I don’t think Will or any other serious scholar believes that it is “workable”. It reads to me like a theoretical assumption that defines a particular abstract philosophy.
“Looking at every possible action, calculating the expected outcome, and then choosing the best one” is also a laughable proposition in the real world, but the notion of “utilitarianism” still makes intuitive sense and can help us weigh how we make decisions (at least, some people think so). Likewise, the notion of “longtermism” can do the same, even if looking 1000 years into the future is impossible.
I also find utilitarian thinking to be more useful/practical than “longtermist thinking”. That said, I haven’t seen much advocacy for longtermism as a guide to personal action, rather than as a guide to research that much more intensively attempts to map out long-term consequences.
Maybe an apt comparison would be “utilitarianism is to decisions I make in my daily life as longtermism is to the decisions I’d make if I were in an influential position with access to many person-years of planning”. But this is me trying to guess what another author was thinking; you could consider writing to them directly, too.
(I assume you’ve heard/considered points of this type before; I’m writing them out here mostly for my own benefit, as a way of thinking through the question.)
I don’t think Will or any other serious scholar believes that it is “workable”. It reads to me like a theoretical assumption that defines a particular abstract philosophy.
“Looking at every possible action, calculating the expected outcome, and then choosing the best one” is also a laughable proposition in the real world, but the notion of “utilitarianism” still makes intuitive sense and can help us weigh how we make decisions (at least, some people think so). Likewise, the notion of “longtermism” can do the same, even if looking 1000 years into the future is impossible.
Sure, but not even close to the same extent.
I also find utilitarian thinking to be more useful/practical than “longtermist thinking”. That said, I haven’t seen much advocacy for longtermism as a guide to personal action, rather than as a guide to research that much more intensively attempts to map out long-term consequences.
Maybe an apt comparison would be “utilitarianism is to decisions I make in my daily life as longtermism is to the decisions I’d make if I were in an influential position with access to many person-years of planning”. But this is me trying to guess what another author was thinking; you could consider writing to them directly, too.
(I assume you’ve heard/considered points of this type before; I’m writing them out here mostly for my own benefit, as a way of thinking through the question.)