I feel the disagreement isn't purely about longtermism. Some people believe in investing billions of dollars in military projects, fusion research, space projects, which might take 50 years to complete. Lots of people argue that AGI is coming in less than 50 years, heck even less than 5 years.
I think people lack concern in AGI not just because it's too far in the future, but because it's psychologically too weird, sci-fi, and unprecedented to care a lot about smarter than human machines.
I do agree it's absurd when people refuse to care at all about the far future of humanity over billions of years, and even look at you funnily when you talk about it. Why do they have to be so "all or nothing" about it, as if we must either care about it completely to the point of neglecting all present day causes, or ignore it completely like an awkward joke?
I wonder what can even be done about the far future over billions of years. I don't think that even if AI progress is fully shut down forever, mankind would have anything to do after the next 10 thousand years. Therefore, mankind's task is to ensure that nobody screws up the current 10 thousand or far less years. In the case of AI this is reduced to ensuring that no one creates an ASI not aligned to the broadest coalition of humans, and to solving current problems.
I agree that going into the details of the far future and trying to find specific solutions to specific problems might be ineffective, e.g. a caveman living 100,000 years ago can't do much help us solve global warming.
But I think imagining the far future over billions of years once in a while, and treating it as a serious topic (e.g. listening to people talk about it without cringing), helps us remember that it actually exists and is something at stake.
Have you ever thought that a trillionfold multiplication of humanity could mean the creation of suffering and catastrophes on a galactic scale? For some reason I have never seen longtermists concern themselves with that kind of future...
I very much disagree with the foundational premise of this post, being that causing a person to be born is equivalent to saving a life. That assumption is neither intuitive nor even reasonable, and it underlies almost everything else you wrote here.
It seems absurd that most people don’t find longtermism as an ideology compelling
Not fully disagreeing. But it doesn't mean it's wrong to suggest longtermism is counterintuitive for us all in all.
Instead: Yes, human moral taste simply is completely absurd - when judged in the way that you implicitly call out.
Meet human moral tastes:
Rmbr how we want to give that one single poor child on the picture - yet ignore how we could save many more efficiently? And how our motivation pales just once we see there are these many to be fed instead of that one?
Rmbr how we all love to care for our cat and feed it the most evilly abused chicken day by day? And it's not that we'd not know how the chicken is abused. Many really do know all while continuing.
Rmbr how we're all happy going to protest against Shell, not for corrupting policy and cheating us, potentially, but merely for having sold big quantities of oil - that exact oil we're until today continuing to order from them every day? Ok, this one a super random example in my mind for a seaparate reason today, but I just wanted to take one absurdity among the million you could pick.
Let's not bore everyone with continuing this obvious list further.
--> So while I find your individual points do exactly make sense, and it seems like longtermism should be the most natural thing: In the aggregate, it is not in any way an absurd claim that longtermism is counterintuitive for many - it really is exactly that. But really, it's also not a surprise, given what I'd guess even you - or at least most readers here - might most plausibly be able to observe (i) even within oneself - despite the slightly higher rationality than average humans' - or, else, at the very least, (ii) among pretty much everyone else near and dear you.
I agree with most of your comment, though I do think that most people haven't been exposed to good arguments for longtermism/utilitarianism in general - if they were I think most of them would at least find weak longtermism plausible.
Most people who disagree with longtermism probably do so because partisans on their side of the political spectrum disagree with longtermism for x reason, and they haven't been exposed to a fair analysis of how longtermists resolve most of the complaints brought up. (i.e. I think people would give up some of their irrational intuitions of they fairly analyzed longtermism)
Again don't fully disagree: yes exposing people, if you manage to get them to listen at all, a bit longer to longtermism, could easily make some of them agree with you.
But
Most people who disagree with longtermism probably do so because partisans on their side of the political spectrum disagree with longtermism for x reason [..]
seems nearly a bit conspiratorial, while reality seems to me so much more banal instead: Most of us are simply not wired to care a lot about these questions. Before anyone would have to exercise some propaganda on you, natural instinct is to care about much more tangible things than an (felt) abstract future expansion of humans and so on. It's just not what commoners think about. Not because sb tells them it's not important. Simply because natural drive to even think and care about such things is lacking. When you write most "haven't been exposed to a fair analysis of how longtermists resolve most of the complaints brought up" you're for sure right, but that 'haven't been exposed' in itself is signal, it's a symptom of their own preferences, maybe more than of external system factors: People don't care about longtermism questions and neither about arguments. Had people sought wisdom about longtermism, the market would trivially flood them with articles and media highlighting arguments like the ones we may make here for it.
