4 ms·

Still learning about the tenets of this philosophy here, nor do I have a position on it yet, so might get this wrong... However, isn't there a more charitable

by bm3719 4y ago

Still learning about the tenets of this philosophy here, nor do I have a position on it yet, so might get this wrong... However, isn't there a more charitable argument you could make that looks something like this: 4. Unlike with cavemen and Socrates' time, we now have decisions to make that could lock us out of continued proliferation of human life in the future. As such, the longtermists are bringing attention to those, and trying to help us to make the right decisions, instead of focusing resources on short-term returns. A good example they might support would be spending more money on space tech and less on food for Africa. Resources aren't limitless, and some aren't renewable at all, so we have to use those wisely to position our heirs such that they could take the next step. They might also make the slightly more tenuous claim that since we know more about the nature of the universe, there could be some invariants that we'll certainly need to see through this vision (e.g., establishing self-sustaining life off the planet). Those will be true in the future, just as the caveman could have assumed we would still need food and shelter of some kind in present day.

lahvak 4y ago
> A good example they might support would be spending more money on space tech and less on food for Africa. Resources aren't limitless, and some aren't renewable at all, so we have to use those wisely to position our heirs such that they could take the next step. 1. I am not sure whether I can get behind the idea of "long term species survival" if that means that those who survive will be absolutely awful creatures. 2. What makes you think that prioritizing space travel over feeding hungry people will not lead to some sort of societal upheaval that will destroy life on the planet just weeks before the ships take of?
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  To be fair to the longtermists, any non-zero chance of survival beyond Earth is vastly preferable to zero. Especially since we know there exist scenarios, that will occur eventually, that would guarantee an end to human civilization limited to a single planet, such as comet impacts, gamma ray bursts, etc.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    Nearest M class planet is how many lifetimes away? How many earths worth of resources must be consumed just to safely transport bacteria there?
  - KingMob 4y ago
    To be fair to the rest of us, this has to be balanced against any detrimental effect longtermist plans would have on long-term survival on Earth. A .002% chance of making it to the stars probably isn't worth a 4% lower chance of keeping Earth habitable.
- bm3719 4y ago
  Since they have formulae to quantize this, they would probably weigh the marginal utility of, say, a billion less hungry people now against a -1% chance reduction of annihilation of the human race, and say the latter is a clear winner. Maybe you can count a cultural shift as just another parameter. They seem to weigh survivability super high, above anything else even. The argument there is likely that nothing matters if we aren't alive to ask these questions. I doubt they're considering "societal upheaval" as a species threat, but if it got bad enough to be on their radar, perhaps they would support (normally unpalatable) solutions to that too. It's all about us reweighting our parameters such that our heuristic functions evaluate towards branches that ensure long-term species survival, and the argument that we're doing the opposite of that now in many areas due to short-term, emotional reasoning. Caveat: Not a longtermist here, just projecting based on what I've read of them so far.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> A good example they might support would be spending more money on space tech and less on food for Africa. Resources aren't limitless In addition to being callous, it's very shortsighted, which is ironic - a developed and politically stable Africa would be making big contribution to a space program, and it has made huge economic strides in the past 20 years. I am almost getting the feeling that lack longterm thinking among longtermists indicates that it is just being used as a facitious justification for political position it's leaders held a priori
- gremlinsinc 4y ago
  I like the idea of planning to colonize the galaxy, etc.. but as a humanist that should come second to ensuring the most upward mobility of earths inhabitants, if we can't maximize happiness, and get some bleak dystopian world order, what's the use existing and keeping existing? Longtermism (the concept of us maximizing humanity's existence) is okay with humanism and effective altruism leading the charge, without those it's just veiled fascism, kill the billion to save 10 billion in the future sounds like a war cry from Nazi Germany, and is dangerous to allow to spread.
gremlinsinc 4y ago
One of the things that worries me about this philosophy is it's callousness to the people currently living, a longtermist may decide (and try to enact a plan) around the fact that relieving the world of a few billion people gives humanity the greatest chance of survival. The last time rich people said it was okay to kill people in the name of the greater good, a World War had to shut that shit down. This is just disguised fascism and it's dangerous. I care that we exist a billion years from now, I can adopt some longterminism, but I'm also a humanist and what's the point of humanity continuing if we can't solve poverty, and make it so everybody has a decent quality of life - all things a spacefaring civilization or (one day) should be able to aspire to. Before we plan for a billion years from now, we should first figure out how to comfortably support the billions we have now and plan for maximum comfort for the poorest person, not full socialism, but surely better social safety nets in all countries and better democracies. Our society is so flawed, hell making it through the end of this century seems like a 50/50 proposition, so lets make here and now better.

