has made improvements, innovations of various forms, technological and institutional, and they’ve handed down this world to their children. It’s through that that we have achieved greatness … is our generation going to be the one that breaks this chain and that drops the baton and destroys everything that all of these others have built? It’s an interesting kind of backwards-looking idea there, of debts that we owe and a kind of relationship we’re in. One of the reasons that so much was passed down to us was an expectation of continuation of this. I think that’s, to me, quite another moving way of thinking about this, which doesn’t appeal to thoughts about the opportunity cost that would be lost in the future.”
“And another one that I think is quite interesting is a virtue approach … When you look at humanity’s current situation, it does not look like how a wise entity would be making decisions about its future. It looks incredibly juvenile and immature and like it needs to grow up. And so I think that’s another kind of moral foundation that one could come to these same conclusions through.”
Thanks for sharing these! I had Toby Ord’s arguments from The Precipice in mind too.