So the problem is one level deeper in our psyche and in our moral behavior: as humans, we won't typically engage with this thing for a start, and thus, also not be educated about it.
FWIW, I think this complacency need also not be surprising at all from an evolutionary perspective. We have mostly ad-hoc moral interests and tastes, those that have enabled us to highlight why we are the ones in the right and of importance and a broad set of things of that sort. Longtermism is really far out from that set of evolutionary pressures we were exposed to.
Crosspost from: https://inputlogic.substack.com/p/longtermism-is-extremely-intuitive
Longtermism seeks to consider the welfare of the quintillions, septillions, or even octillions of potential future human beings, each with a likely higher level of consciousness and ability to feel pain/pleasure compared to us. Humanity has the ability to create astronomically high amounts of future beings, so much so that we should dedicate our resources towards reaching said teleological goals of actualizing long-term potential. Humans have only been around for 300,000 years—anatomically similar humans only arose 70,000 years ago. Exponential scientific and technological development has only occurred within the past 300 years, or the past 0.1% of human history.
As a relatively new species, humanity could have time to settle on distant planets, create artificial biospheres, upload digital minds, and achieve unfathomably high amounts of total utility. It seems intuitive from any consequentialist standpoint that we have a moral obligation to create this future, yet tons of people reject it based on irrational reasons.
I. Temporal discounting.
If I gave you an iPhone 15 right now versus an iPhone 15 in 10 years, you would prefer to receive the iPhone right now—so why should we not temporally discount benefits into the far, far future? A simple objection against this response is to analyze the diminishing marginal utility of the iPhone—10 years from now, an iPhone 15 is worth much less, and consequently carries much less social status.
If you gain an iPhone right now, the posititve benefits of having it can ripple into the far future; if your iPhone allows you to make money off of social media, it might allow you to buy the newest Apple release in 10 years.
None of this applies to pain and pleasure. Getting spontaneously kicked in the balls now is just as bad as getting spontaneously kicked in the balls 10 years from now. Receiving a sporadic dose of pleasurable feelings now is just as good as receiving those feelings 10 years later. It’s irrational to believe that the feelings of people are worth less as long as they’re further away temporally.
If person A were to set up a booby trap explicitly targeting a person born 50 years into the future, A deserves to be held equally accountable compared to if he targeted a person alive right now (assuming that A is still alive but in old age).
II. Genocide, famine, and atrocities.
Under longtermism, reducing existential risks that bring about the total annihilation of humanity, ones that prevent any future progress towards creating vast quantities of happy beings, lead to fanatacist utility calculations that justify real-world atrocities. Longtermists don’t justify genocides, famines, and suffering in places like the global South, as this claim is blatantly false.
It holds true that if there are 100 trillion people yet to be born, and AI ex-risk scenarios have a 1% chance of triggering before any of those 100 trillion people are born, reducing AI risk to 0.9% is the equivalent of saving 100 billion people in the far future. Simultaneously, you have to analyze the distant temporal effects of programs like homelessness aid, AIDs prevention, food distribution, etc. If we prevent existential risks from occurring, 2 humans today can produce thousands of humans across many generations.
Assuming every generation lasts 25 years and 2 people have 4 children every generation, in the 300 years that constitute the most recent 0.1% of human history, 2 people could’ve been responsible for creating 4,096 humans who are alive right now. This is a naive estimate when considering historical mortality rates and declining fertility, but future technology will likely make procreation less of an economic and bodily liability.
If we invest into welfare programs to alleviate the social status of disadvantaged people in distant countries, a small number of them pushing their country towards modern medical care will result in trillions of lives saved in the long run! It’s morally paramount to do this—saving lives in faraway places where saving lives is cheapest allows astronomically high amounts of future happy people to exist for a relatively small price.
