Longtermism: an idea that could save 100 billion trillion lives 

I thought I was imagining his voice : )

Do you have a discord server I could join?

I like longtermism. But... it's a bit narrow view. People who are great in abstract logical reasoning always miss out the social component of such problems: they perfectly answer "what shall be done?" question, but they miss out "who is willing and able to do that?". In society groups that are able to reach immideate results often use their advantage to gain control over the groups that are following long-term strategies. It imposes objective limitations on societies ability to pursue long-term goals. Similar conflicts can be found inside individuals as well. Fortunately or not, we are not living in a world of perfect actors (those that can set up any goal and just follow that). "Who of us can do what for the future at acceptable cost to not loose competition with those who don't care about the future?". That is a better question.

There you go discord.gg/hxWBm6sBNU

This assumes we want to maximize the plague of humanity in the future. Fuck off, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop technological development.

VHEMT

Watch Voluntary Extinction by Solar Sands, it discusses this a lot.

i agree. if we seriously equated the 2 a single abortion could reasonably be compared to a global genocide several billion times over (in expected value of unborn(lost)lifes). That way madness lies.

I'm curious to ask if 0 is an acceptable number of humans in this scenario... It's an annoying question of course, but It's interesting, no?

​@@hobbiefox-pastrycat4568 to give my opinion, yes 0 is fine. human extinction is not bad for anybody, there is nobody for it to be bad for! id rather human existence be short and good than long and meh.

Scary that AI can watch, enjoy, and comment on videos.

@@tophatter1234 The Era where Machines are going to sit right next to you just like any real Human friend and treat you as such is growing increasingly Near, dear Top Hatter...

@@tophatter1234 Indeed, especially when one considers the ultimate code is DNA. Well, at least for now...

HAL reminds me of the book "the moon is a dark mistress". Definitely worth reading. Also has a epic AI computer in it. I think I'm going to read again.

@@falkorornothing261 Oooh, Seems Interesting! Definitely Gonna check it Out Later

The human lives saved would pay more dividends long term. The gain of more genes in the gene pool outweighs the profit loss.

@@SuperKinganthony I specifically named them as retirees. They've provided all the genetic and material value to the world that they were ever going to.

@@burp114 dna not semen

@@SuperKinganthony you're gonna need to explain to me how DNA intrinsically adds value to the world if the person carrying it is already through with their productive years.

@@burp114 dna has a half-life 521 years. So in another 521 years half of the half would remain. This means the dna has value exceeding the lifespan of the person and definitely longer than the loss of opportunity. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR), a more recent development of recombinant DNA technology, has brought out solutions to several problems in different species. This system can be used to target destruction of genes in human cells. This means in the far-reaching future, the promise of this technology lies in its ability to eliminate from the gene pool what medical science identifies as faulty or abnormal genes that cause difference in individual people. The potential of ridding future generations of terrible diseases that cause suffering and death and deplete resources. I put forth that the economic gains by saving the lives and their genes out paces the loss of opportunity.

what person is not a decision maker? oh yeah, slaves. which means they're not 'worthwhile lives', which undermines the entire premise of the video since everything in it is predicated on 'human life' = 'worthwhile life'.

@@sumdumbmick Yep, very well put!

@@sumdumbmick I’m confused on your point.

@@sumdumbmick well then lets abolish slavery and save more lives!

@@sumdumbmick Good thing slavery is illegal in every country on earth.

And living 1000 years kinda happy is not better than living 100 years five times as happy.

Exactly

Nailed it

I would shortly object that if we are reasonably sure that certain kinds of actions positively influence the far future, then we should take them on expected value grounds. And there are several of this kind of actions. MacAskill's paper explicitly covers your objection, see if you are convinced by it or not. Might be interesting to see what comes out of this discussion.

While you're right there would be "no way to be sure the world would actually be better" (if WW1 or WW2 hadn't happened), we don't necessarily need to be "sure". If we keep doing good *in expectation* often enough, it we get closer and closer to certainty that it actually does result in a better world in the long term. Of course for single interventions this is usually extremely hard to predict, but it's still a good idea to take the potential long term effects into account. Just because a problem is hard doesn't mean the best approach is to ignore it (not that you're necessarily claiming that, but your comment seems to imply such a conclusion).

