(I think the following point might be important, but I also think I might be wrong and that I haven’t explained the point well, so you may want to skip it.)
The authors claim that their case for strong longtermism should apply even for actors that aren’t cause-neutral, and they give an example that makes it appear that adopting strong longtermism wouldn’t lead to very strange conclusions for an actor who isn’t cause-neutral. But I think that the example substantially understates the counterintuitiveness of the conclusions one could plausibly reach.
Essentially, the example is a person who has to decide what deworming program to support, who might realise that the one that is best for the long-term isn’t best for the short-term, and who they argue should thus support the former program (the one that’s best for the long-term).
But both programs are presented as net positive in the short term, and economic growth is presented as net positive for the long term
However, it’s plausible that deworming’s intended effects are bad for the long-term future. And if so, then strong longtermism might tell this person that, if possible, they should support a deworming program that utterly fails at its stated objective
And if so, then it seems like the actor ends up acting in a very surprising way, and like they’re actually cause-neutral after all (given that they’re deviating a lot from their initial surface-level goal of deworming)
I think that part of the issue is that the authors are implicitly defining “not cause-neutral” as “focused on a particular type of activity”, rather than “focused on a particular type of outcome”
I think the more intuitive understanding of “not cause-neutral” would involve the actor focusing on the outcome of (e.g.) reducing the burden of intestinal worms
And if we use that definition, then it seems much less obvious how strong longtermism would be relevant to a non-cause-neutral actor’s decisions
(I think the following point might be important, but I also think I might be wrong and that I haven’t explained the point well, so you may want to skip it.)
The authors claim that their case for strong longtermism should apply even for actors that aren’t cause-neutral, and they give an example that makes it appear that adopting strong longtermism wouldn’t lead to very strange conclusions for an actor who isn’t cause-neutral. But I think that the example substantially understates the counterintuitiveness of the conclusions one could plausibly reach.
Essentially, the example is a person who has to decide what deworming program to support, who might realise that the one that is best for the long-term isn’t best for the short-term, and who they argue should thus support the former program (the one that’s best for the long-term).
But both programs are presented as net positive in the short term, and economic growth is presented as net positive for the long term
However, it’s plausible that deworming’s intended effects are bad for the long-term future. And if so, then strong longtermism might tell this person that, if possible, they should support a deworming program that utterly fails at its stated objective
And if so, then it seems like the actor ends up acting in a very surprising way, and like they’re actually cause-neutral after all (given that they’re deviating a lot from their initial surface-level goal of deworming)
I think that part of the issue is that the authors are implicitly defining “not cause-neutral” as “focused on a particular type of activity”, rather than “focused on a particular type of outcome”
I think the more intuitive understanding of “not cause-neutral” would involve the actor focusing on the outcome of (e.g.) reducing the burden of intestinal worms
And if we use that definition, then it seems much less obvious how strong longtermism would be relevant to a non-cause-neutral actor’s decisions