There’s a footnote in the next post to the effect that ‘people’ shouldn’t be taken too literally. I think that’s the short answer in many cases—that it’s just easier to say/write ‘people’. There’s also a tradition in philosophy of using ‘personhood’ more generally than to refer to homo sapiens. It’s maybe a confusing tradition, since I think much of the time people also use the word in its more commonly understood way, so the two can get muddled.
For what it’s worth, my impression is that few philosophical longtermists would exclude nonhuman animals from moral consideration, though they might disagree around how much we should value the welfare of particularly alien-seeming artificial intelligences.
I think “easier to say/write” is not a good enough reason (certainly much weaker than the concern of fighting two philosophical battles, or weirding people away) to always say/write “people”/”humanity”.
My understanding is that when it was proposed to use humans/people/humanity to replace men/man/mankind to refer to humans generally, there were some pushbacks. I didn’t check the full details of the pushbacks but I can imagine some saying man/mankind is just easier to say/write because they have fewer words, and are more commonly known at that time. And I am pretty sure that “mankind” not being gender-neutral is what led to feminists, literature writers, and even etymologists to eventually support using “humanity” instead.
You mentioned “the two [meanings] can get muddled”. For me, that’s a reason to use “sentient beings” instead of “people”. This was actually the reason some etymologists mentioned when they supported using “humanity” in place of “mankind”, because back in their times, the word “man/men” started to mean both “humans” and “male humans”, making it possibly, if not likely, suggest that anything that relates to the whole humanity has nothing to do with women.
And it seems to me that we need to ask, as much as we need to ask whether “mankind” is not explicitly mentioning women as one of the stakeholders given the currently most common meaning of the word “man”, whether “people” is a good umbrella term for all sentient beings. It seems to me that it is clearly not.
I am glad that you mentioned the word “person”. I think even though the same problems still exist if we use this word insofar as people think the word “person” can only be used on humans (which arguably is most people), the problems are less severe. For instance, some animal advocates are trying to advocate for some nonhuman animals to be granted legal personhood, (and some environmentalists tried to seek for nature entities to be given legal personhood, and some of them succeeded). My current take is that “person” is better. But still not ideal as it is quite clear that most people now can only think of humans when they see/hear “person”.
I agree that “few philosophical longtermists would exclude nonhuman animals from moral consideration”. But I took it literally because I do think there is at least one who would exclude nonhuman animals. Eliezer Yudkowsky, whom some might doubt how much he is a philosopher/longtermist, holds the view that pigs cannot feel pain (and by choosing pig he is basically saying no nonhuman animals can feel pain). It also seems to me some “practical longtermists” I came across are omitting/heavily discounting nonhuman animals in their longtermist pictures. For instance, Holden Karnofsky said in an 2017 article on Radical Empathy that his ” own reflections and reasoning about philosophy of mind have, so far, seemed to indicate against the idea that e.g. chickens merit moral concern. And my intuitions value humans astronomically more.” (but he accepts that he could be wrong and that there are smart people who think he is wrong about this, so that he is willing to have OP’s “neartermist” part to help nonhuman animals) And it seems to me that the claim is still mostly right because most longtermists are EAs or lesswrongers or both. But I expect some non-EA/lesswronger philosophers to become longtermists in the future (and presumably this is what the advocates of longtermism want, even for those people who only care about humans), and I also expect some of them to not care about animals.
Also, excluding nonhumans from longtermism philosophically is different from excluding nonhumans from the longtermist project. The fact that there isn’t yet a single project supported by longtermist funders supporting work on animal welfare under the longtermist worldview makes the philosophical inclusion rather non-comforting, if not more depressing. (I mean, not even a single, which could easily be justified by worldview/intervention diversification. And I can assure you that it is not because of a lack of proposals)
P.S. I sometimes have to say “animal” instead of “nonhuman animals” in my writings to not freak people out or think I am an extremist. But this clearly suffers from the same problem I am complaining.
