I have to object to this. I don’t think longtermism is best understood as a cause, or set of causes, but more as a justification for working on certain causes over others. e.g.:
Working on Nuclear Risk could be seen as near-termist.
We agree and say as much:
As we have noted previously, people may of course prioritise these causes for reasons other than longtermism or neartermism per se. Likewise, people might support the ‘Other’ causes here for neartermist or longtermist reasons.
And here’s what we say at the linked previous post:
For simplicity, we label support for these, non-longtermist, causes “neartermist”, as we have in previous years. However, it’s worth noting explicitly that there is little reason to suppose that neartermism specifically, (e.g., attitudes or beliefs related to helping present vs. future generations or different time preference) explain support for these causes, rather than different epistemic beliefs (e.g., about appropriate kinds of evidence) or support for more traditional causes etc.
We also explicitly discuss your example of Climate Change making much the same point:
The classifications we used here were informed by our prior analyses of the factor structure of the cause prioritisation items and a priori theoretical considerations (namely Climate Change is clearly associated with the neartermist causes not the longtermist causes, but theoretically some might think of it as a longtermist cause, and we count it as ‘Other’ in this analysis)
I acknowledge though that your concern is that “this categorisation helps to reify and entrench those divisions”. I think this is possible, but I think that:
It is important to talk about that (I think we’d be more confused/less informed if we just considered all the causes as separate/independent).
Referring to these clusters of causes and ideas in terms of “longtermism” and “neartermism” is established terminology. Crucially, I don’t think there’s an obviously better set of term, because “existential risk” wouldn’t capture some causes within this bucket (e.g. in previous years we had a “broad longtermism” item which was also part of this cluster)
I think it’s important enough not to hide the details in footnotes
I think it’s an entirely reasonable view to think discussion of this should be in the text, not a footnote. Though we had a lot of information in both the footnotes and appendix, so it’s tricky.
Though I don’t claim it’s a single thing, rather than a cluster of correlated things. And empirically, our longtermist-neartermist cause scores measure is strongly correlated with people’s stated abstract beliefs. The single abstract item explicitly about longtermism, is correlated with LT-NT at r=0.457, which is appreciably strong for a necessarily noisy cause prioritisation score and single item, in a social science context.
Thanks for responding David, and again I think that the survey work you’ve done is great :) We have many points of agreement:
Agreed that you basically note my points in the previous works (both in footnotes and in the main text)
Agreed that it’s always a hard tradeoff when compressing detailed research findings into digestible summaries of research—I know from professional experience how hard that is!
Agreed that there is some structure which your previous factor analysis and general community discussions picked up on, which is worth highlighting and examining
I still think that the terminology is somewhat misguided. Perhaps the key part I disagree is that “Referring to these clusters of causes and ideas in terms of “longtermism” and “neartermism” is established terminology”—even if it has been established I want to push back and un-establish because I think it’s more unhelpful and even harmful for community discussion and progress. I’m not sure what terms are better, though some alternatives I’ve seen have been:[1]
I guess, to state my point as clearly as possible, I don’t think the current cluster names “carve nature at its joints”, and that the potential confusion/ambiguity in use could lead to negative perceptions that aren’t accurate became entrenched
Thanks JWS, it certainly sounds like we agree more than we disagree.
even if it has been established I want to push back and un-establish
That’s definitely fair!
For what it’s worth I think that the explanation for differences in support for these two different clusters of causes is more epistemic and than it is to do with attitudes towards the longterm or near term per se.[1] Ideally, I’d like the terms we use to not (be seen to) refer to the explanation for supporting the causes at all, since I think the reasons are heterogeneous.
In any case, we definitely agree that none of these terms are perfect, and I suspect no terms are going to be completely satisfactory, but I’m open to continued discussion about what better terms would be.
Although, in terms of predicting “LT minus NT” cause prioritisation from our cause-related idea items, the “long term future” item and “low probability, high impact” items were about equally predictive.
Interestingly, this also holds true in unpublished work we have looking at the general public, for whom objections that influencing the far future is impractical or impossible are more consequential than their lack of concern for future generations.
Thanks for the detailed comment!
We agree and say as much:
And here’s what we say at the linked previous post:
We also explicitly discuss your example of Climate Change making much the same point:
I acknowledge though that your concern is that “this categorisation helps to reify and entrench those divisions”. I think this is possible, but I think that:
There is something[1] unifying these causes
It is important to talk about that (I think we’d be more confused/less informed if we just considered all the causes as separate/independent).
Referring to these clusters of causes and ideas in terms of “longtermism” and “neartermism” is established terminology. Crucially, I don’t think there’s an obviously better set of term, because “existential risk” wouldn’t capture some causes within this bucket (e.g. in previous years we had a “broad longtermism” item which was also part of this cluster)
I think it’s an entirely reasonable view to think discussion of this should be in the text, not a footnote. Though we had a lot of information in both the footnotes and appendix, so it’s tricky.
Though I don’t claim it’s a single thing, rather than a cluster of correlated things. And empirically, our longtermist-neartermist cause scores measure is strongly correlated with people’s stated abstract beliefs. The single abstract item explicitly about longtermism, is correlated with LT-NT at r=0.457, which is appreciably strong for a necessarily noisy cause prioritisation score and single item, in a social science context.
Thanks for responding David, and again I think that the survey work you’ve done is great :) We have many points of agreement:
Agreed that you basically note my points in the previous works (both in footnotes and in the main text)
Agreed that it’s always a hard tradeoff when compressing detailed research findings into digestible summaries of research—I know from professional experience how hard that is!
Agreed that there is some structure which your previous factor analysis and general community discussions picked up on, which is worth highlighting and examining
I still think that the terminology is somewhat misguided. Perhaps the key part I disagree is that “Referring to these clusters of causes and ideas in terms of “longtermism” and “neartermism” is established terminology”—even if it has been established I want to push back and un-establish because I think it’s more unhelpful and even harmful for community discussion and progress. I’m not sure what terms are better, though some alternatives I’ve seen have been:[1]
Richard Chappell’s “Pure suffering reduction vs Reliable global capacity growth vs High-impact long-shots”
Laura Duffy’s “Empirical EA vs Reason-driven EA”
Ryan Briggs’s “Bed-nets vs Light-cone”
I guess, to state my point as clearly as possible, I don’t think the current cluster names “carve nature at its joints”, and that the potential confusion/ambiguity in use could lead to negative perceptions that aren’t accurate became entrenched
Though I don’t think any of them are perfect distillations
Thanks JWS, it certainly sounds like we agree more than we disagree.
That’s definitely fair!
For what it’s worth I think that the explanation for differences in support for these two different clusters of causes is more epistemic and than it is to do with attitudes towards the longterm or near term per se.[1] Ideally, I’d like the terms we use to not (be seen to) refer to the explanation for supporting the causes at all, since I think the reasons are heterogeneous.
In any case, we definitely agree that none of these terms are perfect, and I suspect no terms are going to be completely satisfactory, but I’m open to continued discussion about what better terms would be.
Although, in terms of predicting “LT minus NT” cause prioritisation from our cause-related idea items, the “long term future” item and “low probability, high impact” items were about equally predictive.
Interestingly, this also holds true in unpublished work we have looking at the general public, for whom objections that influencing the far future is impractical or impossible are more consequential than their lack of concern for future generations.