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The problem is, it is not obvious what the 'correct' decision is today to maximize the future lives. It's all guesses, for longtermist and presentist. Its just

The problem is, it is not obvious what the 'correct' decision is today to maximize the future lives. It's all guesses, for longtermist and presentist. Its just that the longtermism people are using this long term argument for things they do want now, but are potentially 'atrocities', but in the view of infinity looks logical. So dress up some logic using the infinite future with trillions of lives, to make my current bad decision seem reasonable. Its tipping the scales when they also do not know which is best decision.

tuatoru 4y ago
If there is any technological progress trend, then in the long term people will be vastly, incomprehensibly richer than us and so they will be much more able to deal with problems than we are. Ask not what you can do for the future, ask why those b*stards aren't helping us.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >then in the long term people will be vastly, incomprehensibly richer than us Like Rome after the fall was so much richer than before? Or how Hiroshima and Nagasaki were so much better with the advent of nuclear fission technology? Since, technology basically just makes us richer and safer and everything! Or like how the average working/middle class US (or European) family is so much more comfortable than in decades before? >so they will be much more able to deal with problems than we are. Like how we have the best government and Presidents ever? And the best infrastructure and public policy, and the more capable? A lot of this attitude is from people in the upper class (at least salary wise) who can't fathom anybody else suffering more now, because it's business as usual or better than ever for them...
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    This is a bit silly. Imagine life without even commonplace things such as easy access to food, or corrective glasses, or sun cream, or Paracetamol, or a Polio vaccine, or a car, or a bike? You don't need to be rich to access some of the biggest jumps in quality of life in history.
  - FormerBandmate 4y ago
    Hiroshima and Nagasaki are way better off today than they were before World War 2 lmao They have the same issues Japan does now (birth rate, long working hours, etc), but they’re not radioactive wastelands like people assume. In a lot of ways their infrastructure is better than the best cities in America
    - coldtea 4y ago
      >Hiroshima and Nagasaki are way better off today than they were before World War 2 lmao Which is neither here nor there lmao. Were they better in 1947? 1950? Were even the same people alive when they were rehabitated? I'm pretty sure Rome, the other example I mentioned, is also better off today than the 5th century AD. But the point was that "future == better" is not some guarantee. It might be much worse. Or better for some other people, after decades or generations of people have suffered in between a 'good present' and that 'good future', and then again worse, or any such combination. What you described is mere technology and conveniences accumulated, which yes, it's often just increasing, though not even this is guaranteed (many places post war or economic collapse lost a lot of their prior conveniences and technology infrastructure). But societies can be optimistic for life, happy, and dynamic in times with less, and be depressed, stressed out, or squeezed in a rat race in times with more. This can even coincide with other things getting better for this or that segment: say, X improving (say network connectivity or gay rights), while cost of living, health costs, prospects of retiring, precarity of work getting worse for a big majority ever since the 70s.
  - CamperBob2 4y ago
    Compate Hiroshima's fate to that of Pyongyang, and maybe a one-time atomic bombing doesn't sound so bad. It was necessary to give Stalin something to think about -- even if our own planners didn't see it that way at the time.
    - krapp 4y ago
      >It was necessary to give Stalin something to think about. I really wish this meme would die. There's no evidence the US dropped the atomic bombs on Japan as a show of force to Stalin, yet people constantly state it as if it were proven fact. All of the existing documentary evidence from the time points to the purpose of the atomic bombs being to force a surrender from Japan and avoid the cost of an invasion of the main islands. People need to accept that sometimes the straightforward explanation is actually correct. It isn't always a smokescreen of propaganda hiding a nefarious motive or conspiracy. Yes, the US was concerned about dealing with Russia after the war. No, not to the degree that they were willing to nuke two Japanese cities just to spook him.
      - CamperBob2 4y ago
        Yes, the US was concerned about dealing with Russia after the war. No, not to the degree that they were willing to nuke two Japanese cities just to spook him. Agreed, and I edited my comment to clarify. It's funny how it had that effect, though, isn't it? War might change, but Russians never do. They respect force and violence, nothing else. My response was to coldtea's snark: Or how Hiroshima and Nagasaki were so much better with the advent of nuclear fission technology? Since technology basically just makes us richer and safer and everything! Yes, in fact, it absolutely did make Japan "richer and safer and everything," by ensuring that the country didn't become the scene of an epic, likely-endless battle with Communist forces for control of the Pacific. For an additional gedanken exercise, contemplate the likely effect on the net well-being of North Korea's population over time if MacArthur had been given a free hand by Truman.
        krapp 4y ago
        > It's funny how it had that effect, though, isn't it? Did it, in the long term? We know Russia had spies inside the Manhattan Project. They knew what the US was doing, and it seems as if their plan was to get their own nuclear arsenal as soon as possible. In hindsight they don't seem to have been deterred at all.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    They sit in comfortable homes with clean running hot and cold water, air conditioning, refrigeration, automated clothes and dish washers, waterproof under tile laminates, municipal sewer service which can be provided cheaper and faster then at any point in history, and electric lightning with tens of thousands of hours of lifetime at 30% quantum efficiency. They use a computer which has more power then took us to the moon, connect instantly across half the planet, and post a lament: "has technology really made our lives better?"