There’s a footnote in the next post to the effect that ‘people’ shouldn’t be taken too literally. I think that’s the short answer in many cases—that it’s just easier to say/write ‘people’. There’s also a tradition in philosophy of using ‘personhood’ more generally than to refer to homo sapiens. It’s maybe a confusing tradition, since I think much of the time people also use the word in its more commonly understood way, so the two can get muddled.
For what it’s worth, my impression is that few philosophical longtermists would exclude nonhuman animals from moral consideration, though they might disagree around how much we should value the welfare of particularly alien-seeming artificial intelligences.
I think “easier to say/write” is not a good enough reason (certainly much weaker than the concern of fighting two philosophical battles, or weirding people away) to always say/write “people”/”humanity”.
My understanding is that when it was proposed to use humans/people/humanity to replace men/man/mankind to refer to humans generally, there were some pushbacks. I didn’t check the full details of the pushbacks but I can imagine some saying man/mankind is just easier to say/write because they have fewer words, and are more commonly known at that time. And I am pretty sure that “mankind” not being gender-neutral is what led to feminists, literature writers, and even etymologists to eventually support using “humanity” instead.
You mentioned “the two [meanings] can get muddled”. For me, that’s a reason to use “sentient beings” instead of “people”. This was actually the reason some etymologists mentioned when they supported using “humanity” in place of “mankind”, because back in their times, the word “man/men” started to mean both “humans” and “male humans”, making it possibly, if not likely, suggest that anything that relates to the whole humanity has nothing to do with women.
And it seems to me that we need to ask, as much as we need to ask whether “mankind” is not explicitly mentioning women as one of the stakeholders given the currently most common meaning of the word “man”, whether “people” is a good umbrella term for all sentient beings. It seems to me that it is clearly not.
I am glad that you mentioned the word “person”. I think even though the same problems still exist if we use this word insofar as people think the word “person” can only be used on humans (which arguably is most people), the problems are less severe. For instance, some animal advocates are trying to advocate for some nonhuman animals to be granted legal personhood, (and some environmentalists tried to seek for nature entities to be given legal personhood, and some of them succeeded). My current take is that “person” is better. But still not ideal as it is quite clear that most people now can only think of humans when they see/hear “person”.
I agree that “few philosophical longtermists would exclude nonhuman animals from moral consideration”. But I took it literally because I do think there is at least one who would exclude nonhuman animals. Eliezer Yudkowsky, whom some might doubt how much he is a philosopher/longtermist, holds the view that pigs cannot feel pain (and by choosing pig he is basically saying no nonhuman animals can feel pain). It also seems to me some “practical longtermists” I came across are omitting/heavily discounting nonhuman animals in their longtermist pictures. For instance, Holden Karnofsky said in an 2017 article on Radical Empathy that his ” own reflections and reasoning about philosophy of mind have, so far, seemed to indicate against the idea that e.g. chickens merit moral concern. And my intuitions value humans astronomically more.” (but he accepts that he could be wrong and that there are smart people who think he is wrong about this, so that he is willing to have OP’s “neartermist” part to help nonhuman animals) And it seems to me that the claim is still mostly right because most longtermists are EAs or lesswrongers or both. But I expect some non-EA/lesswronger philosophers to become longtermists in the future (and presumably this is what the advocates of longtermism want, even for those people who only care about humans), and I also expect some of them to not care about animals.
Also, excluding nonhumans from longtermism philosophically is different from excluding nonhumans from the longtermist project. The fact that there isn’t yet a single project supported by longtermist funders supporting work on animal welfare under the longtermist worldview makes the philosophical inclusion rather non-comforting, if not more depressing. (I mean, not even a single, which could easily be justified by worldview/intervention diversification. And I can assure you that it is not because of a lack of proposals)
P.S. I sometimes have to say “animal” instead of “nonhuman animals” in my writings to not freak people out or think I am an extremist. But this clearly suffers from the same problem I am complaining.