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This article just attempts to discredit the idea of longtermism by ridiculing it, instead of presenting any actual counterarguments. It just writes about the im

This article just attempts to discredit the idea of longtermism by ridiculing it, instead of presenting any actual counterarguments. It just writes about the implications of its strawman over and over in a sardonic tone. The only thing it wants to get across is “some rich people and philosophy weirdos like this idea, therefore it is bad”. Where are the actual counter-arguments in the article? I suppose it relies on the readers already agreeing with the author that these conclusions are appalling. It works in that case. It doesn’t do much for the reader otherwise.

_Nat_ 5y ago
> Where are the actual counter-arguments in the article? It doesn't appear to attempt to make actual arguments. I think the article's mostly just an emotional appeal. I'd speculate that the argument-like content is meant as flavoring, to make the raw emotionalism less unpalatable.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  That's incorrect. The article is making the argument that "Longtermism" is weighing purely hypothetical (and basic incalculable) future things more than present things. Whether this argument is true or not, there is an argument here.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - rhaps0dy 5y ago
    I partly agree and disagree with your comment. It is true that the article says > that "Longtermism" is weighing purely hypothetical future things more than present things (please forgive the splicing). That is an accurate representation of longtermism as far as I can tell, because the future is inherently hypothetical (we don't know it yet). But this is not arguing that longtermism is true, or false, or beneficial, or harmful. It's just stating its content, and expecting that the reader becomes disgusted by it. The reason I spliced your comment is that the part > (and basic incalculable) is not necessarily true. The article does not really argue for or against the proposition of whether we can estimate the amount of future lives with any accuracy.
    - joe_the_user 5y ago
      > (and basic incalculable) The article does not really argue for or against the proposition of whether we can estimate the amount of future lives with any accuracy. Yes, the article makes that more or less tacit assumption that making decisions based on far hypotheticals is a mistakes. I think that's reasonable assumption that most people would agree with. I would also note that Bostrom and company never claim that they calculate the odds of their existential dangers. In Bostrome's book Superintelligence, he is clear that he cannot calculate any odds. The only thing they do is (implicitly) assume that it's possible to reason about the purely hypothetical in the fashion that one can reason about the clearly possible. But is something one argue against fairly plausibly; I don't know the odds of me getting sick or my car breaking down but because it's possible, I have to prepare for it. I can't use the same reasoning with chances of aliens landing or the sun exploding or any event where I don't have enough information to demonstrate it's plausibility as possibility, so to speak. And sure, I haven't proved aliens landing isn't a possibility.
  - _Nat_ 5y ago
    The topic itself seems interesting, it's just the article itself that's of particularly poor quality. While there may be legitimate philosophical issues that could be addressed in a scholarly manner, I feel like the article is written like celebrity-gossip from a tabloid. Seems more about flinging mud than anything intellectual.
joe_the_user 5y ago
I disagree. The article argues that putting things in term of the "existential" distracts from immediate problems - for example, if climate change can be terrible risk but still not an existential risk. And more broadly, you see the argument extrapolate to an almost purely hypothetical future evades discussion of real risks in the present.
- golemotron 5y ago
  Just like fire and flood insurance distract from car insurance, right? It's tragic that we treat world attention as if it should be a "winner take all game." I don't think it will be effective, and it will certainly prevent us from dealing with a portfolio of risks.
- rhaps0dy 5y ago
  That's fair, actually. This is an argument in the article. I would summarize it as "focusing on long-term risks necessarily means un-focusing on short-term ones, and that's bad". Would you agree? The latter part however ("and that's bad") is not well supported at all. That's what the article argues by emotional appeals. For a counterexample, most of the harms of climate change are still in the future, so addressing it is focusing on longer-term risks. And wouldn't it have been easier if we had started addressing it 20 years ago? To use the same example, extreme harm from climate change (e.g. thousands dead from heatwaves) is very likely, but ultimately still hypothetical -- it has not happened yet. The only difference with existential risks is the degree of hypotheticalness. And when the harm is high enough, why not take the somewhat supported hypotheticals seriously?
  - joe_the_user 5y ago
    That's fair, actually. This is an argument in the article. I would summarize it as "focusing on long-term risks necessarily means un-focusing on short-term ones, and that's bad". Would you agree? -- I'd agree with the addition "risks so long term that any calculation of their value is wholly implausible, risks such as the risk of humanity 'not colonizing the galaxy'" -- And yeah, the article pretty explicitly puts the situation as, this is the long view taken to the level of absurdity.
gregmuellegger 5y ago
It mentions directly the idea that: > a “small misstep for mankind,” however terrible a “massacre for man” it might otherwise be. and > You ought to care equally about people no matter when they exist, whether today, next year, or in a couple billion years henceforth This means that there is put value on unborn, potentially possible lifes. And then you can start weighing these lifes against currently living humans. And then it becomes perfectly reasonable to perform genocide on impaired, or poor people as this would free up resources to focus on colonizing the solar system. I think this is a particular counter argument where this kind of weighting human lifes becomes a bad idea. Especially when comparing current actual living, breathing humans against potential future beeings. This absolutely neglects the needs of current humans, with all their human rights to be able to get the share in the world they require to live in dignity.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  This kind of weighing is inevitable and we see it everyday. We are sacrificing current GDP to mitigate climate change for the benefit of future generations. Countries invest real dollars today in their infrastructure that will benefit the unborn. If not for the value of future human life, perhaps we should crank up CO2 production and go out with one hell of a party. We might be able to minimize the impact to most people living today if we double our fossil fuel use. Replace the green new deal with a huge party fund.
shrimpx 5y ago
One takeaway from the article, for me, is that some of the rhetoric of longermism by itself has dangerous potentials in society. For example it could be weaponized politically to marginalize groups.
mrow84 5y ago
My reading of the article’s core argument is the following: longtermism assumes that it is possible to perform an accounting of future outcomes, and from this expected value calculations, even if just in sketch, that can be used to allocate resources in the present, so as to maximise total “good”. This process is incredibly prone to bias, and in reality appears to amount to little more than selective speculation about its proponents’ desired futures, and a corresponding proposal for the targeting of present resources. I find this argument compelling - most methodologies for inter-temporal decision making acknowledge the large uncertainties associated with the future, and, either explicitly or implicitly, avoid making claims about the distant future, either in terms of what plans we should make for the future, or in how future states should affect our current plans. There is no reason to believe that the proponents of longtermism have addressed this issue - indeed if they had it would be a very significant breakthrough, and we could apply their method to more immediate problems as well. What seems much more likely is that they have not addressed the issue at all, and that their purported accounting is really just a regurgitation of their prior beliefs, and thus, as the article suggests, consequently serves only to justify the existing behaviours of those who subscribe to it.

