Head to https://squarespace.com/sabine to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code sabine
Longtermism is a currently popular philosophy among rich people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Jaan Tallinn. What do they believe and what are the pros and cons? I sort it out for you.
Nick Bostrom’s 2009 paper can be found in this volume:
https://escholarship.org/content/qt29z457nf/qt29z457nf_noSplash_d37ef6dca08811139a988bce8e207dc6.pdf?t=kyrodc
Nick Bostrom’s 2013 paper is here:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1758-5899.12002
The Greaves and MacAskill paper from 2019 is this:
https://globalprioritiesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/Greaves_MacAskill_strong_longtermism.pdf
The toddler’s solution to the trolley problem is from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmIgmOx5vnQ
š Sign up for my weekly science newsletter. It’s free! ā https://sabinehossenfelder.com/newsletter/
š Support me on Patreon ā https://www.patreon.com/Sabine
š My new book “Existential Physics” is now on sale ā http://existentialphysics.com/
š Join this channel to get access to perks ā
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1yNl2E66ZzKApQdRuTQ4tw/join
00:00 Intro
00:35 Sponsor Message
01:20 What is Longtermism
07:15 Criticism of Longtermism
11:23 What are we to make of this?
Many thanks to Jordi BusquƩ for helping with this video http://jordibusque.com/
39 Comments
"Earth will be populated for a billion years."
Wow that's way more optimistic than my best guess of mid to late 2025.
Leave the future alone. Let the future care for itself.
This video would have been better without the attitude
Longtermism is only a way of hiding one's present selfishness behind the fantasy of the future.
Christians are longtermists: Trust Jesus and do good. The longterm is the life after death.
Thank you Sabine!
Can you do analysis on CERN collision in 2012 that potentially led to creation of 2 earths ?
Apparently now people live in 2 realities.
Bad one is the 3D earth : all negative people
Good one 5d ; the people with higher vibrations transferred to this earth since 2012 with greatest suffering but cleansed and itās an amazing reality
Sabine you have the voice of reason
Please do your analysis ā¤
Time to eat the wealthy. Japan did it once after the Meiji Reconstruction and it spurned new growth all over the nation.
There's not just a philosophy of rich people, but for us plebs It has been made basically ilegal…
By the way there's a "effective altruism" side (the wacky one).
But there's a more perennial/traditionalist, pro-nomian one (the sensible one, the thiel-yarvin tier one if you will), but It doesn't get enough or even good press
Capitalists who are longtermists are scary. These billionaires are not elected so who gives them authority in a democracy?
I do like to think about the long-term prospects of humanity but I do not want to be told by a narcissistic lunatic like Musk (with his – let me put it mildly – far right sympathies and odd ideas about what is freedom of speech) what I should or should not do or sacrifice in order to facilitate that long-term survival of our species. Besides, it is my impression that billionaires like him or Bezos contribute significantly to speeding up our extinction by their carbon imprint. But maybe I am wrong on that. But I am sure I am right on noting that the contempt for the lives of other people as surfacing in the ideas of Bostrƶm (and other from reality detached individuals with a huge amount of money others worked for) is both morally unacceptable and utterly dangerous for anyone who has no six or seven figures in his or her bankaccount. Finally, coincidence that humans despising figures like MacAskill and Bostrƶm are located in neoliberal Britain calculating that 1 billion lives in say South West Asia are worth…nothing?
Singer is right: Musk (who has no philosophical depth except that comparable to a sheet of paper on which to write his amount of dollars of which many are coughed up by the taxpayers who have no possibility to evade those taxes, morally and intellectually empty as he is), Bostrƶm et al should shut up.
99 percent of life on earth that ever existed has gone extinct. Those are not good odds for us. We are legends in our own minds. I wouldn't be too worried about our survival billions of years from now. Much like the sea , the earth is indifferent to our existence. Volcanism , Ice Ages and plate tectonics are likely to grind us into dust on a much shorter timeline . Of course unknown factors of our own design may help us along toward our demise. Believe it or not in general I am a glass half full kind of guy.
I enjoyed the video but I feel like it veers a bit away from what I love about your channel's approach to controversial topics. The example of pascal's mugger was very illuminating and spending a bit more time on similar critical analysis of other aspects of the philosophy would have been very helpful in my understanding of it. Knowing who thinks what and what their potential conflicts of interest are is always relevant, but I think more time than necessary was spent on it in this video especially compared to some of your other ones.
Pesky utilitarians just searching for excuses to slaughter more people. Again.
The point is, brains are going to be expendable in the future.
Clovis Bray agrees with Longtermism
Who's interested in the gazillion reimbursement program?
So…… hubris
Loved the trolley problem clip.
The number of humans in the universe is exponentially growing, and the number of our discoveries is a further exponentially growing number based on 1) the number of humans, and 2) the number of our prior discoveries. And: Probability of extinction is always a function of our current numbers. So "sacrificing" currently living humans for the long term benefit will not only cause the long term "finish line" to recede into the future, it will increase the probability of our extinction.
