EA - The Base Rate of Longtermism Is Bad by ColdButtonIssues

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The Base Rate of Longtermism Is Bad, published by ColdButtonIssues on September 5, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Cross-posted from Cold Button Issues. Sometimes philosophers make bold, sweeping claims for other philosophers and modest, palatable claims for the general public. Consider Peter Singer’s writing on philosophy which includes endorsing situational infanticide versus his more popular writing where he makes hard to dispute claims like “[l]iving a minimally acceptable ethical life involves using a substantial part of our spare resources to make the world a better place.” Will MacAskill and Hillary Greaves wrote a paper arguing for strong longtermism the “the view that impact on the far future is the most important feature of our actions today.” Then Will MacAskill wrote a New York Times best-selling book that argued that caring about the future is somewhat morally important. MacAskill didn’t need to water down his claims to convince me. In theory, I’m fully on board with longtermism. There’s probably tons of future people who matter just as much as we do so let’s prioritize them, hurray! Despite being willing to endorse the philosophy of longtermism, I think building a movement around longtermism or taking actions for the sake of the longterm future are likely to backfire. Some friends of mine in the effective altruism movement have said they would be excited about the shift to longtermism if there were successful past examples of longtermist movements. But I think past examples of longtermism are easy to find- it’s just hard to find successful examples. When GiveWell was relatively young and not as influential as it is today, it commissioned work on the history of philanthropy, to answer questions like when did ambitious philanthropists succeed, when did they fail, and what effective altruists could learn from the past. I think repeating such a process for longtermism, by taking even a quick look at past efforts to prioritize the longterm future- casts doubt on longtermist efforts. Benjamin Franklin, Failed Longtermist If George Washington was the Captain America of the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin was Iron Man. The fun one, the cool one, the guy who invented the lightning rod. He’s probably the closest thing America has to a Leonardo Da Vinci. He signed the Declaration of Independence, ran the post office, was the ambassador to France, and kept on inventing things. He also tried to be a longtermist. When he died, he left a bequest to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia that was to accrue interest for the next 200 years before the cities could access the whole principal. As Will MacAskill recounts, the amount grew to $5 million and $2 million respectively. The money mostly went to fund a private college. Because of this he’s sometimes favorably cited as a successful example of how people can intentionally try to help the longterm future and succeed. The problem is, of all the things that Franklin did that shaped the future, his intentional future-oriented bequest was basically a rounding error. No disrespect to the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology which benefited from his generosity, but that’s not what made Benjamin Franklin important to the world. What else could he have spent this money on? Taking better care of his health so he lived longer, supporting relatives to start a family yielding hundred of additional Franklin descendants over the years, running a few more experiments.. He could have thrown another party! This might sound like I’m joking but a big part of an ambassador’s jobs is to be a charming bon vivant and a great party host. An even stronger friendship between the United States and France would surely have been more consequential than founding this private college. There’s no contradiction between spending money now...