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Crit­i­cism of longter­mism and ex­is­ten­tial risk studies

TagLast edit: Jun 6, 2022, 5:20 PM by Leo

Criticism of longtermism and existential risk studies collects critical discussions of longtermism and existential risk studies.

Further reading

Melchin, Denise (2021) Why I am probably not a longtermist, Effective Altruism Forum, September 23.

Tomasik, Brian (2015) Should altruists focus on reducing short-term or far-future suffering?, Essays on Reducing Suffering, February 6 (updated 17 March 2015).

Webb, Duncan (2021) Formalising the “washing out hypothesis”, Effective Altruism Forum, March 25.

Related entries

cluelessness | criticism of effective altruism | criticism of effective altruist causes | existential risk | global health and wellbeing | longtermism

Why I am prob­a­bly not a longtermist

Denise_MelchinSep 23, 2021, 5:24 PM
257 points
49 comments8 min readEA link

Ex­cerpts from “Do­ing EA Bet­ter” on x-risk methodology

Eevee🔹Jan 26, 2023, 1:04 AM
22 points
5 comments6 min readEA link
(forum.effectivealtruism.org)

Longter­mists are per­ceived as power-seeking

OllieBaseJun 20, 2023, 8:39 AM
133 points
43 comments2 min readEA link

Four Con­cerns Re­gard­ing Longtermism

Pat AndriolaJun 6, 2022, 5:42 AM
82 points
15 comments7 min readEA link

Re­sponse to Re­cent Crit­i­cisms of Longtermism

abDec 13, 2021, 1:36 PM
249 points
31 comments28 min readEA link

A Cri­tique of The Precipice: Chap­ter 6 - The Risk Land­scape [Red Team Challenge]

Sarah WeilerJun 26, 2022, 10:59 AM
57 points
2 comments21 min readEA link

A re­sponse to Michael Plant’s re­view of What We Owe The Future

JackMOct 4, 2023, 11:40 PM
61 points
14 comments10 min readEA link

Mone­tary and so­cial in­cen­tives in longter­mist careers

Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸Sep 23, 2023, 9:03 PM
140 points
5 comments6 min readEA link

Effec­tive al­tru­ists are already in­sti­tu­tion­al­ists and are do­ing far more than un­work­able longter­mism—A re­sponse to “On the Differ­ences be­tween Eco­mod­ernism and Effec­tive Altru­ism”

jackvaFeb 21, 2023, 6:08 PM
78 points
3 comments12 min readEA link

Is the Far Fu­ture Ir­rele­vant for Mo­ral De­ci­sion-Mak­ing?

Tristan DOct 1, 2024, 7:42 AM
35 points
31 comments2 min readEA link
(www.sciencedirect.com)

My highly per­sonal skep­ti­cism brain­dump on ex­is­ten­tial risk from ar­tifi­cial in­tel­li­gence.

NunoSempereJan 23, 2023, 8:08 PM
436 points
116 comments14 min readEA link
(nunosempere.com)

En­light­en­ment Values in a Vuln­er­a­ble World

Maxwell TabarrokJul 18, 2022, 11:54 AM
66 points
18 comments31 min readEA link

The Base Rate of Longter­mism Is Bad

ColdButtonIssuesSep 5, 2022, 1:29 PM
225 points
27 comments7 min readEA link

“Effec­tive Altru­ism, Longter­mism, and the Prob­lem of Ar­bi­trary Power” by Gwilym David Blunt

WobblyPandaPandaNov 12, 2023, 1:21 AM
22 points
2 comments1 min readEA link
(www.thephilosopher1923.org)

Mis­takes in the moral math­e­mat­ics of ex­is­ten­tial risk (Part 2: Ig­nor­ing back­ground risk) - Reflec­tive altruism

Eevee🔹Jul 3, 2023, 6:34 AM
84 points
7 comments6 min readEA link
(ineffectivealtruismblog.com)

The Epistemic Challenge to Longter­mism (Tarsney, 2020)

MichaelA🔸Apr 4, 2021, 3:09 AM
79 points
27 comments2 min readEA link
(globalprioritiesinstitute.org)

