Thoughts on "A case against strong longtermism" (Masrani)

seems to be responding to tone rather than the substance of the argument.

That's roughly true for me saying "In any case, “utterly oblivious” seems to me to be both a rude phrasing and a strong claim." 

But I don't think it's true for my comment as a whole. Masrani makes specific claims here, and the claims are inaccurate. 

And given that (I think) we're interested in the substantive question rather than the social legitimacy of the criticism, I think that it is more useful to engage with the strongest version of the argument.

I think steelmanning is often really useful. But I think there's also valuing in noticing when a person/post/whatever is just actually incorrect about something, and in trying to understand what arguments they're actually making. Some reasons:

• Something like epistemic spot-checking / combatting something like Gell-Mann Amnesia
• Making it less likely that other people walk away remembering the incorrect claim as actually true
• Prioritising which arguments/criticisms to bother engaging with
  • We obviously shouldn't choose arguments at random from the entire pool of available arguments in the world, or the entire pool of available arguments on a given topic. It's probably often more efficient to engage with arguments that are already quite strong, rather than steelmanning less strong arguments that we happen to have stumbled upon

So here I'm actually not solely interested in the substantive questions raised by Masrani's post, but also in countering misconceptions that I think the post may have generated, and giving indications of why I think people might find it more useful to engage with other criticisms of longtermism instead (e.g., the ones linked to in the body of my post itself).

One final thing worth noting is that this was a quickly produced post adapting notes I'd made anyway. I do think that if I'd spent quite a while on this, it'd be fair to say "Why didn't you just talk about the best arguments against longtermism, and the points missing from Greaves & MacAskill, instead?"

I think that there are valuable points about secondary uncertainty, value of information, and similar issues that are ignored by Greaves and MacAskill in their sketch of the ideal decision-theoretic reasoning.

Yeah, I imagine there are many things in this vicinity that Greaves & MacAskill didn't cover yet that are relevant to the case for strong longtermism or how to implement it in practice, and I'd be happy to see (a) recommendations of sources where those things are discussed well, and/or (b) other people generate new useful discussions of those things. Ideally applied to longtermism specifically, but general discussions - or general discussions plus a quick explanation of the relevance - seems useful too.

I definitely don't mean to imply with this post that I see strong longtermism as clearly true; I'm just quickly countering a specific set of misconceptions and objections.

Hey! Can't respond most of your points now unfortunately,  but just a few quick things :) 

(I'm working on a followup piece at the moment and will try to respond to some of your criticisms there) 

My central point is the 'inconsequential in the grand scheme of things' one you highlight here. This is why I end the essay with this quote:

> If among our aims and ends there is anything conceived in terms of human happiness and misery, then we are bound to judge our actions in terms not only of possible contributions to the happiness of man in a distant future, but also of their more immediate effects. We must not argue that the misery of one generation may be considered as a mere means to the end of securing the lasting happiness of some later generation or generations; and this argument is improved neither by a high degree of promised happiness nor by a large number of generations profiting by it. All generations are transient. All have an equal right to be considered, but our immediate duties are undoubtedly to the present generation and to the next. Besides, we should never attempt to balance anybody’s misery against somebody else’s happiness. 

The "undefined" bit also "proves too much"; it basically says we can't predict anything ever, but actually empirical evidence and common sense both strongly indicate that we can make many predictions with better-than-chance accuracy

Just wanted to flag that I responded to the 'proving too much' concern here:  Proving Too Much

tl;dr: I basically agree with everything except "This seems to agree with his criticism", because I think (from memory) that Masrani was making a stronger and less valid claim. (Though I'm not totally sure; it may have just been slightly sloppy writing + the other misconception that longtermism is necessarily solely focused on existential risk reduction.)

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I think there's a valid claim similar to what Masrani said, and that that could reasonably be seen as a criticism of longtermism given some reasonable moral and/or empirical assumptions. Specifically, I think it's true that:

• The very core of strong longtermism is that idea that the intrinsic importance of the effects of our actions on the long-term future is far greater than the intrinsic importance of the effects of our actions on the near-term, and thus that we should focus on how our actions affect the long-term (or, in other words, the near-term effects we should aim for are whichever ones are best for the long-term)
• It seems very likely to be the case that what's best for the long-term isn't what's the very best for the near-term
• It seems plausible that what's best for the long-term is actually net-negative for the near-term
• This means acting according to strong longtermism will likely be worse for the near-term than acting according to (EA-style) neartermism, and might be net-negative for the near-term
• Various historical cases suggest that "ends justify the means" reasoning and attempts to enact grand, long-term visions often have net negative effects
  • Though I'm not actually sure how often they had net negative effects vs having net positive effects, how this differs from other types of reasoning and planning, and how analogous those cases are to longtermist efforts in relevant ways)
  • But this might suggest that, in practice, strong longtermism is more likely to be bad for the near-term than it should be in theory

I would mostly "bite the bullet" of this critique - i.e., say that we can't prioritise everything at once, and if the case for strong longtermism holds up then it's appropriate that we prioritise the long-term at the expense of the short-term. And then I do think we should remain vigilant of ways our thinking, priorities, actions, etc. could mirror bad instances of "ends justify the means" etc. 

But I could understand someone else being more worried about this objection.

Also, FWIW, I think the Greaves and MacAskill paper maybe fails to acknowledge that strong longtermism actions might be very strange or net-negative from a near-term perspective, rather than just not top priorities. (Though maybe I just forgot where they said this.) I made a related comment here.

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We could steelman Masrani into making the above sorts of claims and then have a productive discussion. But I think it's also useful to sometimes just talk about what someone actually said and correct things that are actually misleading or common misconceptions. And I think Masrani was making a stronger claim (though I'm now unsure, as mentioned at the top), which I also think some other people actually believe and which seems like a misconception worth correcting (see also). (To be fair, I think Greaves & MacAskill could maybe have been more careful with some phrasngs to avoid people forming this misconception.)

