Results for 'longtermism'

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Bibliography: Longtermism in Applied Ethics
  1. Prudential Longtermism.Johan E. Gustafsson & Petra Kosonen - forthcoming - In Jacob Barrett, Hilary Greaves & David Thorstad (eds.), Essays on Longtermism. Oxford University Press.
    According to Longtermism, our acts’ expected influence on the expected value of the world is mainly determined by their effects in the far future. There is, given total utilitarianism, a straightforward argument for Longtermism due to the enormous number of people that might exist in the future, but this argument does not work on person-affecting views. In this paper, we will argue that these views might also lead to Longtermism if Prudential Longtermism is true. Prudential (...) holds for a person if and only if our acts’ overall influence on that person’s expected well-being is mainly determined by the acts’ effects in the far future. We argue that (due to a small chance of anti-ageing and uploading) there could be an enormous amount of prudential value for some contemporary person in the far future and that value may be so large that it dominates their overall expectation of lifetime well-being. (shrink)
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  2. Longtermism, Aggregation, and Catastrophic Risk.Emma J. Curran - manuscript
    Advocates of longtermism point out that interventions which focus on improving the prospects of people in the very far future will, in expectation, bring about a significant amount of good. Indeed, in expectation, such long-term interventions bring about far more good than their short-term counterparts. As such, longtermists claim we have compelling moral reason to prefer long-term interventions. In this paper, I show that longtermism is in conflict with plausible deontic scepticism about aggregation. I do so by demonstrating (...)
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  3. (1 other version)The epistemic challenge to longtermism.Christian Tarsney - 2023 - Synthese 201 (6):1-37.
    Longtermists claim that what we ought to do is mainly determined by how our actions might affect the very long-run future. A natural objection to longtermism is that these effects may be nearly impossible to predict — perhaps so close to impossible that, despite the astronomical importance of the far future, the expected value of our present actions is mainly determined by near-term considerations. This paper aims to precisify and evaluate one version of this epistemic objection to longtermism. (...)
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  4. Longtermism and the Complaints of Future People.Emma J. Curran - forthcoming - In Jacob Barrett, Hilary Greaves & David Thorstad (eds.), Essays on Longtermism. Oxford University Press.
    A number of philosophers have argued that if you care about how much goodness your actions generate, or how good the state-of-affairs you actions bring about are, then your attention should be directed towards the very far future. But many don’t care about how much goodness their actions generate, nor do they care about things like “states-of-affairs”. Amongst a multitude of things, many people care about how their actions impact individuals. And they also care about the sorts of justifications they (...)
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  5. Longtermism and social risk-taking.H. Orri Stefánsson - forthcoming - In Jacob Barrett, Hilary Greaves & David Thorstad (eds.), Essays on Longtermism. Oxford University Press.
    A social planner who evaluates risky public policies in light of the other risks with which their society will be faced should judge favourably some such policies even though they would deem them too risky when considered in isolation. I suggest that a longtermist would—or at least should—evaluate risky polices in light of their prediction about future risks; hence, longtermism supports social risk-taking. I consider two formal versions of this argument, discuss the conditions needed for the argument to be (...)
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  6. The scope of longtermism.David Thorstad - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    Longtermism is the thesis that in a large class of 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 this is true? In this paper, I suggest that the scope of longtermism may be narrower than many longtermists suppose. I identify a restricted version of longtermism: swamping axiological strong longtermism (swamping ASL). I (...)
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  7. How Much Should Governments Pay to Prevent Catastrophes? Longtermism's Limited Role.Carl Shulman & Elliott Thornley - forthcoming - In Jacob Barrett, Hilary Greaves & David Thorstad (eds.), Essays on Longtermism. Oxford University Press.
