The central question being discussed in the current debate is whether marginal efforts should prioritize reducing existential risk or improving the quality of futures conditional on survival. Both are important, both are neglected, though the latter admittedly more so, at least within EA. But this post examines the tractability of shaping the long-term future if humanity survives, and the uncertainty about our ability to do so effectively.
I want to very briefly argue that given the complexity of long-term trajectories, the lack of empirical evidence, and the difficulty of identifying robust interventions, efforts to improve future value are significantly less tractable than reducing existential risk.
We have strong reasons to think we know what the likely sources of existential risk are - as @Sean_o_h's new paper lays out very clearly. The most plausible risks are well known, and we also have at least some paths towards mitigating them, at least in the form of not causing them. On the other hand, if we condition on humanity’s survival, we are dealing with an open-ended set of possible futures that is both not well characterized, and poorly explored. Exploration of futures is also not particularly tractable, given the branching nature and the complexity of the systems being predicted. And this problem is not just about characterizing futures - the tractability of interventions decreases as the system's complexity increases, especially over multi-century timescales. The complexity of socio-technological and moral evolution makes it infeasible, in my view, to shape long-term outcomes with even moderate confidence. It seems plausible that most interventions would have opposite signs in many plausible futures, and we seem unlikely to know the relative probabilities or the impacts.
And despite @William_MacAskill's book on the topic, we have very limited evidence for what works to guide the future - one of the few key criticisms I think should be generally convincing about the entire premise of longtermism. The exception, of course, is avoiding extinction.
And compared to existential risk, where specific interventions may have clear leverage points, such as biosecurity or AI safety, increasing the quality of long-term futures is a vast and nebulous goal. There is no singular control knob for “future value,” making interventions more speculative. So identifying interventions today that will robustly steer the future in a particular direction is difficult because, as noted, we lack strong historical precedent for guiding complex civilizations over thousands of years, and also, the existence of unpredictable attractor states (e.g., technological singularities, value shifts) makes long-term interventions unreliable. Work to change this seems plausibly valuable, but also more interesting than important, as I previously argued.
I agree with this, and like to lean on what evidence we have rather than theory and speculation
There are many past events which increased the value of the future unintentionally, like free markets and most scientific advancements.
Previous examples of people and movements which intentionally planned to increase the value of the future mostly achieved it through concrete current change in laws and cultural norms. When MLK said "I have a dream", he fought for change then and there to make that dream a reality. Efforts like these have had a huge effect. This list is just what comes to mind, in no particular order and far from extensive. Most of these required community organising and protest as at least part of the process to achieve the concrete change.
- Abolition of slavery
- Women's suffrage
- Nuclear Treaties
- Universal declaration of human rights (which although breaking down a bit has been so successful that "human rights" are seen almost as an objective truth for many people)
- Banning warfare with poisonous gases
- Civil rights movement
- Access to free HIV treatment becoming a universal "right" through social movements and PEPFAR
- Animal welfare movement - specifically the cage free revolution
- Democratic transformation of nation states
- LGBTQ+ rights movements and legal changes
- Social welfare movements for the poorest part of the population in many rich countries
I think efforts to improve the value of the future through concrete current change right here right now are fantastic and EA can continue to focus on those where they are neglected and tractable, but I struggle to see a clear Theory of Change for other possible mechanisms due to, as you put it very well"The complexity of socio-technological and moral evolution". Good things locked in now can be really hard to change in democratic countries. I would (perhaps slightly controversially) cite Obamacare as an example of something that was so beneficial to so many it became extremely hard to reverse.
I'm very open to other pathways for creating change that don't involve a concrete change right here right now, but you'll need to convince me.
This seems mostly correct, though I think the role of community organizing (versus elite consensus change) is strongly overstated.
Do you think "Most of these required community organising and protest as at least part of the process to achieve the concrete change." is that strong a statement? There is a pretty strong correlation between protest/organising and these changes. Elite consense is clearly very important, but I think that the voice of the masses can move the elite to consensus so there's some chicken and egg there. Also to mention a few cases here where I don't think elite consensus was strong at the time of change and their hand's were perhaps forced...
- Access to free HIV treatment (This I'm pretty sure of)
- Civil rights movement
- Women's suffrage
I do find this a tricky issue to keep a scout mindset on here on the forum, as I find EAs in general are unusually against protest and organising compared to other communities I am a part of. My feeling is this is largely because the nature of many EAs is more to be into research, debate and policy rather than social roles like organising and protest.
What makes you think it is overstated? I think its a tricky counterfactual question with a lot of room for conjecture....
Tangentially re: protest, I think things are slowly shifting, due to the work of folks like James Özden founding Social Change Lab to understand how social change movements can be more evidence-based and effective. For instance, James changed my mind on the effectiveness of radical protest tactics in What’s everyone got against throwing soup?, which drew upon this literature review to conclude that
I'd also signal-boost James' article Protest Movements Could Be More Effective Than the Best Charities published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. You should always take charts like the one below claiming superlative cost-eff with a metric ton of salt, but I mostly trust the general quality of his analysis and think his bottomline holds up.
That said, James seems to be the only person banging this drum, so I suppose your observation still broadly holds true.
I think James's did is really important and shows the potential good if a radical flank
Traditionally though movements and organizing was often around issues which has decent public support already and wasnt necessarily that radical. The civil rights movement and the HIV medicine campaigners directly moved the elites towards their goal, and didn't just move the needle on public opinion for the better like the radical flank can
I agree that the examples you list are ones where organizing and protest played a large role, and I agree that it's effectively impossible to know the counterfactual - but I was thinking of the other examples, several where there was no organizing and protest, but which happened anyways - which seems like clear evidence that they are contributory and helpful but not necessary factors. On the other hand, effectiveness is very hard to gauge!
The conclusion is that organizing is likely or even clearly positive - but it's evidently not required, if other factors are present, which is why I thought it was overstated.
Yep I agree with that