Longtermism in an Infinite World
Christian J. Tarsney (Population Wellbeing Initiative, University of Texas at Austin) and Hayden Wilkinson (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
GPI Working Paper No. 4-2023, forthcoming in Essays on Longtermism
The case for longtermism depends on the vast potential scale of the future. But that same vastness also threatens to undermine the case for longtermism: If the future contains infinite value, then many theories of value that support longtermism (e.g., risk-neutral total utilitarianism) seem to imply that no available action is better than any other. And some strategies for avoiding this conclusion (e.g., exponential time discounting) yield views that are much less supportive of longtermism. This chapter explores how the potential infinitude of the future affects the case for longtermism. We argue that (i) there are reasonable prospects for extending risk- neutral totalism and similar views to infinite contexts and (ii) many such extension strategies still support standard arguments for longtermism, since they imply that when we can only affect (or only predictably affect) a finite part of an infinite universe, we can reason as if only that finite part existed. On the other hand, (iii) there are improbable but not impossible physical scenarios in which our actions can have infinite predictable effects on the far future, and these scenarios create substantial unresolved problems for both infinite ethics and the case for longtermism.
Other working papers
How to neglect the long term – Hayden Wilkinson (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
Consider longtermism: the view that, at least in some of the most important decisions facing agents today, which options are morally best is determined by which are best for the long-term future. Various critics have argued that longtermism is false—indeed, that it is obviously false, and that we can reject it on normative grounds without close consideration of certain descriptive facts. In effect, it is argued, longtermism would be false even if real-world agents had promising means…
On the desire to make a difference – Hilary Greaves, William MacAskill, Andreas Mogensen and Teruji Thomas (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
True benevolence is, most fundamentally, a desire that the world be better. It is natural and common, however, to frame thinking about benevolence indirectly, in terms of a desire to make a difference to how good the world is. This would be an innocuous shift if desires to make a difference were extensionally equivalent to desires that the world be better. This paper shows that at least on some common ways of making a “desire to make a difference” precise, this extensional equivalence fails.
Intergenerational equity under catastrophic climate change – Aurélie Méjean (CNRS, Paris), Antonin Pottier (EHESS, CIRED, Paris), Stéphane Zuber (CNRS, Paris) and Marc Fleurbaey (CNRS, Paris School of Economics)
Climate change raises the issue of intergenerational equity. As climate change threatens irreversible and dangerous impacts, possibly leading to extinction, the most relevant trade-off may not be between present and future consumption, but between present consumption and the mere existence of future generations. To investigate this trade-off, we build an integrated assessment model that explicitly accounts for the risk of extinction of future generations…