    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. In this paper, we show that the case for preventing catastrophe does not depend on (...). Standard cost-benefit analysis implies that governments should spend much more on reducing catastrophic risk. We argue that a government catastrophe policy guided by cost-benefit analysis should be the goal of longtermists in the political sphere. This policy would be democratically acceptable, and it would reduce existential risk by almost as much as a strong longtermist policy. (shrink)
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  8.  59
    Animals and Longtermism.Oscar Horta & Mat Rozas - forthcoming - World Futures.
    Longtermism should not be wrongly defined as the view that we should act so that the future is as good as possible for human beings and their descendants; rather, longtermists should be concerned with what the long-term future may be like for all sentient beings. This includes nonhuman animals, as different risks of future suffering may afflict them. Indifference toward their interests could lead to the worsening of their use as resources, quantitatively and qualitatively. It could also help expand (...)
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  9.  65
    Neo-Aristotelian Naturalism as a Metaethical Route to Virtue-Ethical Longtermism.Richard Friedrich Runge - 2024 - Moral Philosophy and Politics.
    This article proposes a metaethical route from neo-Aristotelian naturalism, as developed in particular by Philippa Foot, to virtue-ethical longtermism. It argues that the metaethical assumptions of neo-Aristotelian naturalism inherently imply that a valid description of the life-form of a species must satisfy a formal requirement of internal sustainability. The elements of a valid life-form description then serve as a normative standard. Given that humans have the ability to influence the fate of future generations and know about their influence, this (...)
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  10. The Heart of the Problem with Longtermism (Draft).Ben Bramble - manuscript
    In this critique of longtermism, I attack its Heart, the idea that there is intrinsic value in the addition of each new happy being to the world. I provide new responses to longtermists' two main arguments for the Heart (The Argument from Extinction and The Argument from Miserable Beings). I then sketch an alternative view to longtermism, which I call Future Sentimentalism, a view that does a better job of explaining our future-regarding reasons. Finally, I consider an important (...)
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  11. Longtermism and Cultural Evolution.Aron Vallinder - forthcoming - In Jacob Barrett, Hilary Greaves & David Thorstad (eds.), Essays on Longtermism. Oxford University Press.
    In this chapter, I argue that the field of cultural evolution can usefully inform attempts to understand and influence the long-term future. First, I provide an overview of cultural evolution, covering what it means for culture to evolve, the mechanisms by which it happens, the crucial importance of cumulative cultural evolution for hunan history, and how cultural evolution (and in particular intergroup competition) has driven the rise of large-scale cooperation. Second, I draw out some possible lessons from cultural evolution for (...)
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  12. Should longtermists recommend hastening extinction rather than delaying it?Richard Pettigrew - 2024 - The Monist 107 (2):130-145.
    Longtermism is the view that the most urgent global priorities, and those to which we should devote the largest portion of our resources, are those that focus on (i) ensuring a long future for humanity, and perhaps sentient or intelligent life more generally, and (ii) improving the quality of the lives that inhabit that long future. While it is by no means the only one, the argument most commonly given for this conclusion is that these interventions have greater expected (...)
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  13. Authenticity, Meaning and Alienation: Reasons to Care Less About Far Future People.Stefan Riedener - forthcoming - In Jacob Barrett, Hilary Greaves & David Thorstad (eds.), Essays on Longtermism. Oxford University Press.
    The standard argument for longtermism assumes that we should care as much about far future people as about our contemporaries. I challenge this assumption. I first consider existing interpretations of ‘temporal discounting’, and argue that such discounting seems either unwarranted or insufficient to block the argument. I then offer two alternative reasons to care less about far future people: caring as much about them as about our contemporaries would make our lives less authentic and less meaningful. If I’m right, (...)
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  14. The Moral Case for Long-Term Thinking.Hilary Greaves, William MacAskill & Elliott Thornley - 2021 - In Natalie Cargill & Tyler M. John (eds.), The Long View: Essays on Policy, Philanthropy, and the Long-term Future. London: FIRST. pp. 19-28.