_Nat_ 5y ago

> Where are the actual counter-arguments in the article? It doesn't appear to attempt to make actual arguments. I think the article's mostly just an emotional appeal. I'd speculate that the argument-like content is meant as flavoring, to make the raw emotionalism less unpalatable.

joe_the_user 5y ago
That's incorrect. The article is making the argument that "Longtermism" is weighing purely hypothetical (and basic incalculable) future things more than present things. Whether this argument is true or not, there is an argument here.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rhaps0dy 5y ago
  I partly agree and disagree with your comment. It is true that the article says > that "Longtermism" is weighing purely hypothetical future things more than present things (please forgive the splicing). That is an accurate representation of longtermism as far as I can tell, because the future is inherently hypothetical (we don't know it yet). But this is not arguing that longtermism is true, or false, or beneficial, or harmful. It's just stating its content, and expecting that the reader becomes disgusted by it. The reason I spliced your comment is that the part > (and basic incalculable) is not necessarily true. The article does not really argue for or against the proposition of whether we can estimate the amount of future lives with any accuracy.
  - joe_the_user 5y ago
    > (and basic incalculable) The article does not really argue for or against the proposition of whether we can estimate the amount of future lives with any accuracy. Yes, the article makes that more or less tacit assumption that making decisions based on far hypotheticals is a mistakes. I think that's reasonable assumption that most people would agree with. I would also note that Bostrom and company never claim that they calculate the odds of their existential dangers. In Bostrome's book Superintelligence, he is clear that he cannot calculate any odds. The only thing they do is (implicitly) assume that it's possible to reason about the purely hypothetical in the fashion that one can reason about the clearly possible. But is something one argue against fairly plausibly; I don't know the odds of me getting sick or my car breaking down but because it's possible, I have to prepare for it. I can't use the same reasoning with chances of aliens landing or the sun exploding or any event where I don't have enough information to demonstrate it's plausibility as possibility, so to speak. And sure, I haven't proved aliens landing isn't a possibility.
- _Nat_ 5y ago
  The topic itself seems interesting, it's just the article itself that's of particularly poor quality. While there may be legitimate philosophical issues that could be addressed in a scholarly manner, I feel like the article is written like celebrity-gossip from a tabloid. Seems more about flinging mud than anything intellectual.