by bm3719 4y ago

lahvak 4y ago

> A good example they might support would be spending more money on space tech and less on food for Africa. Resources aren't limitless, and some aren't renewable at all, so we have to use those wisely to position our heirs such that they could take the next step. 1. I am not sure whether I can get behind the idea of "long term species survival" if that means that those who survive will be absolutely awful creatures. 2. What makes you think that prioritizing space travel over feeding hungry people will not lead to some sort of societal upheaval that will destroy life on the planet just weeks before the ships take of?

MichaelZuo 4y ago
To be fair to the longtermists, any non-zero chance of survival beyond Earth is vastly preferable to zero. Especially since we know there exist scenarios, that will occur eventually, that would guarantee an end to human civilization limited to a single planet, such as comet impacts, gamma ray bursts, etc.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Nearest M class planet is how many lifetimes away? How many earths worth of resources must be consumed just to safely transport bacteria there?
- KingMob 4y ago
  To be fair to the rest of us, this has to be balanced against any detrimental effect longtermist plans would have on long-term survival on Earth. A .002% chance of making it to the stars probably isn't worth a 4% lower chance of keeping Earth habitable.
bm3719 4y ago
Since they have formulae to quantize this, they would probably weigh the marginal utility of, say, a billion less hungry people now against a -1% chance reduction of annihilation of the human race, and say the latter is a clear winner. Maybe you can count a cultural shift as just another parameter. They seem to weigh survivability super high, above anything else even. The argument there is likely that nothing matters if we aren't alive to ask these questions. I doubt they're considering "societal upheaval" as a species threat, but if it got bad enough to be on their radar, perhaps they would support (normally unpalatable) solutions to that too. It's all about us reweighting our parameters such that our heuristic functions evaluate towards branches that ensure long-term species survival, and the argument that we're doing the opposite of that now in many areas due to short-term, emotional reasoning. Caveat: Not a longtermist here, just projecting based on what I've read of them so far.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

> A good example they might support would be spending more money on space tech and less on food for Africa. Resources aren't limitless In addition to being callous, it's very shortsighted, which is ironic - a developed and politically stable Africa would be making big contribution to a space program, and it has made huge economic strides in the past 20 years. I am almost getting the feeling that lack longterm thinking among longtermists indicates that it is just being used as a facitious justification for political position it's leaders held a priori

gremlinsinc 4y ago
I like the idea of planning to colonize the galaxy, etc.. but as a humanist that should come second to ensuring the most upward mobility of earths inhabitants, if we can't maximize happiness, and get some bleak dystopian world order, what's the use existing and keeping existing? Longtermism (the concept of us maximizing humanity's existence) is okay with humanism and effective altruism leading the charge, without those it's just veiled fascism, kill the billion to save 10 billion in the future sounds like a war cry from Nazi Germany, and is dangerous to allow to spread.

gremlinsinc 4y ago

One of the things that worries me about this philosophy is it's callousness to the people currently living, a longtermist may decide (and try to enact a plan) around the fact that relieving the world of a few billion people gives humanity the greatest chance of survival. The last time rich people said it was okay to kill people in the name of the greater good, a World War had to shut that shit down. This is just disguised fascism and it's dangerous. I care that we exist a billion years from now, I can adopt some longterminism, but I'm also a humanist and what's the point of humanity continuing if we can't solve poverty, and make it so everybody has a decent quality of life - all things a spacefaring civilization or (one day) should be able to aspire to. Before we plan for a billion years from now, we should first figure out how to comfortably support the billions we have now and plan for maximum comfort for the poorest person, not full socialism, but surely better social safety nets in all countries and better democracies. Our society is so flawed, hell making it through the end of this century seems like a 50/50 proposition, so lets make here and now better.