    This chapter makes the case for strong longtermism: the claim that, in many situations, impact on the long-run future is the most important feature of our actions. Our case begins with the observation that an astronomical number of people could exist in the aeons to come. Even on conservative estimates, the expected future population is enormous. We then add a moral claim: all the consequences of our actions matter. In particular, the moral importance of what happens does not depend (...)
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  15. Longtermist Political Philosophy: An Agenda for Future Research.Andreas T. Schmidt & Jacob Barrett - forthcoming - In Jacob Barrett, Hilary Greaves & David Thorstad (eds.), Essays on Longtermism. Oxford University Press.
    We set out longtermist political philosophy as a research field by exploring the case for, and the implications of, ‘institutional longtermism’: the view that, when evaluating institutions, we should give significant weight to their very long-term effects. We begin by arguing that the standard case for longtermism may be more robust when applied to institutions than to individual actions or policies, both because institutions have large, broad, and long-term effects, and because institutional longtermism can plausibly sidestep various (...)
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  16. (1 other version)Economic inequality and the long-term future.Andreas T. Schmidt & Daan Juijn - 2023 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics (1):67-99.
    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. Such instrumental arguments, however, often concern only the static effects of inequality and neglect its intertemporal conse- quences. In this article, we address this striking gap and investigate income inequality’s intertemporal consequences, including its potential effects on humanity’s (very) long-term future. Following recent arguments around future generations (...)
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  17. Against the singularity hypothesis.David Thorstad - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies:1-25.
    The singularity hypothesis is a radical hypothesis about the future of artificial intelligence on which self-improving artificial agents will quickly become orders of magnitude more intelligent than the average human. Despite the ambitiousness of its claims, the singularity hypothesis has been defended at length by leading philosophers and artificial intelligence researchers. In this paper, I argue that the singularity hypothesis rests on scientifically implausible growth assumptions. I show how leading philosophical defenses of the singularity hypothesis (Chalmers 2010, Bostrom 2014) fail (...)
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  18. Time discounting, consistency, and special obligations: a defence of Robust Temporalism.Harry R. Lloyd - 2021 - Global Priorities Institute, Working Papers 2021 (11):1-38.
    This paper defends the claim that mere temporal proximity always and without exception strengthens certain moral duties, including the duty to save – call this view Robust Temporalism. Although almost all other moral philosophers dismiss Robust Temporalism out of hand, I argue that it is prima facie intuitively plausible, and that it is analogous to a view about special obligations that many philosophers already accept. I also defend Robust Temporalism against several common objections, and I highlight its relevance to a (...)
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  19. High Risk, Low Reward: A Challenge to the Astronomical Value of Existential Risk Mitigation.David Thorstad - 2023 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 51 (4):373-412.
    Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 51, Issue 4, Page 373-412, Fall 2023.
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  20. Understanding the Supportive Care Needs of Family Caregivers in Cancer Stress Management: The Significance of Healthcare Information.Ni Putu Wulan Purnama Sari, Minh-Phuong Thi Duong, Adrino Mazenda, Agustina Chriswinda Bura Mare, Minh-Hoang Nguyen & Quan-Hoang Vuong - manuscript
    Cancer care has transitioned from clinical-based to home-based care to support longterm care in a more familiar and comfortable environment. This care transition has put family caregivers (FCGs) in a strategic position as care providers. Cancer care at home involves psychological and emotional treatment at some point, making FCGs deal with the stress of cancer patients frequently. Due to their limited care competencies, they need supportive care from healthcare professionals in cancer stress management. This study aims to examine how types (...)
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  21. Are we living at the hinge of history?Will MacAskill - 2022
    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 (...)
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  22. The Space Object Ontology.Alexander P. Cox, Christopher Nebelecky, Ronald Rudnicki, William Tagliaferri, John L. Crassidis & Barry Smith - 2016 - In Alexander P. Cox, Christopher Nebelecky, Ronald Rudnicki, William Tagliaferri, John L. Crassidis & Barry Smith (eds.), 19th International Conference on Information Fusion (FUSION 2016). IEEE.
