Trish's Quick takes

Is the future good in expectation? Thoughts on Will MacAskill's most recent 80k Hours podcast

My full summary of this podcast is on my website here. Below are my thoughts on the question posed above - whether the future is good in expectation.

Why Will thinks the future looks good  

Will thinks the future trajectory looks good. He mainly relies on an asymmetry between altruism and sadism in reaching this conclusion: some altruistic agents will systematically pursue things that are good, but very, very few sadistic agents will systematically pursue things that are bad. 

Will therefore believes there’s a strong asymmetry where the very best possible futures are somewhat plausible, but the very worst possible futures are not. He accepts that it’s entirely plausible that we squander our potential and bring about a society that’s not the very best, but he finds it much, much less plausible that we bring about the truly worst society.

My thoughts

I am highly uncertain on this point and, while I have not thought about it as much as Will seems to have, I found his reasoning unpersuasive. In particular:

• I think that it’s largely irrelevant whether a “truly worst” society is plausible. It makes more sense to focus on the respective likelihoods of all “worse than existence” and all “better than existence” societies (weighted by just how good or bad each future would be), rather than just the likelihoods of the best and worst-case scenarios.
• It makes sense to view altruism as positive and sadism as negative, but I don’t think indifference equates to 0 as Rob and Will imply. By “indifference”, they really seem to mean “selfish”, and the latter has more negative connotations than the former. Pure indifference or selfishness may well end up as negative overall (though obviously not as negative as sadism) because of negative externalities. I think the vast majority of agents in the world are largely indifferent, and only a few are altruists, particularly if you include non-human beings in the calculation. The world could still be a net negative in this case.
• There’s also a question about the distribution of power. Even if the impact of indifferents really were 0, and even if altruists and indifferents outnumber sadists, sadists may have more power and more ability to affect the world negatively. It seems plausible there is a positive correlation between having power and being sadistic. Put another way, there could be a negative correlation between having power and being altruistic. This may be because:
  • Altruistic people would be more inclined to give away money and power than sadistic or selfish people; and
  • Obtaining power sometimes requires morally dubious acts that altruistic people may not want to do.
• (On the other hand, I think that people tend to be more altruistic once they have a certain level of wealth and power. It’s like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – once your basic needs are accounted for, you can focus on helping others.)
• People are also not entirely altruistic, entirely sadistic, or entirely selfish. Even someone who identifies as an altruist (effective or otherwise) will be selfish to some degree, and their selfish acts may have larger impacts than their altruistic ones (perhaps more so for non-effective altruists who are less focused on impact). It’s therefore possible for altruistic groups to outnumber sadistic groups, but for sadistic acts to outnumber – or out-impact – altruistic acts.