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.”
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.