In sum: It is always wrong to advocate for the death of humans.
people who simulataneouly think they can predict the precise future and that majro global events have an insigniicant impact on it should just shut up and do nothing as appearently nothing matters
this was so sarcastic in such a satisfying way
If we want to terraform and boost long term human survival odds then solving the gravity problem is critical. If we could use billionaire egos as planet cores then we'd be very lucky. Unfortunately, we need something that's a bit more dense.
To be fair, the more the mugger promises to give in return, the less likely he is to tell the truth. Making the expected return possibly always negative.
Pascal's mugging kindof ignores the fact that more grandiose promises are less likely to come true. It's far less likely that he'll give you 1,000,000x as much in return than 100x in return, and either of those are far less likely than you even getting half of your money back. Considering this, it's actually more likely that there is no potential promise that could ever be high enough because the expected return value remains constant.
I enjoyed this video- but I do have a comment about Pascalās mugging: I think calculating the expected wins and losses is still valid, the thought experiment just doesnāt take into account an important fact: as the mugger increases his promise, the likelihood heās telling the truth decreases. The thought experiment assumes a static probability, and thus seems quite flawed in this respect.
Engagement for the engagement god! Subs for the sub throne!
I donāt mind humans going extinct, in time bio-diversity will enrich the planet againā¦until the next asteroid or quasar
why do people latch on to a guy that fired workers for criticizing him as a savior for freedom of speech?
How does planned obsolescence affect the long term? It wastes resources and pollutes the planet as it increases GDP. Probably puts more CO2 into the atmosphere.
Economists do not talk about NDP very much. Of course the depreciation of so called durable consumer goods some how does not manage to get into the NDP equation.
NDP = GDP – DcapĀ Ā [Western economic calculation]
NDPĀ = GDP – (Dcap + Dcon)Ā [reality]
Dcap: Depreciation of Capital GoodsĀ
Dcon: Depreciation of Durable Consumer Goods
GDP: Grossly Distorted Propaganda
Only slightly related, but the people of the Long Now Foundation think having a few long term projects, like trying to build a clock that can run for 10 thousand years, is a good way to not have exclusively short term thinking.
Hi Sabine, brillant as usual. But I think we can try to Ā«Ā valueĀ Ā» future lives vs ours by gene theory. For instance I may approximate the Ā«Ā value (for me)Ā Ā» of my children to each half of mine since I pass on 50% of my genes. I can also value others children by similarity or even other living thingsā¦ Of course now I am getting older and my children have still reproductive potential so I can value them more (as risk adjusted net present genetic value). This explains why I would certainly consider to sacrifice myself for one of my children and a certain number of others children or even a (large) number of animals and this orientation should increase with age . In brief, Elon and the other should go back to biology text book to make their paper theory a bit more interestingā¦
oh, Gosh, I was just hoping atleast for 7 generations to talk ahead…and now we do it for billion yrs!!?
Hello Sabine! I usually enjoy your videos a lot and i think you are in general very reasonable, but this time i find myself disagreeing. I"m not a die-hard longtermist myself, however i do find it an intriguing concept. I did read some books/articles about it, including some of those you mentioned, and i feel that you kind of misrepresent their ideas. I don't want to write an essay in the comment, but just to mention a few points:
* In your interpretation, longtermists believe that present lives don't matter compared to the massive amounts of future lives. I think its the opposite. Our actions matter much more because of the exponential cumulative effect they have on the long-term future.
* Saying that a nuclear holocaust that we eventually recover from is much less terrible than full extinction, shouldn't be a controversial statement. Its not like they are advocating for nuclear holocausts
* Nobody claims that longtermism is a scientifically correct way to think about the future. It is an ethical position and nobody disputes that. Just because they are using math to support their arguments doesn't mean they are trying to confuse people into believing that they are doing science.
* I don't think its weird or suspicious that they all work in one particular university. Pretty normal that researchers with similar interests gravitate towards each other
Perhaps the best long-term benefit for humanity can be reached by sacrificing Musk, Thiel, et al
People in the future owe me! Just as I owe those before me that lived without hope, under slavery, tyranny, died in wars, traveled by walking and if lucky horse, froze in the winter and endured hot summers, when it was expected at least one of your children will die before you. I am going to suffer or minimize my life so someone in the future can live longer, happier and healthier to name just a few things. Ridiculous.
So, longtermism is just an euphemism for fuck the poor ?
Longtermism is an excuse to simplify planning and cover up current failures and misdeeds of management.
For example, it becomes morally justifiable to inflate companyās stock price via financial manipulation and misinformation if you use this money to āsave billions of lives in the futureā.
Elon Musk isn't a Longtermist… he's a Russian agent.
Hi. My email address is mickey.mouse@mouseland.not. Please let me know how to send that $100!