We. the revolution first case3/25/2023 ![]() While a noble goal in spirit, this focus on untold numbers of future generations is precisely where longtermism runs into trouble. ![]() It is focused on taking into account all future people - those living thousands, millions, and billions of years in the future. Longtermism is not simply taking into account the welfare of our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Yet taking them seriously amounts to a moral revolution-one with far-reaching implications for how activists, researchers, policy makers, and indeed all of us should think and act." (WWOTF, Chap 1 emphasis mine) The premises are simple, and I don’t think they’re particularly controversial. We can make their lives go better. This is the case for longtermism in a nutshell. Like Singer, he is trying to shake the moral ground beneath our feet. MacAskill makes the case for longtermism in his book, What We Owe the Future. Perhaps the leading spokesperson for longtermism is William MacAskill, a young, energetic professor of philosophy at Oxford who was one of EAs founding members. This means that our moral concern should be largely focused on the future. If humans survive even as long as a typical mammalian species then there could be trillions upon trillions of future humans. Adherents of longtermism - longtermists - go on to argue that, because of this temporal agnosticism, we should be much more concerned with the future than the present because of the sheer number of people who may yet be born. It holds that because there may be many more people alive in the future than there are today, the future is where the weight of our moral obligations lie. Longtermism argues that, just as we shouldn’t care about where a person lives, we also shouldn’t care about when a person lives. Our circumstances would be beyond imagination, our problems unrecognizable, our desires mysterious. Imagine someone from the year 1000 trying to influence the present. ![]() The second wave is focused on longtermism, the idea that “positively influencing the far-future is a key moral priority of our time.” Indeed, we might conceive of Singer’s influence as the first wave of EA. In the last few years, however, EA has slowly moved in another direction - one that is less convinced by Singer’s arguments to help the global poor. EA has campaigned for better conditions for animals in factory farms and inspired some of the world’s wealthiest individuals to donate more of their wealth. Perhaps most significantly, Singer inspired the Effective Altruism (EA) movement, which seeks to use “evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis." Since its inception in the early 2010s, EA has been responsible for millions of dollars of funding towards causes such as preventing blindness from Trachoma, curing obstetric Fistula, providing anti-malarial bednets, and sending direct cash transfers to the world’s most impoverished. It was no surprise when, in 2021, he was awarded the Berggruen prize for his work on practical ethics. He is widely acknowledged as the father of the animal welfare movement and widely cited as the most influential living philosopher. He influenced the Giving Pledge, which commits billionaires to giving away a majority of their wealth. He founded the Life You Can Save, which has directed thousands of people to make more globally conscious choices with their donations. Singer’s arguments made, and continue to make, a huge impact. SUGGESTED READING How To Choose Your Dream Job Like an Effective Altruist By William MacAskill A malaria stricken child is equally deserving of our attention whether they are our next-door neighbors or 20,000 kilometers away. His essay, Famine, Affluence, and Morality, argued that distance should not affect our moral decision-making. In the 1970s, the philosopher Peter Singer catalyzed a moral revolution by arguing that we should do more to help the global poor. While concern for future people sounds morally intuitive, nothing concrete is being offered by those who claim we should care for the distant future, writes Ben Chugg. ‘Longtermism’ and ‘Effective Altruism’ have become buzzwords within certain circles.
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