Thoughts on “A case against strong longter­mism” (Mas­rani)

MichaelA🔸May 3, 2021, 2:22 PM
39 points
33 comments2 min readEA link

Com­mon-sense cases where “hy­po­thet­i­cal fu­ture peo­ple” matter

tlevinAug 12, 2022, 2:05 PM
107 points
21 comments4 min readEA link

The Cred­i­bil­ity of Apoca­lyp­tic Claims: A Cri­tique of Techno-Fu­tur­ism within Ex­is­ten­tial Risk

EmberAug 16, 2022, 7:48 PM
25 points
35 comments17 min readEA link

Re­sponse to Tor­res’ ‘The Case Against Longter­mism’

HaydnBelfieldMar 8, 2021, 6:09 PM
138 points
73 comments5 min readEA link

Re­sponse to re­cent crit­i­cisms of EA “longter­mist” thinking

kbogJan 6, 2020, 4:31 AM
27 points
46 comments11 min readEA link

Nu­clear war tail risk has been ex­ag­ger­ated?

Vasco Grilo🔸Feb 25, 2024, 9:14 AM
48 points
22 comments28 min readEA link

[Link post] Op­ti­mistic “Longter­mism” Is Ter­rible For Animals

BrianKSep 6, 2022, 10:38 PM
47 points
6 comments1 min readEA link
(www.forbes.com)

21 crit­i­cisms of EA I’m think­ing about

Peter WildefordSep 1, 2022, 7:28 PM
210 points
26 comments9 min readEA link

Re­think­ing longter­mism and global development

Eevee🔹Sep 2, 2022, 5:28 AM
10 points
2 comments8 min readEA link
(sunyshore.substack.com)

Sum­ma­riz­ing the com­ments on William MacAskill’s NYT opinion piece on longtermism

WestSep 21, 2022, 5:46 PM
106 points
11 comments2 min readEA link

“Prona­tal­ists” may look to co-opt effec­tive al­tru­ism or longtermism

pseudonymNov 17, 2022, 9:04 PM
34 points
25 comments4 min readEA link
(www.businessinsider.com)

A “Solip­sis­tic” Repug­nant Conclusion

RamiroJul 21, 2022, 4:06 PM
13 points
0 comments6 min readEA link

Longter­mists should take cli­mate change very seriously

Nir EyalOct 3, 2022, 6:33 PM
29 points
10 comments8 min readEA link

EA is too fo­cused on the Man­hat­tan Project

trevor1Sep 5, 2022, 2:00 AM
17 points
0 comments1 min readEA link

Against longter­mism: a care-cen­tric ap­proach?

Aron POct 2, 2022, 5:00 AM
21 points
2 comments1 min readEA link

A longter­mist cri­tique of “The ex­pected value of ex­tinc­tion risk re­duc­tion is pos­i­tive”

Anthony DiGiovanniJul 1, 2021, 9:01 PM
145 points
10 comments32 min readEA link

Fu­ture peo­ple might not ex­ist

Indra Gesink 🔸Nov 30, 2022, 7:17 PM
18 points
0 comments4 min readEA link

[Question] Why doesn’t WWOTF men­tion the Bronze Age Col­lapse?

Eevee🔹Sep 19, 2022, 6:29 AM
16 points
4 comments1 min readEA link

Win­ners of the EA Crit­i­cism and Red Team­ing Contest

LizkaOct 1, 2022, 1:50 AM
226 points
41 comments19 min readEA link

[Linkpost] Dan Luu: Fu­tur­ist pre­dic­tion meth­ods and accuracy

LinchSep 15, 2022, 9:20 PM
64 points
7 comments4 min readEA link
(danluu.com)

The Long Reflec­tion as the Great Stag­na­tion

LarksSep 1, 2022, 8:55 PM
43 points
2 comments8 min readEA link

Con­cerns/​Thoughts over in­ter­na­tional aid, longter­mism and philo­soph­i­cal notes on speak­ing with Larry Temkin.

Ben YeohJul 27, 2022, 7:51 PM
35 points
1 comment12 min readEA link

For­mal­is­ing the “Wash­ing Out Hy­poth­e­sis”

dwebbMar 25, 2021, 11:40 AM
101 points
27 comments12 min readEA link

Re­duc­ing the neart­erm risk of hu­man ex­tinc­tion is not as­tro­nom­i­cally cost-effec­tive?