    Achieving space domain awareness requires the identification, characterization, and tracking of space objects. Storing and leveraging associated space object data for purposes such as hostile threat assessment, object identification, and collision prediction and avoidance present further challenges. Space objects are characterized according to a variety of parameters including their identifiers, design specifications, components, subsystems, capabilities, vulnerabilities, origins, missions, orbital elements, patterns of life, processes, operational statuses, and associated persons, organizations, or nations. The Space Object Ontology provides a consensus-based realist framework (...)
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  23. Longtermist Institutional Reform.Tyler John & William MacAskill - 2021 - In Natalie Cargill & Tyler M. John (eds.), The Long View: Essays on Policy, Philanthropy, and the Long-term Future. London: FIRST.
    In all probability, future generations will outnumber us by thousands or millions to one. In the aggregate, their interests therefore matter enormously, and anything we can do to steer the future of civilization onto a better trajectory is of tremendous moral importance. This is the guiding thought that defines the philosophy of longtermism. Political science tells us that the practices of most governments are at stark odds with longtermism. But the problems of political short-termism are neither necessary nor (...)
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  24. The Long View: Essays on Policy, Philanthropy, and the Long-term Future.Natalie Cargill & Tyler M. John (eds.) - 2021 - London: FIRST.
    Enclosed is a guidebook for philanthropists, advocates, and policymakers who want to do the most good possible. This book introduces the philosophy of “longtermism,” the idea that it is particularly important that we act now to safeguard future generations. -/- The future is vast in scale: depending on our choices in the coming centuries, the future could stretch for eons or it could dwindle into oblivion, and be inordinately good or inordinately bad. And yet future generations are utterly disenfranchised (...)
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  25. The Philosophical Investigations in Philosophy of Religion.Thomas D. Carroll - 2024 - JOLMA 5 (Special Issue):37-64.
    Despite overlooking religious topics, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (PI) has had a large impact in philosophy of religion. This article surveys that influence and the reasons for it. In what follows, I first describe the reception of certain key concepts from the PI in philosophy of religion. Second, I examine a few scattered remarks on religious topics in the PI. Third, I consider the relevance of the PI for contemporary philosophy of religion. I argue that the dialogical nature of the PI, (...)
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  26. The Utility of Offshoring: A Rawlsian Critique.Julian Friedland - 2005 - Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies 10 (1):9-13.
    Most prominent arguments favoring the widespread discretionary business practice of sending jobs overseas, known as ‘offshoring,’ attempt to justify the trend by appeal to utilitarian principles. It is argued that when business can be performed more cost-effectively offshore, doing so tends, over the longterm, to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number. This claim is supported by evidence that exporting jobs actively promotes economic development overseas while simultaneously increasing the revenue of the exporting country. After showing that offshoring might (...)
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  27. The unexpected value of the future.Hayden Wilkinson - forthcoming - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy.
    Various philosophers accept moral views that are impartial, additive, and risk-neutral with respect to moral betterness. But, if that risk neutrality is spelt out according to expected value theory alone, such views face a dire reductio ad absurdum. If the expected sum of value in humanity's future is undefined--if, e.g., the probability distribution over possible values of the future resembles the Pasadena game, or a Cauchy distribution--then those views say that no option is ever better than any other. And, as (...)
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  28. Longtermizm a moralne zobowiązania wobec biednych.Jakub Synowiec - 2023 - Studia Redemptorystowskie 21:57-74.
    Celem artykułu jest pokazanie konsekwencji przyjęcia longtermizmu w wersji skrajnej dla postrzegania obowiązku likwidacji skrajnej biedy w świetle zasady równego rozważania interesów. W artykule argumentuję na rzecz hipotezy, że konsekwentny zwolennik myśli etycznej Petera Singera skorygowanej o postulaty long- termizmu musi przyjąć, iż obowiązki wobec przyszłych ludzi uchylają obowiązki wobec obecnie żyjących ludzi, nawet znajdujących się w tak niekorzystnym położeniu jak skrajna bieda. W pierwszej części artykułu szkicuję argumenty Singera na rzecz moralnego obowiązku likwidacji skrajnej biedy za pomocą efektywnych metod (...)