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > ask why those b*stards aren't helping us This is an important question. Just like with AI, future generations don’t need us because history and the arrow of time has already caused them to emerge — there’s more risk for them in changing the past (our current time) than just let it be. How much do you care about going back in time and help your 10 generations ago ancestor have better access to clean water?
  - tasuki 4y ago
    > there’s more risk for them in changing the past (our current time) than just let it be Why would it be possible? And what would the risk be?
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      > And what would the risk be? There are more ways to be dead than being alive. They're alive in their future time (they won the lotto!); any change they make in the past carries the risk that their future selves won't emerge.
      - tasuki 3y ago
        But they have emerged already. What would it be at all possible to change that?
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  > If there is any technological progress trend, then in the long term people will be vastly, incomprehensibly richer than us There are still people who enjoy "roughing it", some who enjoy it so much they spend large amounts of their lives effectively living as pre-agricultural people did. As is seen in ennui and frustration among the rich, or grouchiness among the old, the human psyche adapts to what it is used to in terms of emotional responses. > so they will be much more able to deal with problems than we are. We are still dealing with the fallout (literal, and figurative) of tetraethyl lead. Stopping it at the beginning would have been far more cost effective, and "deal with it" effective, than all of the technology we have put into remediating it since. This is one example. An ounce of prevention is often far better than a pound of cure. Let's let future scientists, who will be far more capable than us, invent new things instead of spending their efforts rectifying our mistakes.
wnkrshm 4y ago
Imo, you can have all of the philosophical arguments you want but in the end, how do you make people go along with your goals? Not everyone is ever on board and the 'means' of the famous idiom have looked the same everywhere for most of human history. Maybe we should first be more effective at policing our means than dream up better ends. The chosen means of centuries ago caused what people want to heal now. The ends (colonial industry, hegemony, religion, power) didn't matter at all for the people who were their victims. Edit: What if, by being too zealous, longtermists damage the image of their goal so much that it won't be seen as acceptable to pursue for centuries (ref. communism).
- dublinben 4y ago
  >how do you make people go along with your goals? This is the challenge that "degrowth" or other scarcity-rooted environmentalists have. When you are pushing a promise of deprivation on the currently comfortable, your message is going to struggle to gain traction. For any movement, it is of primary tactical importance to have a message that is appealing to your audience.
  - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    It's not the currently comfortable who push back the most, it's those who don't have much and hear that they will have to lose even that (even if this is not true). Constraints on the rich are popular even among some of the rich. Shared suffering is something the poor, rightfully, don't believe.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    I feel like you are missing an opportunity here, the submission is about longtermism. If you wanted to stay on topic you would say something like, if people have the option of certain deprivation and uncertain deprivation (effects of climate change) they will choose uncertain deprivation and that is exactly the problem with longtermism as well.
FrustratedMonky 4y ago
Of course, also, can't fight "Moloch". To best help the future, we should change ourselves in the present to not fall into the traps, local minima, "Moloch" has set out. This isn't going to happen through any philosophy or social program, we need to change ourselves as humans into something else. Some genetic change to change our brain to not 'keep up with the neighbors', and all of the other drives that make us form hierarchies and consume. But then, we wouldn't be human anymore, so does this violate longtermism? In order to save humanity, we would need to stop being human. OR the opposite, humans are not going to make it.
- FormerBandmate 4y ago
  Why? Humanity has had a pretty good run so far with all of its flaws, Dr. Frankensteining the entire species out of some general dislike of competition has barely any upside and a ton of downside
  - FrustratedMonky 4y ago
    Guess responding more directly to the 'longtermism' argument. If we , humans today, are so awful at making decisions (with our drive towards consuming, hierarchies, war), that we need to stop doing what we are doing, and focus on the future or we will die out. Then, what I am saying is, there is no way to do that, other than to change ourselves to not be human. There is no way to form an organization, or re-work capitalism, or form a new government, to change the future, because all of the human based drives will remain and inevitably devolve to the current situation again. Over millions of years, we'll get what we have now, unless we change what we are. And the longtermism people are saying what we have now is no good, will lead to us dyeing out. Because as the longtermist state, if we are heading towards dying out because of our current human decisions, then how can we do otherwise except to change our human reasoning.
evanwise 4y ago
Even if we accept their motivations at face value (which is naive), it's a totally incoherent morality. There are infinitely many future states with trillions of of lives. Which one is the one we attach moral value to? If it's all of them, then every single decision you make is equivalent to killing infinitely many future people. If it's one particular future state how do we decide which one? (I am not, of course, saying that you shouldn't value making the future better, just that applying this specific kind of utilitarian calculus to future humans is childish nonsense.)
- imtringued 4y ago
  Yes it is basically the classic expected value problem but we don't know the outcomes or their probabilities.