Helping countries develop and contribute to long-term development is morally necessary under longtermism. Preserving future generations to actualize humanity’s potential entails both preventing ex-risks, preventing atrocities, and making everybody better off.
The vast majority of people who critique longtermism forget that utilitarianism is not only impartial in accounting for everyone’s interests equally, it also strives for maximum equality when it comes to morally positive outcomes. If a utilitarian could either grant $100 to a wealthy billionaire or $100 to a homeless person, the utilitarian would no doubt choose the latter option—$100 makes significantly less impact on a billionaire than a homeless person who needs money.
III. Racism and oppression of the impoverished
Apparently, longtermism advocates for racist, capitalist policies. If preserving very happy, well-off, and productive individuals should be preferred over less happy, impoverished ones, doesn’t that mean longtermism prioritizes predominantly white, Western lives over lives in the global South or other impoverished regions of the world? Absolutely not.
Most people actually do find it intuitive to save the life of a productive member of society over a criminal in the trolley problem—meaning they do prefer individuals that contribute more to society in such moral dichotomies. If you asked a longtermist, they’d also agree, and there is no real argument for treating the two people equally. The impact of these preferences on longtermism is cancelled out within any utilitarian calculus.
When you’re in a scenario where you have to prevent death, it’s rational to prefer saving the higher-functioning, higher-utility person. When you’re in a scenario where you have to create happiness and utility, it’s rational to prefer benefiting the more impoverished, less happy person.
If I could either press a button to
The rational choice would be to prefer the person living in Indonesia over the person living in Denmark, as the Indonesian would gain vastly more utility from the aid than the already prospering person in Denmark.
You can’t cite the preference for higher-utility individuals in situations of loss-aversion but deliberately ignore the preference for lower-utility individuals in situations of gain-creation! Longtermism only borrows 2 basic, consequentialist intuitions and translates them to asymmetric prioritization of well-off individuals and not-so-well-off individuals in a very symmetric fashion. Cherrypicking one half of the balance to throw shade on the “racist real-world impacts of longtermism” (longtermism is just a practical implementation of utilitarianism) is intellectually dishonest.
IV. Eugenics/transhumanism.
Another common claim is that longtermism endorses eugenics. If specific scientists were able to create biologically enhanced, superhuman embryos that possessed increased IQ and physical attributes, that itself is a net good, as it increases the welfare of the future human being.
The commercialization of CRISPR or other gene-editing/enhancing technologies overwhelmingly favors the rich—which isn’t an intrinsically concerning issue; rich people have access to lifelong advantages that significantly alter who they are, the rich can afford better education, better food, easier lifestyles, among other things that all impact the development of their offspring.
Genetic modifications are, however, another layer that separates classes of society based on wealth, and, due to its flexibility and high potential efficacy, threaten to increase societal gaps massively. Gene editing can operate on the same layer as better food, healthcare, or tutoring, but the advantages are much harder to extinguish and it potential to be more lethal. The problem with the eugenics objection is that it relies on the assumption that people in charge of gene-editing technologies will not behave in a utilitarian way.
If everyone who influenced gene-editing strived to maximize welfare and utility for everybody, a descent into a genetic caste system shouldn’t be a liability. Unfortunately, not everybody has a clear, longtermist moral compass that steers them away from eugenics.
Using CRISPR as a way to remove propensities for life-threatening illness and not for genetic enhancement provides a simple solution for all of this—currently, that is the only acceptable use of CRISPR. Longtermism can operate without a need to edit genes, as future technology can make humans completely digital. If the risk of a descent into eugenics is too high, the negative outcomes of such a descent will compel longtermism to avoid it and regulate gene tech similarly to an existential risk.
V. Conclusion
It seems absurd that most people don’t find longtermism as an ideology compelling—most deontologists would even admit we have deontic obligations to preserving future generations, that we cannot use them as a means to our short-term gain. Longtermism only needs you to accept a simple premise: that we must stop viewing progress through a single temporal lens. Most of the conclusions are obvious—longtermism is mainly just a commitment to upholding the welfare of humanity as a whole long-term.
Most of the common objections brought up to longtermism simply don’t work, since the ideology is so simple and modifiable that its core premise is beyond intuitive.