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  29. Valuing the “Afterlife”.Avram Hiller - 2024 - Topoi 43 (1):65-73.
    To what extent do we value future generations? It may seem from our behavior that we don’t value future generations much at all, at least in relation to how much we value present generations. However, in his book _Death and the Afterlife_, Samuel Scheffler argues that we value the future even _more_ than we value the present, even though this is not immediately apparent to us. If Scheffler’s argument is sound, then it has important ramifications: It would give us a (...)
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  30. Urbanization and Political Development of the World System.Leonid Grinin & Andrey Korotayev - 2013 - Entelequia 15:197-255.
    Section 1 of this article presents a mathematical analysis of the longterm global urbanization dynamics and demonstrates that it could be described as a series of phase transitions between attraction basins. This makes it possible to suggest new approaches to the analysis of global social macroevolution. Section 2 presents a threestage model of the macroevolution of the World System statehood (early – developed – mature state) that, we believe, describes the main features of political macroevolution better than the twostage model (...)
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  31.  98
    Social Discounting and the Tragedy of the Horizon: from the Stern-Nordhaus debate to target-consistent prices.Ramiro Peres - 2024 - Working Paper Series - Banco Central Do Brasil.
    This paper reviews debates related to the social cost of carbon (SCC) and the challenge of pricing uncertain damages that will occur only in the future. They often revolve around the pure time preference rate, which reflects how much one favors present over future well-being. The SCC measures the marginal cost of the impact on economic growth caused by the emission of a quantity of greenhouse gases equivalent to an additional ton of carbon dioxide (tCO2eq). There is significant variance among (...)
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  32. Професійна етика як фактор становлення й розвитку соціально-відповідальної організаційної культури туристичного підприємства.Oleksandr Krupskyi - 2014 - Вісник Дніпропетровського Університету. Сер.: Світове Господарство І Міжнародні Економічні Відносини 6 (22):23-30.
    The purpose of the article is to analyze aspects of organizational culture of professional ethics in the travel and hospitality industry and to work out recommendations for improvement in the context of the transition to sustainable tourism. The methodological basis of the study is: a) a systematic approach that allowed to consider professional ethics not only its structural components, but also with functional connections and relationships; b) professiographic approach, which discovered the specifics of professional work in the tourism industry; c) (...)
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  33. Mutual Aid as Effective Altruism.Ricky Mouser - 2023 - Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 33 (2):201-226.
    Effective altruism has a strategy problem. Overreliance on a strategy of donating to the most effective charities keeps us on the firefighter's treadmill, continually pursuing the next-highest quantifiable marginal gain. But on its own, this is politically shortsighted. Without any long-term framework within which these individual rescues fit together to bring about the greatest overall impact, we are almost certainly leaving a lot of value on the table. Thus, effective altruists' preferred means undercut their professed aims. Alongside the charity framework, (...)
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  34. Pascal's Mugger Strikes Again.Dylan Balfour - 2021 - Utilitas 33 (1):118-124.
    In a well-known paper, Nick Bostrom presents a confrontation between a fictionalised Blaise Pascal and a mysterious mugger. The mugger persuades Pascal to hand over his wallet by exploiting Pascal's commitment to expected utility maximisation. He does so by offering Pascal an astronomically high reward such that, despite Pascal's low credence in the mugger's truthfulness, the expected utility of accepting the mugging is higher than rejecting it. In this article, I present another sort of high value, low credence mugging. This (...)
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  35. Review of Carol J. Adams, Alice Crary, and Lori Gruen (eds.) The Good It Promises, The Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism, 2023, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [REVIEW]Richard Pettigrew - forthcoming - Mind.
    Effective altruists (EAs) seek to persuade the globally wealthy to donate a proportion of their income to do good, and specifically to donate it to those charit.
