Below you can find summaries of some working papers written by GPI researchers. The full text of these papers as well as other working papers can be found on our papers page.
Consequentialism is the view that good and right coincide: right actions are those which maximise good and minimise bad. The best-known form of consequentialism is utilitarianism. By inviting morality to override all else in our lives, utilitarianism hence inspires what is known as the demandingness objection: that utilitarianism asks far too much of us and so is unacceptable as a moral theory. … In this paper, Greaves and MacAskill make the case for strong longtermism: the view that the most important feature of our actions today is their impact on the far future. They claim that strong longtermism is of the utmost significance: that if the view were widely adopted, much of what we prioritise would change. … We live at a time of rapid technological development, and how we handle the most powerful emerging technologies could determine the fate of humanity. Indeed, our ability to prevent such technologies from causing extinction could put us amongst the most important people in history. In “Doomsday rings twice”, Andreas Mogensen illustrates how our potential importance could be evidence…