​@@MrKohlenstoff Only people living in incredible levels of comfort and security would concern themselves with hypothetical people who don't even exist yet when their fellow compatriots on this planet are dying of preventable disease and hunger right now.

@@mentality-monster While that statement on its own may indeed be correct, I'm not sure if that really tells us that much. And you could make practically the same argument about distance in space: "Only people living in incredible levels of comfort and security would concern themselves with hypothetical people who they can't even see or will ever interact with when their fellow compatriots around them are dying of preventable disease and hunger right now." - which I would strongly disagree with. I wouldn't want to say "hypothetical future people" and "currently existing people in another country" are ethically equivalent, but I also don't think it's so obvious that future people are somehow much less worthy of support than current ones. In the end, for me it just comes down to how many individuals can be helped/saved in expectation. All else being equal, the closer to the present the better, but if I can push either of two buttons, one saving 10 people today and the other 100 people a year from now, I'll definitely go with the second one.

what monk?

what monk

Are you talking about the monk that scribbled over a papyrus that described calculus or something ~200 years before it was re-descopered?

@@reclipsel ye

No, we should not count people who were never born.

Good one

exactly smh

I am totally in agreement with this sentiment you've expressed, Tim T. While I generally enjoy this channel's well-produced content, another of these videos also seemed naively optimistic to me. I posted the following on it, and feel it's also relevant here: We are heading into a very dark time. While we have always bailed ourselves out via technological innovation in the past, this can only go so far (IMHO). When I was born in 1970 there were 3-1/2 billion humans already on the planet; now we are near to 8 billion. We have so dominated the planet that the next highest species count to humans are those animals we've domesticated for our own use: cows (1.46 billion), pigs (1bn), sheep (1bn)... The first of those three is emitting massive amounts of climate-wrecking methane. If you'll forgive my alarmist language, we need to form consensus among ourselves to start making massive changes in how we do things -- and this must happen within a relatively short span of time -- otherwise our very existence may become something we feel guilt or shame in even *enjoying*... `

@@keykrazy While I agree with 90% of what you said, but you really went off the deep end with those population numbers. 1) population-wise, we're not even CLOSE to being the most wide-spread species on the planet. Hell, I think we wouldn't even make the top 100. Chickens outnumber us 3 to 1, ants - 2.5 milion to one, and flies - a staggering *17 milion to 1* Rats don't outnumber us yet, but they're still close - there's around 7 billion rats estimated in the world. 2) mass-wise, we're even worse off. Humans make about 0.01% of the Earth's biomass... for comparison, plants make up about 81% of that mass, and bacteria another 13%. So I wouldn't say we've *dominated* the ecosystem (humans and every single animal they've domesticated wouldn't even account for 1% of life on the planet), but it can't be denied that our influence on it is considerable.

It also treats existence as a purely good thing, and non-existence as evil and bad, which is absurd.

@@introprospector Yeah the equation of "human lives that could have but did not exist" to "human lives lost" was very unsettling for me. Wouldn't that mean birth control is essentially murder? Masturbation is mass genocide? I dunno what that guy was thinking

I was thinking along these same lines-thank you for describing this in detail. Holding up expansion of human population as an absolute good creates many problems when it comes to decision making.

@@taeyeonlover turns out that we're all hitlers here... 😔

I was thinking about the abortion debate myself and was about to bring it up, but thank you for saving me that trouble 😊 I'm uneasy about using *only* utilitarianism in making any decision, or "the ends justify the means", especially because we can't ever *know* the ends. And even if we did, I'm a huge un-fan of means to an end in general, and believe that everything we do should be done for the sake of doing so, otherwise, it is a thing not worth doing. There may be exceptions to this rule (such as *needing* to do something; i.e. to literally survive as a human being I need to do this thing), but perhaps in those cases it is the mental state that needs changing rather than the action itself. Anyways, I also don't disagree with most of the points made in the video. We *should* do things to benefit the potential masses of the future, and we *should* develop technology and science, but only within reason. Our philosophy; including our ideas, ideals, politics, and economics; needs just as much, if not *more* attention than technology and science. We also need to focus on fixing the problems of the now (such as climate change) so that we actually have an opportunity to make progress in the future as frictionless as possible.

