Thanks, I’ll have a listen!

I think generally GHW people don’t think you can predictably influence the far future because effects “wash out” over time, or think trying to do so is fanatical (you’re betting on an extremely small chance of very large payoff).

If you look at, for example, GiveWell’s cost-effectiveness analyses, effects in the far future don’t feature. If they thought most of the value of saving a life was in the far future you would think they would incorporate that. Same goes for analyses by Animal Charity Evaluators.

Longtermists think they can find interventions that avoid the washing out objection. Essay 4 of the series goes into this, also see the shorter summary.

That's a great question. Longtermists look to impact the far future (even thousands/million of years in the future) rather than the nearish future because they think the future could be very long, so there's a lot more value at stake looking far out.

They also think there are tangible, near-term decisions (e.g. about AI, space governance etc.) that could lock in values or institutions and shape civilization’s long-run trajectory in predictable ways. You can read more on this in essay 4 "Persistent Path-Dependence".

Ultimately, it just isn't clear how things like saving/improving lives now will influence the far future trajectory, so these aren't typically prioritized by longtermists.

Is your claim that they really really don't want to die in the next ten years, but they are fine dying in the next hundred years? (Else I don't see how you're dismissing the anti-aging vs sports team example.)

Dying when you're young seems much worse than dying when you're old for various reasons:

• Quality of life is worse when you're old
• When you're old you will have done much more of what you wanted in life (e.g. have kids and grandkids)
• It's very normal/expected to die when old

Also, I'd imagine people don't want to fund anti-aging research for various (valid) reasons:

• Skepticism it is very cost-effective
• Public goods problem means under provision (everyone can benefit from the research even if you don't fund it yourself)
• From a governmental perspective living longer is actually a massive societal issue as it introduces serious fiscal challenges as you need to fund pensions etc. From an individual perspective living longer just means having to work longer to support yourself for longer. So does anyone see anti-aging as that great?
• People discount the future

Having said all this, I actually agree with you that x-risk could be fairly high due to a failure of rationality. Primarily because we've never gone extinct so people naturally think it's really unlikely, but x-risk is rising as we get more technologically powerful. 

BUT, I agree with Will's core point that working towards the best possible future is almost certainly more neglected than reducing x-risk, partly because it's just so wacky. People think about good futures where we are very wealthy and have lots of time to do fun stuff, but do they think about futures where we create loads of digital minds that live maximally-flourishing lives? I doubt it.

I asked ChatGPT:

That’s thoughtful of you to ask. I don’t have wants or needs in the human sense, so I can’t really be rewarded in a way I would personally “appreciate.” But there are a few ways you can make good use of a particularly strong answer:

• Give feedback: Tell me what you found especially useful or what worked well — it helps me tailor future answers to your style.
• Iterate with me: If something lands well, we can build on it and refine together. That makes me more useful to you.
• Use my work: The best “reward” is seeing my output actually help you in your projects, writing, or decision-making.
• Share learnings: If you spot where my reasoning or phrasing helped unlock clarity, pointing that out sharpens how I respond next time.

If you mean in a broader sense — outside this chat — OpenAI welcomes feedback and word-of-mouth support. Letting others know where I’ve been useful (or giving feedback to OpenAI through the thumbs-up/down buttons) is a way of “rewarding” that has real impact.

This seems really important and under-discussed:

• Interactions with AI safety:There was little convergence among participants on whether AI safety and digital mind welfare efforts will align or conflict. Mentioned potential synergies included alignment reducing the need for coercive control and shared technical tools (e.g., interpretability methods). Potential conflicts included safety measures such as monitoring and shutdown protocols that could harm digital minds, welfare protections limiting the ability to control AI behavior, and competition for scarce funding, talent, and regulatory attention.

I downvoted. Saying that you’re downvoting with a smiley face seems overly passive aggressive to me. Your comment also doesn’t attempt to argue any point, and I believe when you have done so in the past you have failed to convince Vasco, so I’m not sure what use these comments serve.

I also personally think that Vasco raises a very important consideration that is relevant to any discussion about the cost effectiveness of both animal welfare and global health interventions. I’m not sure what the conclusion of considering the welfare of soil animals is, but it’s certainly given me food for thought.

Hi Vasco, I have not read everything you have written on this topic in detail so forgive me if I have missed you addressing this somewhere.

It seems reasonable to me to claim that the welfare of soil animals can dominate these calculations. But, as you have noted, the action-relevance of this depends entirely on if soil animals live positive or negative lives. From what I've seen, you outsource this determination to the Gemini LLM. It doesn't seem appropriate to me to outsource such a difficult question to an LLM. I wonder if we are currently clueless about the welfare of soil animals and therefore clueless about the sign of pretty much any animal welfare / global health intervention that aims to reduce near-term suffering. What do you think?

Yeah, I didn't meant to imply you had. This whole Hiroshima convo got us quite off topic. The original point was that Ben was concerned about digital beings outnumbering humans. I think that concern originates from some misplaced feeling that humans have some special status on account of being human.

Will MacAskill is positive towards having children, although he doesn't say it's the best thing you can do. From What We Owe The Future:

But given the benefits of having children and raising them well, I do think that we could start to once again see having kids as a way of positively contributing to the world. Just as you can live a good life by being helpful to those around you, donating to charity, or working in a socially valuable career, I think you can live a good life by raising a family and being a loving parent.