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  36. Features of franchising expansion into the Ukrainian tourist market.Victoriia Redko & Yurii V. Semych - 2020 - European Journal of Management Issues 28 (3):101-109.
    Purpose – to differency in the franchise model implementation by tour operators in the European and Ukrainian markets. Design/Method/Approach. A theoretical approach is based on generalization, system and comparative analysis, content analysis, statistical, and graphical and tabular methods. Findings. The research characterized business franchising models of the largest multidisciplinary tour operators of mass tourism in Ukraine. The general conditions of performing tourist activity on the principles of business franchising for travel agencies are determined. The authors clarified the differences between business (...)
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  37. Genetic enhancement, human extinction, and the best interests of posthumanity.Jon Rueda - 2022 - Bioethics (6):529-538.
    The cumulative impact of enhancement technologies may alter the human species in the very long-term future. In this article, I will start showing how radical genetic enhancements may accelerate the conversion into a novel species. I will also clarify the concepts of ‘biological species’, ‘transhuman’ and ‘posthuman’. Then, I will summarize some ethical arguments for creating a transhuman or posthuman species with a substantially higher level of well-being than the human one. In particular, I will present what I shall call (...)
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  38. Existential Risk and Equal Political Liberty.J. Joseph Porter & Adam F. Gibbons - forthcoming - Asian Journal of Philosophy 3.
    Rawls famously argues that the parties in the original position would agree upon the two principles of justice. Among other things, these principles guarantee equal political liberty—that is, democracy—as a requirement of justice. We argue on the contrary that the parties have reason to reject this requirement. As we show, by Rawls’ own lights, the parties would be greatly concerned to mitigate existential risk. But it is doubtful whether democracy always minimizes such risk. Indeed, no one currently knows which political (...)
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  39. Unfinished Business.Jonathan Knutzen - 2023 - Philosophers' Imprint 23 (1): 4, 1-15.
    According to an intriguing though somewhat enigmatic line of thought first proposed by Jonathan Bennett, if humanity went extinct any time soon this would be unfortunate because important business would be left unfinished. This line of thought remains largely unexplored. I offer an interpretation of the idea that captures its intuitive appeal, is consistent with plausible constraints, and makes it non-redundant to other views in the literature. The resulting view contrasts with a welfare-promotion perspective, according to which extinction would be (...)
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  40. Tiny Probabilities of Vast Value.Petra Kosonen - 2022 - Dissertation, Oxford University
    The topic of this thesis is how we should treat tiny probabilities of vast value. This thesis consists of six independent papers. Chapter 1 discusses the idea that utilities are bounded. It shows that bounded decision theories prescribe prospects that are better for no one and worse for some if combined with an additive axiology. Chapter 2, in turn, points out that standard axiomatizations of Expected Utility Theory violate dominance in cases that involve possible states of zero probability. Chapters 3–6 (...)
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  41. Why Not Effective Altruism?Richard Yetter Chappell - 2024 - Public Affairs Quarterly 38 (1):3-21.
    Effective altruism sounds so innocuous—who could possibly be opposed to doing good more effectively? Yet it has inspired significant backlash in recent years. This paper addresses some common misconceptions and argues that the core “beneficentric” ideas of effective altruism are both excellent and widely neglected. Reasonable people may disagree on details of implementation, but all should share the basic goals or values underlying effective altruism.
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  42. Critical-Set Views, Biographical Identity, and the Long Term.Elliott Thornley - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    Critical-set views avoid the Repugnant Conclusion by subtracting some constant from the welfare score of each life in a population. These views are thus sensitive to facts about biographical identity: identity between lives. In this paper, I argue that questions of biographical identity give us reason to reject critical-set views and embrace the total view. I end with a practical implication. If we shift our credences towards the total view, we should also shift our efforts towards ensuring that humanity survives (...)
