Thanks—this comparison was clarifying to me! The point about past people being poorer was quite novel to me.
Intuitively for me, the strongest weights are for “it’s easier to help the future than the past” followed by “there are a lot of possible people in the future”, so on balance longtermism is more important than “pasttermism” (?). But I’d also intuit that pasttermism is under-discussed compared to long/neartermism on the margin—basically the reason I wrote this post at all.
Yeah I basically agree with that. I think pasttermism is basically interesting because there are plausibly some very low hanging fruit, like respecting graves, temples and monuments. The scope seems much smaller than longtermism.
Has this low-hanging fruit remained unpicked, however? I feel like “respecting graves, temples, and monuments” is already something most people do most of the time. Are there particularly neglected things you think we ought to do that we as a society currently don’t?
Thanks—this comparison was clarifying to me! The point about past people being poorer was quite novel to me.
Intuitively for me, the strongest weights are for “it’s easier to help the future than the past” followed by “there are a lot of possible people in the future”, so on balance longtermism is more important than “pasttermism” (?). But I’d also intuit that pasttermism is under-discussed compared to long/neartermism on the margin—basically the reason I wrote this post at all.
Yeah I basically agree with that. I think pasttermism is basically interesting because there are plausibly some very low hanging fruit, like respecting graves, temples and monuments. The scope seems much smaller than longtermism.
Has this low-hanging fruit remained unpicked, however? I feel like “respecting graves, temples, and monuments” is already something most people do most of the time. Are there particularly neglected things you think we ought to do that we as a society currently don’t?