Vasco Grilo🔸Jun 9, 2024, 8:02 AM
20 points
37 comments8 min readEA link

Non-util­i­tar­ian effec­tive altruism

keir bradwellJan 29, 2023, 6:07 AM
42 points
10 comments17 min readEA link
(keirbradwell.substack.com)

I No Longer Feel Com­fortable in EA

disgruntled_eaFeb 5, 2023, 8:45 PM
2 points
29 comments1 min readEA link

Pro­posal: Create A New Longter­mism Organization

Brian LuiFeb 7, 2023, 5:59 AM
25 points
37 comments6 min readEA link

Maybe longter­mism isn’t for everyone

Eevee🔹Feb 10, 2023, 4:48 PM
39 points
17 comments1 min readEA link

Mis­takes in the moral math­e­mat­ics of ex­is­ten­tial risk (Part 1: In­tro­duc­tion and cu­mu­la­tive risk) - Reflec­tive altruism

Eevee🔹Jul 3, 2023, 6:33 AM
74 points
6 comments6 min readEA link
(ineffectivealtruismblog.com)

[Question] Will the vast ma­jor­ity of tech­nolog­i­cal progress hap­pen in the longterm fu­ture?

Vasco Grilo🔸Jul 8, 2023, 8:40 AM
8 points
0 comments2 min readEA link

Prior prob­a­bil­ity of this be­ing the most im­por­tant century

Vasco Grilo🔸Jul 15, 2023, 7:18 AM
8 points
2 comments2 min readEA link

Effec­tive Altru­ism and the strate­gic am­bi­guity of ‘do­ing good’

Jeroen De Ryck 🔹Jul 17, 2023, 7:24 PM
81 points
10 comments2 min readEA link
(medialibrary.uantwerpen.be)

Blog up­date: Reflec­tive altruism

David ThorstadMay 14, 2023, 11:07 AM
169 points
22 comments9 min readEA link

Ex­is­ten­tial risk pes­simism and the time of perils

David ThorstadAug 12, 2022, 2:42 PM
177 points
67 comments20 min readEA link

Nu­clear war is un­likely to cause hu­man extinction

Jeffrey LadishNov 7, 2020, 5:39 AM
61 points
27 comments11 min readEA link

Can a ter­ror­ist at­tack cause hu­man ex­tinc­tion? Not on priors

Vasco Grilo🔸Dec 2, 2023, 8:20 AM
43 points
9 comments15 min readEA link

Su­per­vol­ca­noes tail risk has been ex­ag­ger­ated?

Vasco Grilo🔸Mar 6, 2024, 8:38 AM
46 points
9 comments8 min readEA link
(journals.ametsoc.org)

Can a con­flict cause hu­man ex­tinc­tion? Yet again, not on priors

Vasco Grilo🔸Jun 19, 2024, 4:59 PM
19 points
2 comments11 min readEA link

A case against fo­cus­ing on tail-end nu­clear war risks

Sarah WeilerNov 16, 2022, 6:08 AM
32 points
15 comments10 min readEA link

Utili­tar­i­anism and the re­place­abil­ity of de­sires and attachments

MichaelStJulesJul 27, 2024, 1:57 AM
34 points
13 comments12 min readEA link

Ex­ag­ger­at­ing the risks (Part 13: Ord on Biorisk)

Vasco Grilo🔸Dec 31, 2023, 8:45 AM
57 points
18 comments13 min readEA link
(ineffectivealtruismblog.com)

[linkpost] “What Are Rea­son­able AI Fears?” by Robin Han­son, 2023-04-23

Arjun PanicksseryApr 14, 2023, 11:26 PM
41 points
3 comments4 min readEA link
(quillette.com)

Var­i­ance of the an­nual con­flict and epi­demic/​pan­demic deaths as a frac­tion of the global population

