I don’t encounter many people who still identify as longtermist, but as someone who does, I recently wrote thesearguments for why longtermists should be less extinction-focused.
The tl;dr is that I think that other than extinction there are predictable patterns, with perhaps the most prominent related to entropy, and that those patterns provide more nuanced ways to estimate the cost of lesser catastrophes—and that while assessing the costs of lesser catastrophes precisely is infeasible, that’s not a basis for thinking they would be negligible compared to extinction.
Interesting that you don’t come across many people these days who still identify as longtermist, that’s pretty different from my experience. I think it feels more intuitive to me to identify as ‘longtermist’ than ‘effective altruist’. The former is a claim about my values (people in the future matter morally) whereas the latter is behavioural and feels presumptuous (how altruistic really am I? Am I effective at it even when I try?). But I guess I’m in the minority on that!
I don’t encounter many people who still identify as longtermist, but as someone who does, I recently wrote these arguments for why longtermists should be less extinction-focused.
The tl;dr is that I think that other than extinction there are predictable patterns, with perhaps the most prominent related to entropy, and that those patterns provide more nuanced ways to estimate the cost of lesser catastrophes—and that while assessing the costs of lesser catastrophes precisely is infeasible, that’s not a basis for thinking they would be negligible compared to extinction.
Interesting that you don’t come across many people these days who still identify as longtermist, that’s pretty different from my experience. I think it feels more intuitive to me to identify as ‘longtermist’ than ‘effective altruist’. The former is a claim about my values (people in the future matter morally) whereas the latter is behavioural and feels presumptuous (how altruistic really am I? Am I effective at it even when I try?). But I guess I’m in the minority on that!