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  43. Existential risk pessimism and the time of perils.David Thorstad - manuscript
    When our choice affects some other person and the outcome is unknown, it has been argued that we should defer to their risk attitude, if known, or else default to use of a risk avoidant risk function. This, in turn, has been claimed to require the use of a risk avoidant risk function when making decisions that primarily affect future people, and to decrease the desirability of efforts to prevent human extinction, owing to the significant risks associated with continued human (...)
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  44. Risk, Non-Identity, and Extinction.Kacper Kowalczyk & Nikhil Venkatesh - 2024 - The Monist 107 (2):146–156.
    This paper examines a recent argument in favour of strong precautionary action—possibly including working to hasten human extinction—on the basis of a decision-theoretic view that accommodates the risk-attitudes of all affected while giving more weight to the more risk-averse attitudes. First, we dispute the need to take into account other people’s attitudes towards risk at all. Second we argue that a version of the non-identity problem undermines the case for doing so in the context of future people. Lastly, we suggest (...)
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  45. Doomsday rings twice.Andreas Mogensen - manuscript
    This paper considers the argument according to which, because we should regard it as a priori very unlikely that we are among the most important people who will ever exist, we should increase our confidence that the human species will not persist beyond the current historical era, which seems to represent a crucial juncture in human history and perhaps even the history of life on earth. The argument is a descendant of the Carter-Leslie Doomsday Argument, but I show that it (...)
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  46. (1 other version)Every History.Jonathan Knutzen - forthcoming - The Philosophical Quarterly.
    This paper focuses on an underexplored challenge in infinite ethics. On realistic assumptions, if our universe is infinite, every nomologically possible history is actual and nothing we ever do makes a difference to the moral quality of the world as a whole. Call this thought Every History. This paper unpacks Every History and explores some of its ethical implications. Specifically, I argue that if Every History is true and the universe turns out to be infinite (1) our lives are globally (...)
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  47. Exceeding Expectations: Stochastic Dominance as a General Decision Theory.Christian Tarsney - manuscript
    The principle that rational agents should maximize expected utility or choiceworthiness is intuitively plausible in many ordinary cases of decision-making under uncertainty. But it is less plausible in cases of extreme, low-probability risk (like Pascal's Mugging), and intolerably paradoxical in cases like the St. Petersburg and Pasadena games. In this paper I show that, under certain conditions, stochastic dominance reasoning can capture most of the plausible implications of expectational reasoning while avoiding most of its pitfalls. Specifically, given sufficient background uncertainty (...)
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  48. When should an effective altruist donate?William MacAskill - manuscript
    Effective altruism is the use of evidence and careful reasoning to work out how to maximize positive impact on others with a given unit of resources, and the taking of action on that basis. It’s a philosophy and a social movement that is gaining considerable steam in the philanthropic world. For example, GiveWell, an organization that recommends charities working in global health and development and generally follows effective altruist principles, moves over $90 million per year to its top recommendations. Giving (...)
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  49. Mistakes in the moral mathematics of existential risk.David Thorstad - 2024 - Ethics 135 (1):122-150.
    Longtermists have recently argued that it is overwhelmingly important to do what we can to mitigate existential risks to humanity. I consider three mistakes that are often made in calculating the value of existential risk mitigation. I show how correcting these mistakes pushes the value of existential risk mitigation substantially below leading estimates, potentially low enough to threaten the normative case for existential risk mitigation. I use this discussion to draw four positive lessons for the study of existential risk. -/- (...)
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  50. Nuclear war as a predictable surprise.Matthew Rendall - 2022 - Global Policy 13 (5):782-791.
    Like asteroids, hundred-year floods and pandemic disease, thermonuclear war is a low-frequency, high-impact threat. In the long run, catastrophe is inevitable if nothing is done − yet each successive government and generation may fail to address it. Drawing on risk perception research, this paper argues that psychological biases cause the threat of nuclear war to receive less attention than it deserves. Nuclear deterrence is, moreover, a ‘front-loaded good’: its benefits accrue disproportionately to proximate generations, whereas much of the expected cost (...)
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