Vasco Grilo🔸Sep 10, 2024, 5:02 PM
16 points
0 comments2 min readEA link

Which World Gets Saved

trammellNov 9, 2018, 6:08 PM
155 points
27 comments3 min readEA link

Two tools for re­think­ing ex­is­ten­tial risk

ArepoApr 5, 2024, 9:25 PM
82 points
14 comments25 min readEA link

Imi­ta­tion Learn­ing is Prob­a­bly Ex­is­ten­tially Safe

Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 30, 2024, 5:06 PM
19 points
7 comments3 min readEA link
(www.openphilanthropy.org)

In­ter­na­tional risk of food in­se­cu­rity and mass mor­tal­ity in a run­away global warm­ing scenario

Vasco Grilo🔸Sep 2, 2023, 7:28 AM
15 points
2 comments6 min readEA link
(www.sciencedirect.com)

Can a war cause hu­man ex­tinc­tion? Once again, not on priors

Vasco Grilo🔸Jan 25, 2024, 7:56 AM
67 points
29 comments18 min readEA link

Three er­rors in the moral calcu­la­tions con­cern­ing ex­is­ten­tial risk.

jun123Aug 3, 2023, 11:47 AM
−9 points
0 comments1 min readEA link

A cri­tique of strong longtermism

Pablo RosadoAug 28, 2022, 7:33 PM
15 points
11 comments14 min readEA link

[Opz­ionale] Perché prob­a­bil­mente non sono una lungoterminista

EA ItalyJan 17, 2023, 6:12 PM
1 point
0 comments8 min readEA link

Blog up­date: Reflec­tive altruism

David ThorstadDec 15, 2024, 4:05 PM
103 points
12 comments11 min readEA link

Rad­i­cal Longter­mism and the Se­duc­tion of End­less Growth: A Cri­tique of William MacAskill’s ‘What We Owe the Fu­ture’

Alexander Herwix 🔸Sep 14, 2023, 2:43 PM
−13 points
15 comments1 min readEA link
(perspecteeva.substack.com)

An Evolu­tion­ary Ar­gu­ment un­der­min­ing Longter­mist think­ing?

Jim BuhlerMar 3, 2025, 2:47 PM
22 points
10 comments8 min readEA link

Sum­mary: Max­i­mal Clue­less­ness (An­dreas Mo­gensen)

Noah Varley🔸Feb 6, 2024, 2:49 PM
39 points
17 comments4 min readEA link

Op­ti­mism, AI risk, and EA blind spots

JustisSep 28, 2022, 5:21 PM
87 points
21 comments8 min readEA link

Carnegie Coun­cil MisUn­der­stands Longtermism

Jeff ASep 30, 2022, 2:57 AM
6 points
8 comments1 min readEA link
(www.carnegiecouncil.org)

Against longtermism

Brian LuiAug 11, 2022, 5:37 AM
38 points
30 comments6 min readEA link

Will longter­mists self-efface

Noah ScalesAug 12, 2022, 2:32 AM
−7 points
23 comments6 min readEA link

A Se­quence Against Strong Longter­mism

vadmasJul 22, 2021, 8:07 PM
20 points
14 comments1 min readEA link

EA is more than longtermism

frances_lorenzMay 3, 2022, 3:18 PM
160 points
99 comments5 min readEA link

A Case Against Strong Longtermism

A. WolffSep 2, 2022, 4:40 PM
10 points
4 comments39 min readEA link

Phil Tor­res on Against Longtermism

Group OrganizerJan 13, 2022, 6:04 AM
1 point
5 comments1 min readEA link

The rea­son­able­ness of spe­cial concerns

jwtAug 29, 2022, 12:10 AM
3 points
0 comments3 min readEA link

[Linkpost] Eric Sch­witzgebel: Against Longtermism

ag4000Jan 6, 2022, 2:15 PM
41 points
4 comments1 min readEA link

Phil Tor­res’ ar­ti­cle: “The Danger­ous Ideas of ‘Longter­mism’ and ‘Ex­is­ten­tial Risk’”

Ben_EisenpressAug 6, 2021, 7:19 AM
6 points
13 comments1 min readEA link

Re­marks about Longter­mism in­spired by Tor­res’s ‘Against Longter­mism’

carboniferous_umbraculumFeb 2, 2022, 4:20 PM
43 points
0 comments24 min readEA link

