The “distant country” objection does not defend against the argument that “We Are Not in a Position to Predict the Best Actions for the Far Future”.
We can go to a distant country and observe what is going on there, and make reasonably informed decisions about how to help them. A more accurate analogy would be if we were trying to help a distant country that we hadn’t seen, couldn’t communicate with and knew next to nothing about.
It also doesn’t work as a counterargument for “The Far Future Must Conflict with the Near Future to be Morally Relevant”. The authors are claiming that anything that helps the far future can also be accomplished by helping people in the present. The analogous argument that anything that helps distant countries can also be accomplished by helping people in this country is just wrong.
We can go to a distant country and observe what is going on there, and make reasonably informed decisions about how to help them.
We can make meaningful decisions about how to help people in the distant future. For example, to allow them to exist at all, to allow them to exist with a complex civilisation that hasn’t collapsed, to give them more prosperity that they can use as they choose, to avoid destroying their environment, to avoid collapsing their options by other irreversible choices, etc. Basically, to aim and giving them things near the base of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs or to give them universal goods — resources or options that can be traded for whatever it is they know they need at the time. And the same is often true for international aid.
In both cases, it isn’t always easy to know that our actions will actually secure these basic needs, rather than making things worse in some way. But it is possible. One way to do it for the distant future is to avoid catastrophes that have predictable longterm effects, which is a major reason I focus on that and suggest others do too.
I don’t see it as an objection to Longtermism if it recommends the same things as traditional morality — that is just as much a problem for traditional theories, by symmetry. It is especially not a problem when traditional theories might (if their adherents were careful) recommend much more focus on existential risks but in fact almost always neglect the issue substantially. If they admit that Longtermists are right that these are the biggest issues of our time and that the world should massively scale up focus and resources on them, and that they weren’t saying this before we came along, then that is a big win for Longtermism. If they don’t think it is all that important actually, then we disagree and the theory is quite distinctive in practice. Either way the distinctiveness objection also fails.
It is rather that longtermists have not provided any examples of moral decisions that would be different if we were to consider the far future versus the near future. All current focus areas, the authors argue, can be justified by appealing to the near future.
Yeah, perhaps I am subtly misrepresenting the argument. Trying again, I interpret it as saying:
People have justified longtermism by pointing to actions that seem sensible, such as the claim that it made sense in the past to end slavery, and it makes sense currently to prevent existential risk. But both of these examples can be justified with a lot more certainty by appealing to the short term future. So in order to justify longtermism in particular, you have to point out proposed policies that are a lot less sensible seeming, and rely on a lot less certainty.
It might help to clarify that in the article they are defining “long term future” as a scale of millions of years.
So i order to justify longtermism in particular, you have to point out proposed policies that are a lot less sensible seeming, and rely on a lot less certainty.
If you’re referring to the first point I would reword this to:
In order to justify longtermism in particular, you have to point out proposed policies that can’t be justified by drawing on the near future.
The “distant country” objection does not defend against the argument that “We Are Not in a Position to Predict the Best Actions for the Far Future”.
We can go to a distant country and observe what is going on there, and make reasonably informed decisions about how to help them. A more accurate analogy would be if we were trying to help a distant country that we hadn’t seen, couldn’t communicate with and knew next to nothing about.
It also doesn’t work as a counterargument for “The Far Future Must Conflict with the Near Future to be Morally Relevant”. The authors are claiming that anything that helps the far future can also be accomplished by helping people in the present. The analogous argument that anything that helps distant countries can also be accomplished by helping people in this country is just wrong.
We can make meaningful decisions about how to help people in the distant future. For example, to allow them to exist at all, to allow them to exist with a complex civilisation that hasn’t collapsed, to give them more prosperity that they can use as they choose, to avoid destroying their environment, to avoid collapsing their options by other irreversible choices, etc. Basically, to aim and giving them things near the base of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs or to give them universal goods — resources or options that can be traded for whatever it is they know they need at the time. And the same is often true for international aid.
In both cases, it isn’t always easy to know that our actions will actually secure these basic needs, rather than making things worse in some way. But it is possible. One way to do it for the distant future is to avoid catastrophes that have predictable longterm effects, which is a major reason I focus on that and suggest others do too.
I don’t see it as an objection to Longtermism if it recommends the same things as traditional morality — that is just as much a problem for traditional theories, by symmetry. It is especially not a problem when traditional theories might (if their adherents were careful) recommend much more focus on existential risks but in fact almost always neglect the issue substantially. If they admit that Longtermists are right that these are the biggest issues of our time and that the world should massively scale up focus and resources on them, and that they weren’t saying this before we came along, then that is a big win for Longtermism. If they don’t think it is all that important actually, then we disagree and the theory is quite distinctive in practice. Either way the distinctiveness objection also fails.
This is in tension with “We Are Not in a Position to Predict the Best Actions for the Far Future”, isn’t it?
It is rather that longtermists have not provided any examples of moral decisions that would be different if we were to consider the far future versus the near future. All current focus areas, the authors argue, can be justified by appealing to the near future.
Yeah, perhaps I am subtly misrepresenting the argument. Trying again, I interpret it as saying:
People have justified longtermism by pointing to actions that seem sensible, such as the claim that it made sense in the past to end slavery, and it makes sense currently to prevent existential risk. But both of these examples can be justified with a lot more certainty by appealing to the short term future. So in order to justify longtermism in particular, you have to point out proposed policies that are a lot less sensible seeming, and rely on a lot less certainty.
It might help to clarify that in the article they are defining “long term future” as a scale of millions of years.
If you’re referring to the first point I would reword this to: