Lundgren and Kudlek (2024), in their recent article, discuss several challenges to longtermism as it currently stands. Below is a summary of these challenges.
The Far Future is Irrelevant for Moral Decision-Making
- Longtermists have not convincingly shown that taking the far future into account impacts decision-making in practice. In the examples given, the moral decisions remain the same even if the far future is disregarded.
- Example: Slavery
We didn’t need to consider the far future to recognize that abolishing slavery was morally right, as its benefits were evident in the short term. - Example: Existential Risk
The urgency of addressing existential risks does not depend on the far future; the importance of avoiding these risks is clear when focusing on the present and the next few generations.
- As a result, the far future has little relevance to most moral decisions. Policies that are good for the far future are often also good for the present and can be justified based on their benefits to the near future.
The Far Future Must Conflict with the Near Future to be Morally Relevant
- For the far future to be a significant factor in moral decisions, it must lead to different decisions compared to those made when only considering the near future. If the same decisions are made in both cases, there is no need to consider the far future.
- Given the vastness of the future compared to the present, focusing on the far future, risks harming the present. Resources spent on the far future could instead be used to address immediate problems like health crises, hunger, and conflict.
We Are Not in a Position to Predict the Best Actions for the Far Future
- There are two main reasons for this:
- Unpredictability of Future Effects
It's nearly impossible to predict how our actions today will influence the far future. For instance, antibiotics once seemed like the greatest medical discovery, estimating the long-term effects of medical research in 10,000 years—or even millions of years—is beyond our capacity. - Unpredictability of Future Values
Technological advancements significantly change moral values and social norms over time. For example, contraceptives contributed to shifts in values regarding sexual autonomy during the sexual revolution. We cannot reliably predict what future generations will value.
Implementing Longtermism is Practically Implausible
- Human biases and limitations in moral thinking lead to distorted and unreliable judgments, making it difficult to meaningfully care about the far future.
- Our moral concern is naturally limited to those close to us, and our capacity for empathy and care is finite. Even if we care about future generations in principle, our resources are constrained.
- Focusing on the far future comes at a cost to addressing present-day needs and crises, such as health issues and poverty.
- Implementing longtermism would require radical changes to human psychology or to social institutions, which is a major practical hurdle.
I'm interested to hear your opinions on these challenges and how they relate to understanding longtermism.
I don't have time to look into this in full depth, but it looks like a good paper, making useful good-faith critiques, which I very much appreciate. Note that the paper is principally arguing against 'strong longtermism' and doesn't necessarily disagree with longtermism. For the record, I don't endorse strong longtermism either, and I think that the paper delineating it which came out before any defenses of (non-strong) longtermism has been bad for the ability to have conversations about the form of the view that is much more widely endorsed by 'longtermists'.
My main response to the points in the paper would be by analogy to cosmopolitanism (or to environmentalism or animal welfare). We are saying that something (the lives of people in of future generations) matters a great deal more than most people think (at least judging by their actions). In all cases, this does mean that adding a new priority will mean a reduction in resources going to existing priorities. But that doesn't mean these expansions of the moral circle are in error. I worry that the lines of argument in this paper apply just as well to denying previous steps like cosmopolitanism (caring deeply about people's lives across national borders). e.g. here is the final set of bullets you listed with minor revisions:
the far futuredistant countries.future generationspeople in distant countries in principle, our resources are constrained.the far futuredistant countries comes at a cost to addressingpresent-daylocal needs and crises, such as health issues and poverty.longtermismcosmopolitanism would require radical changes to human psychology or to social institutions, which is a major practical hurdle.What I'm trying to show here is that these arguments apply just as well to argue against previous moral circle expansions which most moral philosophers would think were major points of progress in moral thinking. So I think they are suspect, and that the argument would instead need to address things that are distinctive about longtermism, such as arguing positively that future peoples' lives don't matter morally as much as present people.
The "distant country" objection does not defend against the argument that "We Are Not in a Position to Predict the Best Actions for the Far Future".
We can go to a distant country and observe what is going on there, and make reasonably informed decisions about how to help them. A more accurate analogy would be if we were trying to help a distant country that we hadn't seen, couldn't communicate with and knew next to nothing about.
It also doesn't work as a counterargument for "The Far Future Must Conflict with the Near Future to be Morally Relevant". The authors are claiming that anything that helps the far future can also be accomplished by helping people in the present. The analogous argument that anything that helps distant countries can also be accomplished by helping people in this country is just wrong.
We can make meaningful decisions about how to help people in the distant future. For example, to allow them to exist at all, to allow them to exist with a complex civilisation that hasn't collapsed, to give them more prosperity that they can use as they choose, to avoid destroying their environment, to avoid collapsing their options by other irreversible choices, etc. Basically, to aim and giving them things near the base of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs or to give them universal goods — resources or options that can be traded for whatever it is they know they need at the time. And the same is often true for international aid.
In both cases, it isn't always easy to know that our actions will actually secure these basic needs, rather than making things worse in some way. But it is possible. One way to do it for the distant future is to avoid catastrophes that have predictable longterm effects, which is a major reason I focus on that and suggest others do too.
I don't see it as an objection to Longtermism if it recommends the same things as traditional morality — that is just as much a problem for traditional theories, by symmetry. It is especially not a problem when traditional theories might (if their adherents were careful) recommend much more focus on existential risks but in fact almost always neglect the issue substantially. If they admit that Longtermists are right that these are the biggest issues of our time and that the world should massively scale up focus and resources on them, and that they weren't saying this before we came along, then that is a big win for Longtermism. If they don't think it is all that important actually, then we disagree and the theory is quite distinctive in practice. Either way the distinctiveness objection also fails.
This is in tension with "We Are Not in a Position to Predict the Best Actions for the Far Future", isn't it?
It is rather that longtermists have not provided any examples of moral decisions that would be different if we were to consider the far future versus the near future. All current focus areas, the authors argue, can be justified by appealing to the near future.
Yeah, perhaps I am subtly misrepresenting the argument. Trying again, I interpret it as saying:
People have justified longtermism by pointing to actions that seem sensible, such as the claim that it made sense in the past to end slavery, and it makes sense currently to prevent existential risk. But both of these examples can be justified with a lot more certainty by appealing to the short term future. So in order to justify longtermism in particular, you have to point out proposed policies that are a lot less sensible seeming, and rely on a lot less certainty.
It might help to clarify that in the article they are defining “long term future” as a scale of millions of years.
If you're referring to the first point I would reword this to:
What is the more widely endorsed view of longtermists?
I largely agree with your "distant countries" objection. Just because something is practically implausible does not make it morally wrong, or not worthy of attention. I also think it's not necessarily true that implementing longtermism requires radical changes to human psychology or social institutions. We need not necessarily convince every human on the planet to care about the lives of future generations, only those who might have a meaningful impact (which could be a small number).
Nevertheless, I think the other three objections that you don't mention provide some interesting and potentially serious challenges for longtermism, perhaps for weaker forms as well.