On longter­mism, Bayesi­anism, and the dooms­day argument

iporphyrySep 1, 2022, 12:27 AM
30 points
5 comments13 min readEA link

A pro­posed hi­er­ar­chy of longter­mist concepts

ArepoOct 30, 2022, 4:26 PM
38 points
13 comments4 min readEA link

Should strong longter­mists re­ally want to min­i­mize ex­is­ten­tial risk?

tobycrisford 🔸Dec 4, 2022, 4:56 PM
38 points
9 comments4 min readEA link

Longter­mist (es­pe­cially x-risk) ter­minol­ogy has bi­as­ing assumptions

ArepoOct 30, 2022, 4:26 PM
70 points
13 comments7 min readEA link

Nu­clear win­ter scepticism

Vasco Grilo🔸Aug 13, 2023, 10:55 AM
110 points
42 comments10 min readEA link
(www.navalgazing.net)

Talk: Longter­mism, the “Spirit” of Digi­tal Capitalism

ludwigbaldJan 5, 2025, 2:27 PM
−2 points
1 comment1 min readEA link
(media.ccc.de)

Nu­clear Fine-Tun­ing: How Many Wor­lds Have Been De­stroyed?

EmberAug 17, 2022, 1:13 PM
18 points
28 comments23 min readEA link

St. Peters­burg De­mon – a thought ex­per­i­ment that makes me doubt Longter­mism

wuschelMay 23, 2022, 11:49 AM
48 points
39 comments2 min readEA link

Con­cepts of ex­is­ten­tial catastrophe

Vasco Grilo🔸Apr 15, 2024, 5:16 PM
11 points
1 comment8 min readEA link
(globalprioritiesinstitute.org)

A Gen­tle In­tro­duc­tion to Risk Frame­works Beyond Forecasting

pending_survivalApr 11, 2024, 9:15 AM
81 points
4 comments27 min readEA link

#203 – In­terfer­ing with wild na­ture, ac­cept­ing death, and the ori­gin of com­plex civil­i­sa­tion (Peter God­frey-Smith on The 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

80000_HoursOct 4, 2024, 1:00 PM
14 points
0 comments16 min readEA link

A Cri­tique of Longter­mism by Pop­u­lar YouTube Science Chan­nel, Sabine Hossen­felder: “Elon Musk & The Longter­mists: What Is Their Plan?”

Ram AdityaOct 29, 2022, 5:31 PM
61 points
21 comments2 min readEA link

We can’t put num­bers on ev­ery­thing and try­ing to weak­ens our col­lec­tive epistemics

ConcernedEAsMar 8, 2023, 3:09 PM
9 points
0 comments11 min readEA link

An epistemic cri­tique of longtermism

Nathan_BarnardJul 10, 2022, 10:59 AM
12 points
4 comments9 min readEA link

Thread on LT/​ut’s prefer­ence for billions of im­mi­nent deaths

Peter_LaymanSep 14, 2022, 3:44 PM
−16 points
1 comment1 min readEA link
(twitter.com)

Against Longter­mism: I wel­come our robot over­lords, and you should too!

MattBallJul 2, 2022, 2:05 AM
5 points
6 comments6 min readEA link

The Case for Short­ter­mism—by Robert Wright

Miquel Banchs-Piqué (prev. mikbp)Aug 16, 2022, 8:00 PM
24 points
0 comments1 min readEA link
(nonzero.substack.com)

Sen­si­tive as­sump­tions in longter­mist modeling

Owen MurphySep 18, 2024, 1:39 AM
82 points
12 comments7 min readEA link
(ohmurphy.substack.com)

Paper sum­mary: Stak­ing our fu­ture: de­on­tic long-ter­mism and the non-iden­tity prob­lem (An­dreas Mo­gensen)

Global Priorities InstituteJun 7, 2022, 1:14 PM
25 points
6 comments6 min readEA link
(globalprioritiesinstitute.org)

[Question] What do you think the vi­sion is be­hind our biggest crit­ics?

aprilsunAug 1, 2023, 6:49 PM
29 points
6 comments1 min readEA link
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