This isn’t answering the question you ask (sorry), but one possible response to this line of criticism is for some people within EA / longtermism to more clearly state what vision of the future they are aiming towards. Because this tends not to happen, it means that critics can attribute particular visions to people that they don’t have. In particular, critics of WWOTF often thought that I was trying to push for some particular narrow vision of the future, whereas really the primary goal, in my mind at least, is to keep our options open as much as possible, and make moral progress in order to figure out what sort of future we should try to create.
Here are a couple of suggestions for positive visions. These are what I’d answer if asked: “What vision of the future are you aiming towards?”:
”Procedural visions” (Name options: Viatopia—representing the idea of a waypoint, and of keeping multiple paths open—though this mixes latin and greek roots.Optiotopia, though is a mouthful and mixes latin and greek roots. Related ideas: existential security, the long reflection.)
These doesn’t have some vision of what we ultimately want to achieve. Instead they propose a waypoint that we’d want to achieve, as a step on the path to a good future. That waypoint would involve: (i) ending all obvious grievous contemporary harms, like war, violence and unnecessary suffering; (ii) reducing existential risk down to a very low level; (iii) securing a deliberative process for humanity as a whole, so that we make sufficient moral progress before embarking on potentially-irreversible actions like space settlement.
The hope could be that almost everyone could agree on this as a desirable waypoint.
”Utopia for everyone” (Name options: multitopia or pluritopia, but this mixes latin and greek roots; polytopia, but this is the name of a computer game. Related idea: Paretopia.)
This vision is where a great diversity of different visions of the good are allowed to happen, and people have choice about what sort of society they want to live in. Environmentalists could preserve Earth’s ecosystems; others can build off-world societies. Liberals and libertarians can create a society where everyone is empowered to act autonomously, pursuing their own goals; lovers of knowledge can build societies devoted to figuring out the deepest truths of the universe; philosophical hedonists can create societies devoted to joy, and so on.
The key insight, here, is that there’s just a lot of available stuff in the future, and that scientific, social and moral progress will potentially enable us to produce great wealth with that stuff (if we don’t destroy the world first, or suffer value lock-in). Plausibly, if we as a global society get our act together, the large majority of moral perspectives can get most of what they want.
Like the procedural visions, spelling this vision out more could have great benefits today, via greater collaboration: if we could agree that this is what we’ll aim for, at least in part, then we could reduce the chance of some person or people with some narrow view trying to grab power for itself.
(I write about these a little bit about both of these idea in a fictional short story, here.)
I’d welcome name ideas for these, especially the former. My best guesses so far are “viatopia” and “multitopia”, but I’m not wedded to them and I haven’t spent lots of time on naming. I don’t think that the -topia suffix is strictly necessary.
What’s wrong with the Long Reflection and Paretopia? I think they’re great!
A name doesn’t have to reference all key aspects of the thing—you can just pick one. And reflecting is what people will actually be doing, so it’s a good one to pick. We can still talk about the need for the Long Reflection to be a time of existential security, keeping options open and ending unnecessary suffering.
And then Paretopia just sounds like a better version of Paretotopia.
But if you’re sure these won’t work, I vote Pretopia and Potatopia.
This isn’t answering the question you ask (sorry), but one possible response to this line of criticism is for some people within EA / longtermism to more clearly state what vision of the future they are aiming towards. Because this tends not to happen, it means that critics can attribute particular visions to people that they don’t have. In particular, critics of WWOTF often thought that I was trying to push for some particular narrow vision of the future, whereas really the primary goal, in my mind at least, is to keep our options open as much as possible, and make moral progress in order to figure out what sort of future we should try to create.
Here are a couple of suggestions for positive visions. These are what I’d answer if asked: “What vision of the future are you aiming towards?”:
”Procedural visions”
(Name options: Viatopia—representing the idea of a waypoint, and of keeping multiple paths open—though this mixes latin and greek roots. Optiotopia, though is a mouthful and mixes latin and greek roots. Related ideas: existential security, the long reflection.)
These doesn’t have some vision of what we ultimately want to achieve. Instead they propose a waypoint that we’d want to achieve, as a step on the path to a good future. That waypoint would involve: (i) ending all obvious grievous contemporary harms, like war, violence and unnecessary suffering; (ii) reducing existential risk down to a very low level; (iii) securing a deliberative process for humanity as a whole, so that we make sufficient moral progress before embarking on potentially-irreversible actions like space settlement.
The hope could be that almost everyone could agree on this as a desirable waypoint.
”Utopia for everyone”
(Name options: multitopia or pluritopia, but this mixes latin and greek roots; polytopia, but this is the name of a computer game. Related idea: Paretopia.)
This vision is where a great diversity of different visions of the good are allowed to happen, and people have choice about what sort of society they want to live in. Environmentalists could preserve Earth’s ecosystems; others can build off-world societies. Liberals and libertarians can create a society where everyone is empowered to act autonomously, pursuing their own goals; lovers of knowledge can build societies devoted to figuring out the deepest truths of the universe; philosophical hedonists can create societies devoted to joy, and so on.
The key insight, here, is that there’s just a lot of available stuff in the future, and that scientific, social and moral progress will potentially enable us to produce great wealth with that stuff (if we don’t destroy the world first, or suffer value lock-in). Plausibly, if we as a global society get our act together, the large majority of moral perspectives can get most of what they want.
Like the procedural visions, spelling this vision out more could have great benefits today, via greater collaboration: if we could agree that this is what we’ll aim for, at least in part, then we could reduce the chance of some person or people with some narrow view trying to grab power for itself.
(I write about these a little bit about both of these idea in a fictional short story, here.)
I’d welcome name ideas for these, especially the former. My best guesses so far are “viatopia” and “multitopia”, but I’m not wedded to them and I haven’t spent lots of time on naming. I don’t think that the -topia suffix is strictly necessary.
What’s wrong with the Long Reflection and Paretopia? I think they’re great!
A name doesn’t have to reference all key aspects of the thing—you can just pick one. And reflecting is what people will actually be doing, so it’s a good one to pick. We can still talk about the need for the Long Reflection to be a time of existential security, keeping options open and ending unnecessary suffering.
And then Paretopia just sounds like a better version of Paretotopia.
But if you’re sure these won’t work, I vote Pretopia and Potatopia.