tuatoru 4y ago

If there is any technological progress trend, then in the long term people will be vastly, incomprehensibly richer than us and so they will be much more able to deal with problems than we are. Ask not what you can do for the future, ask why those b*stards aren't helping us.

coldtea 4y ago
>then in the long term people will be vastly, incomprehensibly richer than us Like Rome after the fall was so much richer than before? Or how Hiroshima and Nagasaki were so much better with the advent of nuclear fission technology? Since, technology basically just makes us richer and safer and everything! Or like how the average working/middle class US (or European) family is so much more comfortable than in decades before? >so they will be much more able to deal with problems than we are. Like how we have the best government and Presidents ever? And the best infrastructure and public policy, and the more capable? A lot of this attitude is from people in the upper class (at least salary wise) who can't fathom anybody else suffering more now, because it's business as usual or better than ever for them...
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  This is a bit silly. Imagine life without even commonplace things such as easy access to food, or corrective glasses, or sun cream, or Paracetamol, or a Polio vaccine, or a car, or a bike? You don't need to be rich to access some of the biggest jumps in quality of life in history.
- FormerBandmate 4y ago
  Hiroshima and Nagasaki are way better off today than they were before World War 2 lmao They have the same issues Japan does now (birth rate, long working hours, etc), but they’re not radioactive wastelands like people assume. In a lot of ways their infrastructure is better than the best cities in America
  - coldtea 4y ago
    >Hiroshima and Nagasaki are way better off today than they were before World War 2 lmao Which is neither here nor there lmao. Were they better in 1947? 1950? Were even the same people alive when they were rehabitated? I'm pretty sure Rome, the other example I mentioned, is also better off today than the 5th century AD. But the point was that "future == better" is not some guarantee. It might be much worse. Or better for some other people, after decades or generations of people have suffered in between a 'good present' and that 'good future', and then again worse, or any such combination. What you described is mere technology and conveniences accumulated, which yes, it's often just increasing, though not even this is guaranteed (many places post war or economic collapse lost a lot of their prior conveniences and technology infrastructure). But societies can be optimistic for life, happy, and dynamic in times with less, and be depressed, stressed out, or squeezed in a rat race in times with more. This can even coincide with other things getting better for this or that segment: say, X improving (say network connectivity or gay rights), while cost of living, health costs, prospects of retiring, precarity of work getting worse for a big majority ever since the 70s.
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  Compate Hiroshima's fate to that of Pyongyang, and maybe a one-time atomic bombing doesn't sound so bad. It was necessary to give Stalin something to think about -- even if our own planners didn't see it that way at the time.
  - krapp 4y ago
    >It was necessary to give Stalin something to think about. I really wish this meme would die. There's no evidence the US dropped the atomic bombs on Japan as a show of force to Stalin, yet people constantly state it as if it were proven fact. All of the existing documentary evidence from the time points to the purpose of the atomic bombs being to force a surrender from Japan and avoid the cost of an invasion of the main islands. People need to accept that sometimes the straightforward explanation is actually correct. It isn't always a smokescreen of propaganda hiding a nefarious motive or conspiracy. Yes, the US was concerned about dealing with Russia after the war. No, not to the degree that they were willing to nuke two Japanese cities just to spook him.