Yes I mostly agree. For technology to be beneficial society at large has to take, and maintain, democratic control over it and that unfortunantly that means waging a political struggle to take power over the technological and informational infrastructure from the rich.

Woah. I love you man! That’s the best explanation for being a hippy I’ve ever heard! Lol

Meh, the weapon argument doesn’t really hold. Every time we were inventing new weapons, we were also inventing stuff that allowed society to develop and more people to survive. When we only had spears to kill each other, there were way less people overall. Also, consider that the mere existence of powerful weapons sometimes prevents violence, instead of enhancing it. Like the nuclear bombs. They forced Japan to surrender (killing only 200 thousands people, instead of the millions that would have died if the USA was forced to invade Japan) and effectively prevented open war between USA and USSR (because of the threat of mutually assured destruction).

well the diference is that a woman giving birth to 24 children will not be able to care for them as well as if she had fewer children. The case being made is not to give birth to more humans, but to make descisions that will improve the quality of life and quantity of humans that exist. In your example, it would not be about having her make more babies, it would be about making sure those babies have healthier and more fulfilling lives. A child that dies from malaria is a wasted life. A child that grows up in misery is a partially wasted life. and a woman that lives 300 years of youth will ahve more children, than a woman that lives only a few decades

also men could make thousands of women pregnant does that mean every time a man masturbates instead of having sex is a lost human ?

@@edkopik "the diference is that a woman giving birth to 24 children will not be able to care for them as well as if she had fewer children" - take those kids away and raise them in either well funded state facilities, or give them to rich and caring families without kids. Raise them to be healthy and happy. Now you've ruined the life of one woman, but created 24 healthy and happy children out of it, resulting in a net gain of 23+ (cos those kids will live longer than the woman) happy humans. Of there's assumptions here, but there's assumptions in the idea it's critiquing as well. These are the kinds of ridiculous conclusions you reach when you start diving deep in utilitarianism, which is what this video is about even if it doesn't say it.

@@iamacat9400 Yes it is, at least according to naive utiliatarinism. Mind you we're assuming here that the man has women available that he can have sex with. But if so, then yes every drop of sperm must be used to its absolute fullest potential. Every ovum must be saved and the most advanced technology used to ensure it is fertilized. Every resultant child must be given the best quality of life possible, even if that means destroying the lives of their parents - cos there'll be more kids than parents - but simultaneously every decision must be made for them in order to ensure it is the maximally socially beneficial decision (mind you, they'll still be allowed to play - for a precise amount of time each day that perfectly balances their gain in happiness with the loss of productivity it causes). In order to ensure they're not miserable from having no freedom, every type of psychological manipulation must be employed to make them think it's all actually their own choices and ideas. And so on and so forth. Or just skip to the logical endpoint and endlessly clone human brains that are kept in nutrient jars and fed a constant stream of pleasure-inducing drugs to keep them 'happy'. Welcome to the rabbit hole that is pure utilitarianism.

Ideally yes, but in practice this would be a very difficult task, as humans are a hierarchical species by nature, and there will always be unscrupulous individuals among us to take that to an extreme. I think it is something that can be overcome, but we still have a long way to go. It is a progression, not something you can start with. I am of the belief, though be it stark, that suffering is almost inevitable in order to progress towards something better in the future. We all live today on the groundwork built by serfs, slaves, and peasants, and future humans more enlightened than us may see us as the same. It seems to be a natural progression to go from total authoritarianism/monarchy/etc to democracy, to possibly later down the road total cooperation. Yes that sounds like Star Trek pie in the sky futurism, but I think we either find a way or we die off. Left and right politics need to eventually go out the door and common ground must be reached. Certainly seems impossible at this moment in time.

