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Om fri THE POTENTIAL vilja, beslut OF THE och FARödet FUTURE
The Potential of the Far Future TEXT & ILLUSTRATION KAROLINA GUSTAVSSON
As the ancient saying goes ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ There are a multitude of reasons to be hopeful about our future, humanity has so much yet to achieve and create. We need to be cautious since the road ahead may be bumpy! However we live in a crucial time where we can choose to put a seatbelt on civilization for a safer ride, but will we rise to the occasion? Longtermism may give us some answers.
What is longtermism really? When I dream of the far future I imagine exploring distant worlds and learning about what is currently considered science fiction. The budding philosophy and movement known as longtermism, aims to help us put that seatbelt on and realise those dreams of the far future. I decided to interview Jonathan Salter and Erik Engelhardt, who both have a lot of expertise in effective altruism and are especially knowledgeable in the area of longtermism. Longtermism is a philosophy where value is placed on future potential and future human lives. It touches upon all areas that could have a positive impact on the future. The term was coined quite recently, in 2017, by the philosophers Toby Ord and William McAskill. The reason for it being such a recent idea is that humanity only recently gained the capability to destroy civilization. For instance nuclear weapons, changing the climate, bioweapons and so on. While the concept may be quite new, a lot of people already care about creating a great future for their kids and grandkids. This is taking it one step further. Why would you say longtermism is important?
J: The central moral claim is that, in much the same way we shouldn't discriminate based on superficial factors such as gender, ethnicity, creed, nationality, or indeed location on Earth — we shouldn't treat future people as if they have less worth just because they don't exist right now. Personally, I was pretty nihilistic before I found out about longtermism, but now we have the chance to feel cosmically significant since we live in a time where our actions potentially have huge consequences on the future. To get some perspective we can look at the history of life. The historian Rutger Bregman thinks of it as a calendar year in his book ‘Humankind — A Hopeful History’. If life started on the 1st of January, Dinosaurs would go extinct on the 25th of December and humans would appear on December 31st at 23:00. Perhaps surprisingly, agriculture would begin at 23.58 — this means modern civilisation has only existed in the last two minutes of this year of life. Human ancestors began walking on two legs 5-7 million years ago which hopefully is only the beginning. In Toby Ord's book ‘The Precipice,’ he considers the humble horseshoe crab, which has been here for a whopping 450 million years. What if we manage to exist for as long or longer? OSQLEDAREN #4
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Do we owe future generations anything? J: It depends on if you are buying into duties, as far as duties go I believe we have an obligation to do good for others, including future generations. The implications of looking at life in this way are vast. We should have an enormous amount of existential hope for the future. Humanity could create such grand things with time, solve great mysteries and explore the universe. A hundred years ago it would have been difficult to imagine the internet or spaceflight, but what else could we create with more time? David Deutsch, in his book ‘The Beginning of Infinity’, illuminates that a tradition of criticism combined with scientific principles can create limitless knowledge. Even though we often focus on negative news, we cannot forget all the positive ways the world is developing. There are so many reasons to be excited about the future, not even the sky's the limit! What can individuals do? E: The most actionable advice is to work for or give money to organisations who work with existential risks. Think about how you can have a long term impact in your future
