I think there’re a lot of inferential steps most people would need to go through to get from their current worldview, to a longtermist worldview. But I think a pretty massive one is just getting people to appreciate how big the future could be, and I think this post does a great job of that.
An added bonus is that the idea that the future could be huge is a claim the longtermist community is particularly certain of (whereas other important ideas, such as the likelihood of various existential risks and what we can do about them are extremely uncertain and contested). While quantifying how big the future could be, or is on expectation, is really difficult—but the idea that it could be extremely big stands up to scrutiny quite well. I think it’s really useful to have such beautifully illustrated graphs that put where humanity is now into context, I’m excited to use them for future work on longtermism at Giving What We Can.
RE something that would be useful for OWID on longtermism. I’d be very interested in approximate data on the amount of funding each year that gets directed to improving the very long-term future. Given there’d be a lot of difficult edge-cases here (e.g., should climate change funding be included?), it may need to be operationalised quite narrowly (perhaps “How much money do we spend each year on avoiding human extinction?” would be better.)
Yes, the question about tracking funding is one that is on our list – it’d be so helpful to understand this. But building and maintaining this would be quite a major undertaking. To do it well we’d need someone who can dedicate a lot of time and energy to it. And we are still a very small team, so realistically we won’t be able to do that in the next few years.
Makes sense! From your appearance on the 80,000 Hours podcast, I was shocked by how much you have managed to do given you’re such a small team. I’m really looking forward to seeing what you accomplish as you expand :)
This was fantastic, thanks for sharing!
I think there’re a lot of inferential steps most people would need to go through to get from their current worldview, to a longtermist worldview. But I think a pretty massive one is just getting people to appreciate how big the future could be, and I think this post does a great job of that.
An added bonus is that the idea that the future could be huge is a claim the longtermist community is particularly certain of (whereas other important ideas, such as the likelihood of various existential risks and what we can do about them are extremely uncertain and contested). While quantifying how big the future could be, or is on expectation, is really difficult—but the idea that it could be extremely big stands up to scrutiny quite well. I think it’s really useful to have such beautifully illustrated graphs that put where humanity is now into context, I’m excited to use them for future work on longtermism at Giving What We Can.
RE something that would be useful for OWID on longtermism. I’d be very interested in approximate data on the amount of funding each year that gets directed to improving the very long-term future. Given there’d be a lot of difficult edge-cases here (e.g., should climate change funding be included?), it may need to be operationalised quite narrowly (perhaps “How much money do we spend each year on avoiding human extinction?” would be better.)
Thanks. Very good to hear!
Yes, the question about tracking funding is one that is on our list – it’d be so helpful to understand this. But building and maintaining this would be quite a major undertaking. To do it well we’d need someone who can dedicate a lot of time and energy to it. And we are still a very small team, so realistically we won’t be able to do that in the next few years.
Makes sense! From your appearance on the 80,000 Hours podcast, I was shocked by how much you have managed to do given you’re such a small team. I’m really looking forward to seeing what you accomplish as you expand :)