    - CamperBob2 4y ago
      Yes, the US was concerned about dealing with Russia after the war. No, not to the degree that they were willing to nuke two Japanese cities just to spook him. Agreed, and I edited my comment to clarify. It's funny how it had that effect, though, isn't it? War might change, but Russians never do. They respect force and violence, nothing else. My response was to coldtea's snark: Or how Hiroshima and Nagasaki were so much better with the advent of nuclear fission technology? Since technology basically just makes us richer and safer and everything! Yes, in fact, it absolutely did make Japan "richer and safer and everything," by ensuring that the country didn't become the scene of an epic, likely-endless battle with Communist forces for control of the Pacific. For an additional gedanken exercise, contemplate the likely effect on the net well-being of North Korea's population over time if MacArthur had been given a free hand by Truman.
      - krapp 4y ago
        > It's funny how it had that effect, though, isn't it? Did it, in the long term? We know Russia had spies inside the Manhattan Project. They knew what the US was doing, and it seems as if their plan was to get their own nuclear arsenal as soon as possible. In hindsight they don't seem to have been deterred at all.
- XorNot 4y ago
  They sit in comfortable homes with clean running hot and cold water, air conditioning, refrigeration, automated clothes and dish washers, waterproof under tile laminates, municipal sewer service which can be provided cheaper and faster then at any point in history, and electric lightning with tens of thousands of hours of lifetime at 30% quantum efficiency. They use a computer which has more power then took us to the moon, connect instantly across half the planet, and post a lament: "has technology really made our lives better?"
andsoitis 4y ago
> ask why those b*stards aren't helping us This is an important question. Just like with AI, future generations don’t need us because history and the arrow of time has already caused them to emerge — there’s more risk for them in changing the past (our current time) than just let it be. How much do you care about going back in time and help your 10 generations ago ancestor have better access to clean water?
- tasuki 4y ago
  > there’s more risk for them in changing the past (our current time) than just let it be Why would it be possible? And what would the risk be?
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    > And what would the risk be? There are more ways to be dead than being alive. They're alive in their future time (they won the lotto!); any change they make in the past carries the risk that their future selves won't emerge.
    - tasuki 3y ago
      But they have emerged already. What would it be at all possible to change that?
anonymouskimmer 4y ago
> If there is any technological progress trend, then in the long term people will be vastly, incomprehensibly richer than us There are still people who enjoy "roughing it", some who enjoy it so much they spend large amounts of their lives effectively living as pre-agricultural people did. As is seen in ennui and frustration among the rich, or grouchiness among the old, the human psyche adapts to what it is used to in terms of emotional responses. > so they will be much more able to deal with problems than we are. We are still dealing with the fallout (literal, and figurative) of tetraethyl lead. Stopping it at the beginning would have been far more cost effective, and "deal with it" effective, than all of the technology we have put into remediating it since. This is one example. An ounce of prevention is often far better than a pound of cure. Let's let future scientists, who will be far more capable than us, invent new things instead of spending their efforts rectifying our mistakes.

