The scope of longtermism
David Thorstad (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
GPI Working Paper No. 6-2021
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 cause-neutral philanthropic decisionmaking, it is increasingly suggested that longtermism holds in many or most decision problems that humans face. By contrast, I suggest that the scope of longtermism may be more restricted than commonly supposed. After specifying my target, swamping axiological strong longtermism (swamping ASL), I give two arguments for the rarity thesis that the options needed to vindicate swamping ASL in a given decision problem are rare. I use the rarity thesis to pose two challenges to the scope of longtermism: the area challenge that swamping ASL often fails when we restrict our attention to specific cause areas, and the challenge from option unawareness that swamping ASL may fail when decision problems are modified to incorporate agents’ limited awareness of the options available to them.
Other working papers
Against Willing Servitude: Autonomy in the Ethics of Advanced Artificial Intelligence – Adam Bales (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
Some people believe that advanced artificial intelligence systems (AIs) might, in the future, come to have moral status. Further, humans might be tempted to design such AIs that they serve us, carrying out tasks that make our lives better. This raises the question of whether designing AIs with moral status to be willing servants would problematically violate their autonomy. In this paper, I argue that it would in fact do so.
A non-identity dilemma for person-affecting views – Elliott Thornley (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
Person-affecting views in population ethics state that (in cases where all else is equal) we’re permitted but not required to create people who would enjoy good lives. In this paper, I present an argument against every possible variety of person- affecting view. The argument takes the form of a dilemma. Narrow person-affecting views must embrace at least one of three implausible verdicts in a case that I call ‘Expanded Non- Identity.’ Wide person-affecting views run into trouble in a case that I call ‘Two-Shot Non-Identity.’ …
Tough enough? Robust satisficing as a decision norm for long-term policy analysis – Andreas Mogensen and David Thorstad (Global Priorities Institute, Oxford University)
This paper aims to open a dialogue between philosophers working in decision theory and operations researchers and engineers whose research addresses the topic of decision making under deep uncertainty. Specifically, we assess the recommendation to follow a norm of robust satisficing when making decisions under deep uncertainty in the context of decision analyses that rely on the tools of Robust Decision Making developed by Robert Lempert and colleagues at RAND …