E.g. Masrani writes:

The recent working paper by Hilary Greaves and William MacAskill puts forth the case for strong longtermism, a philosophy which says one should simply ignore the consequences of one’s actions if they take place over the “short term” timescale of 100 to 1000 years

And: 

To reiterate, longtermism gives us permission to completely ignore the consequences of our actions over the next one thousand years, provided we don’t personally believe these actions will rise to the level of existential threats. 

And:

 longtermism encourages us to treat our fellow brothers and sisters with careless disregard for the next one thousand years, forever.

(But again, I now realise that this might have just been slightly sloppy writing + the x-risk misconception, and also that Greaves & MacAskill may have been slightly sloppy with some phrases as well in a way that contributed to this. So I think this point isn't especially important as a critique of the post.

Though I guess my original statement still seems appropriate hedged: "At least in some places, Masrani seems to think or imply that longtermism doesn’t aim to influence any events that occur in the next (say) 1000 years." [emphasis added])

Yes, this seems to be a problem, but it's also a problem with naive expected value thinking that  prioritizes predictions without looking at adaptive planning or value of information. And I think Greaves and MacAskill don't really address these issues sufficiently in their paper - though I agree that they have considered them and are open to further refinement of their ideas.

But I don't beleive that it's clear we predict things about the long term "with above chance accuracy." If we do, it's not obvious how to construct the baseline probability we would expect to outperform.

Critically, the requirement for this criticism to be correct is that our predictions are not good enough to point to interventions that have higher expected benefit than more-certain ones, and this seems very plausible. Constructing the case for whether or not it is true seems valuable, but mostly unexplored.

That being said, I suspect it's possible in practice to hedge against these indirect effects from short-term-focused interventions.

I haven't read your post, so can't comment. 

That said, FWIW, my independent impression is that "cluelessness" isn't a useful concept and that the common ways the concept has been used either to counter neartermism or counter longtermism are misguided. (I write about this here and here.) So I guess that that's probably consistent with your conclusion, though maybe by a different road. (I prefer to use the sort of analysis in Tarsney's epistemic challenge paper, and I think that that pushes in favour of either longtermism or further research on longtermism vs neartermism, though I definitely acknowledge room for debate on that.)

tl;dr: I basically agree with your first paragraph, but think that: 

• that's mostly consistent with my prior comment
• that doesn't represent a strong argument against longtermism
• Masrani's claims/language go beyond the defensible claims you're making

This can happen unconsciously, though, e.g. confirmation bias, or whenever there's arbitrariness or "whim", e.g. priors or how you weight different considerations with little evidence. The weaker the evidence, the more prone to bias

Agreed. But: 

1. I think that a small to moderate degree of such bias is something I acknowledged in my prior comment
   • (And I intended to imply that it could occur unconsciously, though I didn't explicitly state that)
2. I think unconscious bias is always a possibility, including in relation to whatever alternative to longtermism one might endorse
   • See also Caution on Bias Arguments and Beware Isolated Demands for Rigor
   • That said, I think "The weaker the evidence, the more prone to bias" is true (all other factors held constant), and I think that that does create one reason why bias may push in favour of longtermism more than in favour of other things.
     • I think I probably should've acknowledged that.
     • But there's still the fact that there are so many other sources of bias, factors exacerbating or mitigating bias, etc. So it's still far from obvious which group of people (sorted by current cause priorities) is more biased overall in their cause prioritisation. 
       • And I think that there's some value in trying to figure that out, but that should be done and discussed very carefully, and is probably less useful than other discussions/research that could inform cause priorities.
       • E.g., scope neglect, identifiable victim effects, and confirmation bias when most people first enter EA (since more were previously interested in global health & dev than in longtermism) bias against longtermism
       • But a desire to conform to what's currently probably more "trendy" in EA biases towards longtermism
       • And so on
   • Less important: It seems far from obvious to me whether there's substantial truth in the claim that "there's self-selection so that the people most interested in longtermism are the ones whose arbitrary priors and weights support it most, rightly or wrongly", even assuming bias is a big part of the story.
     • E.g., I think things along the lines of conformity and deference are more likely culprits for "unwarranted/unjustified" shifts towards longtermism than confirmation bias are
       • It seems like a very large portion of longtermists were originally focused on other areas and were surprised to find themselves ending up longtermist, which makes confirmation bias seem like an unlikely explanation
3. Compared to what you're suggesting, Masrani - at least in some places - seems to imply something more extreme, more conscious, and/or more explicitly permitted by longtermism itself (rather than just general biases that are exacerbated by having limited info)
   • E.g., "by fiddling with the numbers, the above reasoning can be used to squash funding for any charitable cause whatsoever." [emphasis added]
   • E.g., “To reiterate, longtermism gives us permission to completely ignore the consequences of our actions over the next one thousand years, provided we don’t personally believe these actions will rise to the level of existential threats. In other words, the entirely subjective and non-falsifiable belief that one’s actions aren’t directly contributing to existential risks gives one carte blanche permission to treat others however one pleases. The suffering of our fellow humans alive today is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. We can “simply ignore” it - even contribute to it if we wish - because it doesn’t matter." [emphasis added]
   • This very much sounds to me like "assuming bad faith" in a way that I think is both unproductive and inaccurate for most actual longtermists
     • I.e., this sounds quite different to "These people are really trying to do what's best. But they're subject to cognitive biases and are disproportionately affected by the beliefs of the people they happen to be around or look up to - as are we all. And there are X, Y, Z specific reasons to think those effects are leading these people to be more inclined towards longtermism than they should be."