Strong longtermism and the challenge from anti-aggregative moral views
Karri Heikkinen (University College London)
GPI Working Paper No. 5 - 2022
Greaves and MacAskill (2019) argue for strong longtermism, according to which, in a wide class of decision situations, the option that is ex ante best, and the one we ex ante ought to choose, is the option that makes the very long-run future go best. One important aspect of their argument is the claim that strong longtermism is compatible with a wide range of ethical assumptions, including plausible non-consequentialist views. In this essay, I challenge this claim. I argue that strong longtermism is incompatible with a range of non-aggregative and partially aggregative moral views. Furthermore, I argue that the conflict between these views and strong longtermism is so deep that those in favour of strong longtermism are better off arguing against them, rather than trying to modify their own view. The upshot of this discussion is that strong longtermism is not as robust to plausible variations in underlying ethical assumptions as Greaves and MacAskill claim. In particular, the stand we take on interpersonal aggregation has important implications on whether making the future go as well as possible should be a global priority.
Other working papers
Economic inequality and the long-term future – Andreas T. Schmidt (University of Groningen) and Daan Juijn (CE Delft)
Why, if at all, should we object to economic inequality? Some central arguments – the argument from decreasing marginal utility for example – invoke instrumental reasons and object to inequality because of its effects…
Prediction: The long and the short of it – Antony Millner (University of California, Santa Barbara) and Daniel Heyen (ETH Zurich)
Commentators often lament forecasters’ inability to provide precise predictions of the long-run behaviour of complex economic and physical systems. Yet their concerns often conflate the presence of substantial long-run uncertainty with the need for long-run predictability; short-run predictions can partially substitute for long-run predictions if decision-makers can adjust their activities over time. …
The scope of longtermism – David Thorstad (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
Longtermism holds roughly that in many decision situations, the best thing we can do is what is best for the long-term future. The scope question for longtermism asks: how large is the class of decision situations for which longtermism holds? Although longtermism was initially developed to describe the situation of…