“There are still trillions of future individuals, whose interests and dignity matter.”
How can the interests and dignity of unidentified fictional persons matter?
I view this aspect of longtermism much the way I view forced-birthers (so-called “pro-life”) who pretend to care about “unborn babies”. The fake concern in both cases is in service of an ideology. Many of the forced birthers are sociopaths who show no concern for actual human beings. In the case of the cargo cult concern of longtermism, it strikes me as something I might expect of people on the spectrum … but I don’t know any of these people personally, so I have no concrete reason to think this is true, but I find a concern for trillions of abstract people who are merely imagined to some day exist to be so bizarre that I’m grasping for an explanation.
“When someone is born is a morally irrelevant fact”
Whether “someone” actually exists is a morally relevant fact. This use of “someone” is a highly misleading equivocation or amphiboly—in one case it references a specific organism; in the other case it doesn’t reference anything it at all. Perhaps it would help to try to formulate longtermism in Loglan.
As a moderator, I think this comment is rude and uncivil, breaking Forum norms. Please don’t leave any more comments like this or you will be banned from the Forum.
I’m sorry you’ve had a rough time with your first posts! The norms here are somewhat different than a lot of other places on the internet. Personally I think they’re better, but they can lead to a lot of backlash against people when they act in a way that wouldn’t be unusual on, say, Twitter. Specifically, I would look at our commenting guidelines:
Commenting guidelines:
Aim to explain, not persuade
Try to be clear, on-topic, and kind
Approach disagreements with curiosity
This comment doesn’t really fit the last two. It’s rather uncharitable and uncurious to assume that people are faking concern for future people / unborn babies, even if you can’t personally think of a reason why someone would genuinely care about these things. It is a pretty counterintuitive worldview, but on this forum we tend to think the right response to ideas we don’t understand is “Why do you believe that?” not “Nobody could actually believe that.”
As for a reason for why someone might genuinely care about longtermism, maybe I can provide one.
EA started with the idea that we should care about people we don’t know, people on the other side of the world who might not look like us or share our language, as much as we care about our own communities. This led to a lot of great work done on alleviating global poverty, which continues to this day.
Now—does anyone care about any future people? I think the answer is clearly yes here—some parents begin preparing for a better life for their kid before they ever get pregnant—they’re still a purely conceptual child at this point. Many people report wanting to leave a better world for their children’s children, whether they currently exist or not. That means we can care about at least some future people, if they feel close to us.
So why not care about future people who aren’t close to us? In the same way that I can care about people in Africa who I’ll never meet, I can care about future people who I don’t feel personally close to as well. In this way, caring about future people is a logical expansion of the moral circle, just like caring about people outside one’s own country.
You may not agree with this argument, and thats fine, but hopefully that lets you see why someone might legitimately care about people who don’t yet exist, rather than just pretend to do so in service of some other goal.
“There are still trillions of future individuals, whose interests and dignity matter.”
How can the interests and dignity of unidentified fictional persons matter?
I view this aspect of longtermism much the way I view forced-birthers (so-called “pro-life”) who pretend to care about “unborn babies”. The fake concern in both cases is in service of an ideology. Many of the forced birthers are sociopaths who show no concern for actual human beings. In the case of the cargo cult concern of longtermism, it strikes me as something I might expect of people on the spectrum … but I don’t know any of these people personally, so I have no concrete reason to think this is true, but I find a concern for trillions of abstract people who are merely imagined to some day exist to be so bizarre that I’m grasping for an explanation.
“When someone is born is a morally irrelevant fact”
Whether “someone” actually exists is a morally relevant fact. This use of “someone” is a highly misleading equivocation or amphiboly—in one case it references a specific organism; in the other case it doesn’t reference anything it at all. Perhaps it would help to try to formulate longtermism in Loglan.
As a moderator, I think this comment is rude and uncivil, breaking Forum norms. Please don’t leave any more comments like this or you will be banned from the Forum.
Welcome to the forum.
I’m sorry you’ve had a rough time with your first posts! The norms here are somewhat different than a lot of other places on the internet. Personally I think they’re better, but they can lead to a lot of backlash against people when they act in a way that wouldn’t be unusual on, say, Twitter. Specifically, I would look at our commenting guidelines:
Commenting guidelines:
Aim to explain, not persuade
Try to be clear, on-topic, and kind
Approach disagreements with curiosity
This comment doesn’t really fit the last two. It’s rather uncharitable and uncurious to assume that people are faking concern for future people / unborn babies, even if you can’t personally think of a reason why someone would genuinely care about these things. It is a pretty counterintuitive worldview, but on this forum we tend to think the right response to ideas we don’t understand is “Why do you believe that?” not “Nobody could actually believe that.”
As for a reason for why someone might genuinely care about longtermism, maybe I can provide one.
EA started with the idea that we should care about people we don’t know, people on the other side of the world who might not look like us or share our language, as much as we care about our own communities. This led to a lot of great work done on alleviating global poverty, which continues to this day.
Now—does anyone care about any future people? I think the answer is clearly yes here—some parents begin preparing for a better life for their kid before they ever get pregnant—they’re still a purely conceptual child at this point. Many people report wanting to leave a better world for their children’s children, whether they currently exist or not. That means we can care about at least some future people, if they feel close to us.
So why not care about future people who aren’t close to us? In the same way that I can care about people in Africa who I’ll never meet, I can care about future people who I don’t feel personally close to as well. In this way, caring about future people is a logical expansion of the moral circle, just like caring about people outside one’s own country.
You may not agree with this argument, and thats fine, but hopefully that lets you see why someone might legitimately care about people who don’t yet exist, rather than just pretend to do so in service of some other goal.