wnkrshm 4y ago

Imo, you can have all of the philosophical arguments you want but in the end, how do you make people go along with your goals? Not everyone is ever on board and the 'means' of the famous idiom have looked the same everywhere for most of human history. Maybe we should first be more effective at policing our means than dream up better ends. The chosen means of centuries ago caused what people want to heal now. The ends (colonial industry, hegemony, religion, power) didn't matter at all for the people who were their victims. Edit: What if, by being too zealous, longtermists damage the image of their goal so much that it won't be seen as acceptable to pursue for centuries (ref. communism).

dublinben 4y ago
>how do you make people go along with your goals? This is the challenge that "degrowth" or other scarcity-rooted environmentalists have. When you are pushing a promise of deprivation on the currently comfortable, your message is going to struggle to gain traction. For any movement, it is of primary tactical importance to have a message that is appealing to your audience.
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  It's not the currently comfortable who push back the most, it's those who don't have much and hear that they will have to lose even that (even if this is not true). Constraints on the rich are popular even among some of the rich. Shared suffering is something the poor, rightfully, don't believe.
- imtringued 4y ago
  I feel like you are missing an opportunity here, the submission is about longtermism. If you wanted to stay on topic you would say something like, if people have the option of certain deprivation and uncertain deprivation (effects of climate change) they will choose uncertain deprivation and that is exactly the problem with longtermism as well.

FrustratedMonky 4y ago

Of course, also, can't fight "Moloch". To best help the future, we should change ourselves in the present to not fall into the traps, local minima, "Moloch" has set out. This isn't going to happen through any philosophy or social program, we need to change ourselves as humans into something else. Some genetic change to change our brain to not 'keep up with the neighbors', and all of the other drives that make us form hierarchies and consume. But then, we wouldn't be human anymore, so does this violate longtermism? In order to save humanity, we would need to stop being human. OR the opposite, humans are not going to make it.

FormerBandmate 4y ago
Why? Humanity has had a pretty good run so far with all of its flaws, Dr. Frankensteining the entire species out of some general dislike of competition has barely any upside and a ton of downside
- FrustratedMonky 4y ago
  Guess responding more directly to the 'longtermism' argument. If we , humans today, are so awful at making decisions (with our drive towards consuming, hierarchies, war), that we need to stop doing what we are doing, and focus on the future or we will die out. Then, what I am saying is, there is no way to do that, other than to change ourselves to not be human. There is no way to form an organization, or re-work capitalism, or form a new government, to change the future, because all of the human based drives will remain and inevitably devolve to the current situation again. Over millions of years, we'll get what we have now, unless we change what we are. And the longtermism people are saying what we have now is no good, will lead to us dyeing out. Because as the longtermist state, if we are heading towards dying out because of our current human decisions, then how can we do otherwise except to change our human reasoning.

evanwise 4y ago

Even if we accept their motivations at face value (which is naive), it's a totally incoherent morality. There are infinitely many future states with trillions of of lives. Which one is the one we attach moral value to? If it's all of them, then every single decision you make is equivalent to killing infinitely many future people. If it's one particular future state how do we decide which one? (I am not, of course, saying that you shouldn't value making the future better, just that applying this specific kind of utilitarian calculus to future humans is childish nonsense.)

imtringued 4y ago
Yes it is basically the classic expected value problem but we don't know the outcomes or their probabilities.