Are we living at the hinge of history?
William MacAskill (Global Priorities Institute, Oxford University)
GPI Working Paper No. 12-2020, published in Ethics and Existence: The Legacy of Derek Parfit
In the final pages of On What Matters, Volume II, Derek Parfit comments: ‘We live during the hinge of history... If we act wisely in the next few centuries, humanity will survive its most dangerous and decisive period... What now matters most is that we avoid ending human history.’ This passage echoes Parfit's comment, in Reasons and Persons, that ‘the next few centuries will be the most important in human history’.
But is the claim that we live at the hinge of history true? The argument of this paper is that it is not. The paper first suggests a way of making the hinge of history claim precise and action-relevant in the context of the question of whether altruists should try to do good now, or invest their resources in order to have more of an impact later on. Given this understanding, there are two worldviews - the Time of Perils and Value Lock-in views - on which we are indeed living during, or about to enter, the hinge of history.
This paper then presents two arguments against the hinge of history claim: first, that it is a priori extremely unlikely to be true, and that the evidence in its favour is not strong enough to overcome this a priori unlikelihood; second, an inductive argument that our ability to influence events has been increasing over time, and we should expect that trend to continue into the future. The paper concludes by considering two additional arguments in favour of the claim, and suggests that though they have some merit, they are not sufficient for us to think that the present time is the most important time in the history of civilisation.
Other working papers
Simulation expectation – Teruji Thomas (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
I present a new argument for the claim that I’m much more likely to be a person living in a computer simulation than a person living in the ground-level of reality. I consider whether this argument can be blocked by an externalist view of what my evidence supports, and I urge caution against the easy assumption that actually finding lots of simulations would increase the odds that I myself am in one.
The Conservation Multiplier – Bård Harstad (University of Oslo)
Every government that controls an exhaustible resource must decide whether to exploit it or to conserve and thereby let the subsequent government decide whether to exploit or conserve. This paper develops a positive theory of this situation and shows when a small change in parameter values has a multiplier effect on exploitation. The multiplier strengthens the influence of a lobby paying for exploitation, and of a donor compensating for conservation. …
How much should governments pay to prevent catastrophes? Longtermism’s limited role – Carl Shulman (Advisor, Open Philanthropy) and Elliott Thornley (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
Longtermists have argued that humanity should significantly increase its efforts to prevent catastrophes like nuclear wars, pandemics, and AI disasters. But one prominent longtermist argument overshoots this conclusion: the argument also implies that humanity should reduce the risk of existential catastrophe even at extreme cost to the present generation. This overshoot means that democratic governments cannot use the longtermist argument to guide their catastrophe policy. …