A general issue I see with the answers here is they assume opposition to longtermism necessarily need be philosophical. The case for actually doing anything different on longtermist grounds relies on a long chain of quasi-empirical speculation, and it seems perfectly coherent to me to just object to some induction along the way, and fall onto the side of (say) global health or economic development while still believing in something like aggregative utilitarianism.
So I feel like a term would need to be more general and/or more focused on actions. ‘Pragmatist’ comes to mind, though it would need some distinction from the existing philosophical school. ‘Altruistic pragmatist’? Maybe ‘pragmatermist’ if you don’t mind neologisms (and if it doesn’t turn out to etymologically imply something like ‘end of facts’ )
I think another part of the problem is that, for the same reasons, ‘longtermism’ has substantial mission creep/motte-and-bailey-itis. Like if I say I’m not a longtermist in EA circles, supporters will probably hit me with an argument for a totalising population ethic . But if I say I am one it feels like I’m supporting a bunch of academic research projects about which I might be quite sceptical. So maybe ‘longtermism’ is the concept that should be under the microscope, rather than its negation.
A general issue I see with the answers here is they assume opposition to longtermism necessarily need be philosophical. The case for actually doing anything different on longtermist grounds relies on a long chain of quasi-empirical speculation, and it seems perfectly coherent to me to just object to some induction along the way, and fall onto the side of (say) global health or economic development while still believing in something like aggregative utilitarianism.
So I feel like a term would need to be more general and/or more focused on actions. ‘Pragmatist’ comes to mind, though it would need some distinction from the existing philosophical school. ‘Altruistic pragmatist’? Maybe ‘pragmatermist’ if you don’t mind neologisms (and if it doesn’t turn out to etymologically imply something like ‘end of facts’ )
I think another part of the problem is that, for the same reasons, ‘longtermism’ has substantial mission creep/motte-and-bailey-itis. Like if I say I’m not a longtermist in EA circles, supporters will probably hit me with an argument for a totalising population ethic . But if I say I am one it feels like I’m supporting a bunch of academic research projects about which I might be quite sceptical. So maybe ‘longtermism’ is the concept that should be under the microscope, rather than its negation.