What We Owe the Future
by William MacAskill · first published 2022
15mentions
4recommended by
14HN commenters
2022–2026first – last mentioned
29% recommend64% neutral7% critical
Why we should organize our plans to include the well-being people 10s or even 100s of generations into the future, and how we should go about doing that kind of planning.
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
I read MacAskill's What We Owe The Future - it's a great book, and a compelling argument. I recommend you read it. What I suspect might be happening is that "do gooders" (as research has shown) are often attacked by others because those that…
on “Effective Altruism Is about Getting Rich with a Clean Conscience” ↗In the (excellent) What We Owe the Future, William MacAskill discusses some ways of considering and weighing values on different lives, one of which was counting neurons. I don't have the book in front of me, but from my notes at the time: >There…
on “Who rules Earth? Wild mammals far outweighed by humans and domestic animals” ↗…humans thousands of years ago made decisions that make our lives today possible. Aren’t you glad that you had the chance to exist and enjoy your own life? I highly recommend Ian McCaskill‘s recent book “ what we owe the future.” He makes a compelling rational argument that it makes no less sense to discount future generations than it does to discount physically distant people who are suffering today.
on “A step-by-step guide to our solar system’s demise” ↗…vegetables and less bread is good. Hold on, all it takes to turn over "conventional wisdom" on nutrition is "many nutritionists" and "new research"? Does some well researched books like "The Precipice" or "What We Owe the Future" suffice here? I'm sure that among all the effective altruists out there, you can find among them "many" to support their claim?
on “Effective Altruism Has a Toxic Culture of Sexual Harassment and Abuse” ↗…past couple of years the most prominent public “face” of the EA community has been William MacAskill, who went on a major donor-funded press tour to promote his ideas on longtermism through his book “What We Owe the Future.” For most of the general public, this was probably their first encounter with the entire concept of EA. It is perfectly fine if you don’t support MacAskill’s vision for EA’s future. But to pretend it…
on “Effective Altruism Has a Toxic Culture of Sexual Harassment and Abuse” ↗…the face of EA. I think if you look at search data, you'll find that Peter Singer's popularity merely went from being ~100x MacAskill's to more like 10x during the book tour. EA predates the notions in What We Owe the Future by many years. Present-focused charities like GiveWell were perhaps overshadowed in popularity by that book for a news cycle or two in late 2022. It happens. But the notion that that book or its author…
on “Effective Altruism Has a Toxic Culture of Sexual Harassment and Abuse” ↗Without taking a particular position on how the probabilities shake out, I suggest critically reading “What We Owe the Future” by William MacAskill and:or other long-term writings that use statistical thinking over a wide range of future scenarios.
on “John Carmack and Rich Sutton partner to accelerate development of AGI” ↗…democracies is much more complex. There is a distinction between good group rights, bad group rights, and intolerable group rights. [1]: https://philarchive.org/archive/HABTIT-2 [2]: I learned this from What We Owe The Future by William MacAskill. Did he borrow it from someone else? Maybe Derek Parfit? I'll need to research more.
on “IDF Killed Gaza Aid Workers at Point Blank Range in 2025 Massacre: Report” ↗This https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_We_Owe_the_Future has been compared to your link, though I haven’t read it (it’s out Sept. 1st).
on “Midlife: A Philosophical Guide” ↗This has been extremely noticeable with the author of What We Owe The Future, he's been on every podcast I listen to over the last month or so
on “Lose weight the slow and incredibly difficult way” ↗Kind of interesting that they mention Toby Ord in the article and not his (similar) book, _The Precipice._ William's book _What We Owe the Future_ sounds similar, but rather than research on avoiding disaster as a species, it seems _What We Owe the Future_ will spend more time convincing people that the long-term matters. Please let me know if…
on “What is longtermism and why does it matter?” ↗Your comment reminds me of a topic from "What We Owe The Future"[0][1], in particular an idea in ethics that is aptly called the repugnant conclusion[2]. This is not a perfect parallel but both the RC and your comment touch on the idea of how or when it is justified…
on “Private Prisons Are Behind the Push for Homeless Criminalization” ↗Or any philosophy, for that matter. I have been reading up on this subject, "What We Owe The Future" book lately. As I soak up more of the arguments, I see a lot of spilled ink, highly debatable key takeaways, and no practical recommendations for actions which were not already obvious. In other words,…
on “Why longtermism is the world’s most dangerous secular credo” ↗…today's global poor. Whenever I see people talking about longtermism this way, I'm a bit confused. I've always thought of climate change being one of the things that longtermists care a lot about. I read 'What We Owe the Future' briefly, and could be misremembering, but I recall it being heavy on climate change being a major issue because of the long-lasting impact it could have. It feels like it became popular to shit on longtermism…
on “We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus” ↗…https://www.effectivealtruism.org/faqs#objectionsto-effectiv... [2] “80,000 Hours thinks that only a small proportion of people should earn to give long term”: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/80000-hours-thinks-that-only-... [3] What We Owe The Future (EA book): “naive calculations that justify some harmful action because it has good consequences are, in practice, almost never correct.” and “it's wrong to do harm even when doing so will bring about…
on “A new book about the origins of Effective Altruism” ↗