joe_the_user 5y ago

I disagree. The article argues that putting things in term of the "existential" distracts from immediate problems - for example, if climate change can be terrible risk but still not an existential risk. And more broadly, you see the argument extrapolate to an almost purely hypothetical future evades discussion of real risks in the present.

golemotron 5y ago
Just like fire and flood insurance distract from car insurance, right? It's tragic that we treat world attention as if it should be a "winner take all game." I don't think it will be effective, and it will certainly prevent us from dealing with a portfolio of risks.
rhaps0dy 5y ago
That's fair, actually. This is an argument in the article. I would summarize it as "focusing on long-term risks necessarily means un-focusing on short-term ones, and that's bad". Would you agree? The latter part however ("and that's bad") is not well supported at all. That's what the article argues by emotional appeals. For a counterexample, most of the harms of climate change are still in the future, so addressing it is focusing on longer-term risks. And wouldn't it have been easier if we had started addressing it 20 years ago? To use the same example, extreme harm from climate change (e.g. thousands dead from heatwaves) is very likely, but ultimately still hypothetical -- it has not happened yet. The only difference with existential risks is the degree of hypotheticalness. And when the harm is high enough, why not take the somewhat supported hypotheticals seriously?
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  That's fair, actually. This is an argument in the article. I would summarize it as "focusing on long-term risks necessarily means un-focusing on short-term ones, and that's bad". Would you agree? -- I'd agree with the addition "risks so long term that any calculation of their value is wholly implausible, risks such as the risk of humanity 'not colonizing the galaxy'" -- And yeah, the article pretty explicitly puts the situation as, this is the long view taken to the level of absurdity.

gregmuellegger 5y ago

It mentions directly the idea that: > a “small misstep for mankind,” however terrible a “massacre for man” it might otherwise be. and > You ought to care equally about people no matter when they exist, whether today, next year, or in a couple billion years henceforth This means that there is put value on unborn, potentially possible lifes. And then you can start weighing these lifes against currently living humans. And then it becomes perfectly reasonable to perform genocide on impaired, or poor people as this would free up resources to focus on colonizing the solar system. I think this is a particular counter argument where this kind of weighting human lifes becomes a bad idea. Especially when comparing current actual living, breathing humans against potential future beeings. This absolutely neglects the needs of current humans, with all their human rights to be able to get the share in the world they require to live in dignity.

s1artibartfast 5y ago
This kind of weighing is inevitable and we see it everyday. We are sacrificing current GDP to mitigate climate change for the benefit of future generations. Countries invest real dollars today in their infrastructure that will benefit the unborn. If not for the value of future human life, perhaps we should crank up CO2 production and go out with one hell of a party. We might be able to minimize the impact to most people living today if we double our fossil fuel use. Replace the green new deal with a huge party fund.

shrimpx 5y ago

One takeaway from the article, for me, is that some of the rhetoric of longermism by itself has dangerous potentials in society. For example it could be weaponized politically to marginalize groups.

mrow84 5y ago

My reading of the article’s core argument is the following: longtermism assumes that it is possible to perform an accounting of future outcomes, and from this expected value calculations, even if just in sketch, that can be used to allocate resources in the present, so as to maximise total “good”. This process is incredibly prone to bias, and in reality appears to amount to little more than selective speculation about its proponents’ desired futures, and a corresponding proposal for the targeting of present resources. I find this argument compelling - most methodologies for inter-temporal decision making acknowledge the large uncertainties associated with the future, and, either explicitly or implicitly, avoid making claims about the distant future, either in terms of what plans we should make for the future, or in how future states should affect our current plans. There is no reason to believe that the proponents of longtermism have addressed this issue - indeed if they had it would be a very significant breakthrough, and we could apply their method to more immediate problems as well. What seems much more likely is that they have not addressed the issue at all, and that their purported accounting is really just a regurgitation of their prior beliefs, and thus, as the article suggests, consequently serves only to justify the existing behaviours of those who subscribe to it.