Longtermism is the view that most of the value of our actions lies in what happens in the future.
You mean ‘in the far future’, correct? Unless you believe in backwards causality, and excluding the value that occurs at the same moment you act, all the value of our actions is in the future. I presume by ‘far future’ you would mean actions affecting future people, as contrasted with presently existing people.
I do think that longtermism as a philosophical point of view is emerging as an intellectual consensus in the movement
Cards on the table, I am not a long-termist; I am sympathetic to person-affecting views in population ethics. Given the power CEA has in shaping the community, I think it’s the case that any view CEA advocated would eventually become the consensus view: anyone who didn’t find it appealing would eventually leave EA.
I just wanted to briefly clarify that I don’t think CEA taking a view in favor of longtermism or even in favor of specific causes that are associated with longtermism is evidence against us being cause-impartial.
I don’t think this can be true. If you’re a longtermist, you can’t also hold person-affecting views in population ethics (at least, narrow, symmetric person-affecting views), so taking the longtermist position requires ruling such views out of consideration. You might think you should rule out, as obviously false, such views in population ethics, but you should concede you are doing that. To be more accurate you could perhaps call it something like “possibilism cause impartiality—selecting causes based on impartial estimates of impact assuming we account for the welfare of everyone who might possibly exist” but then it would seem almost trivially true long-termist ought to follow (this might not be the right name, but I couldn’t think of a better restatement off-hand).
You mean ‘in the far future’, correct? Unless you believe in backwards causality, and excluding the value that occurs at the same moment you act, all the value of our actions is in the future. I presume by ‘far future’ you would mean actions affecting future people, as contrasted with presently existing people.
Cards on the table, I am not a long-termist; I am sympathetic to person-affecting views in population ethics. Given the power CEA has in shaping the community, I think it’s the case that any view CEA advocated would eventually become the consensus view: anyone who didn’t find it appealing would eventually leave EA.
I don’t think this can be true. If you’re a longtermist, you can’t also hold person-affecting views in population ethics (at least, narrow, symmetric person-affecting views), so taking the longtermist position requires ruling such views out of consideration. You might think you should rule out, as obviously false, such views in population ethics, but you should concede you are doing that. To be more accurate you could perhaps call it something like “possibilism cause impartiality—selecting causes based on impartial estimates of impact assuming we account for the welfare of everyone who might possibly exist” but then it would seem almost trivially true long-termist ought to follow (this might not be the right name, but I couldn’t think of a better restatement off-hand).