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This is: Response to Phil Torres’ ‘The Case Against Longtermism’, published by HaydnBelfield on the effective altruism forum.
This short post responds to some of the criticisms of longtermism in Torres’ minibook: Were the Great Tragedies of History “Mere Ripples”? The Case Against Longtermism, which I came across in this syllabus.
I argue that while many of the criticisms of Bostrom strike true, newer formulations of longtermism and existential risk – most prominently Ord’s The Precipice (but also Greaves, MacAskill, etc) – do not face the same challenges. I split the criticisms into two sections: the first on problematic ethical assumptions or commitments, the second on problematic policy proposals.
Note that I both respect and disagree with all three authors. Torres piece is insightful and thought-provoking, as well as polemical; Ord’s book is a great restatement of the ethical case, though I disagree with his prioritisation of climate change, nuclear weapons and collapse; and Bostrom is a groundbreaking visionary, though one can dispute many of his views.
Problematic ethical assumptions or commitments
Torres argues that longtermism rests on assumptions and makes commitments that are problematic and unusual/niche. He is correct that Bostrom has a number of unusual ethical views, and in his early writing he was perhaps overly fond of a contrarian ‘even given these incredibly conservative assumptions the argument goes through’ framing. But Torres does not sufficiently appreciate that these limitations and constraints have largely been acknowledged by longtermist philosophers, who have (re)formulated longtermism so as to not require these assumptions and commitments.
Total utilitarianism
Torres suggests that longtermism is based on an ethical assumption of total utilitarianism, a view in which we should maximise wellbeing based on adding together the wellbeing of all the individuals in a group. Such a ‘more is better’ ethical view accords significant weight to trillions of future individuals. He points out that total utilitarianism is not a majority opinion amongst moral philosophers.
However, although total utilitarianism strongly supports longtermism, longtermism doesn’t need to be based on total utilitarianism. One of the achievements of The Precipice is Ord’s arguments pointing out the affinities between longtermism with other ethical traditions, such as conservatism, obligations to the past, virtue ethics. One can be committed to a range of ethical views and endorse longtermism.
Trillions of simulations on computronium
Torres suggests that the scales are tilted towards longtermism by including in the calculation quadrillions of simulations of individuals living flourishing lives. The view that such simulations would be moral agents, or that this future is desirable, is certainly unusual.
But one doesn’t have to be committed to this view for the argument to work. The argument goes through if we assume that humanity never leaves Earth, and simply survives until the Earth is uninhabitable – or even more conservatively, survives the duration of an average mammalian species. There are still trillions of future individuals, whose interests and dignity matter.
‘Reducing risk from 0.001% to 0.0001% is not the same as saving thousands of lives’
Torres implies that longtermism is committed to a view of the form that reducing risk from 0.001% to 0.0001% is morally equivalent to saving e.g. thousands of present day lives. This a clear example of early Bostrom stating his argument in a philosophically robust, but very counterintuitive way. Worries about this framing have been common for over a decade, in the debate over ‘Pascal’s Mugging’.
However, longtermism does not have to be stated in such a way. The probabilities are unfortunately likely higher – for example Ord gives a 1/6 (~16...
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