It makes me think of "plan A vs plan B" in the movie Interstellar. Do you go forward with the harder task of saving everyone now, or sacrifice nearly everyone for a select few to save the species. It's a moral and spiritual argument for the ages. There may come a time where we are forced to execute a "plan B" type decision, and it won't be easy, and understandably so. We are hard wired to care for our immediate loved ones, not some far off future society we will never see.

The solution is balance, and a way to best predict what's gonna happen in the future.

I place a pretty high value on those that reside in the future but only because I wish I was valued more by those residing in the past.

So work towards longer lifespans/immortality, we need it, thanks. I have an idea myself, one that I'm sure is not unique in the slightest, and we really aren't too far off from the technology required for it. I can easily see it happening within our lifespans, unless you're expecting death in the next.... 40-50 years?

@@gotchathespider7850 It's really not too unlikely that I'd be dead in 40 to 50 years, for one reason or another, but I would be plenty happy to get the life extension before then.

@@sirusshard2971 Immortality is honestly probably closer than any significant life extension. So long as you're okay with leaving our fleshy bodies. Don't worry though, I'm sure eventually we'll be advanced enough to be able to return to a biological body if you want one (I mean I do. They have their downsides, but yk, they also have their perks lol)

@@gotchathespider7850 leaving your biological shell is by definition death

There's discussion in the comments about counter-points to this video; if you haven't already, I'd suggest looking through them before making such blanket statements :) UNLESS you are making them purely as rhetoric for how good the channel is and how much you like it, then obviously continue; they bring up very good topics of discussion and thought!

When you say "EA" do you mean effective altruism?

I think kurzgesagt is a very large channel and has a few videos on longtermist type topics e.g. the great filter. Their animations are also great!

Especially when your measure ignores average happiness per Human and unit of time in order to argue for accumulated happiness.

I take it you wouldn't push a fat man in front of a trolly to stop the death of 5 people then?

@@Orion_Fritz You're right, I wouldn't.

It is of course a fair position to have, but would you be of the same opinion if it was very likely that the world is getting better and better, and (human) suffering/unhappiness/illness approaches 0 over time? Even today, I personally am very happy to exist and gladly accept the deal of suffering somewhat every now and then for all the positive experiences I'm having. Of course pre-birth-me wouldn't care about any of this due to the lack of ability to care about anything. Still seems like a relevant consideration to me. If 99% of the individuals that end up existing due to your decision to procreate end up content/happy, and 1% don't, to me that seems to me like a decent deal. Is your view based more on the procreation asymmetry (assuming that creating happy lives is morally neutral whereas creating unhappy lives is morally reprehensible), or on a negative utilitarianism-like assumption that suffering is inherently of much bigger moral weight than happiness?

@@MrKohlenstoff "would you be of the same opinion if it was very likely that the world is getting better and better," This requires an extermination of the "forces" that are intentionally and immorally creating [undue] human suffering. I phrase it this way, because this isn't some random outcome of human activity. No. There are actors with AGENCY that are creating these horrendous conditions. These immoral agents, they need to be neutralized in order to remove the hindrances on human advancement and personal growth. There is a reason our global system is set up like a prison, instead of a place of reverence, learning, and self expression.

Well don't forget about climate change, and we're not gonna fix that *or* leave earth until we move past capitalism so it's not as far off as you think unfortunately lol

@@smileyp4535 Climate change is not that big of a problem. And it certainly is not an extinction level one. Besides, it is USA that leads the space race now, despite being on the more 'capitalist' side of the spectrum. Also, no societal system on Earth is simple enough to be described with 'capitalism' alone. If you happen to be a communism sympathizer, then please reconsider. It has caused far, _far_ more death and suffering than 'capitalism' ever did. You may be young and naïve, but it is still not responsible to play with that ideology. Look no further than North Korea if you want to experience pure, unadulturated communism in the present.

@@mishafinadorin8049 you seem like a smart person yourself, but young and nieve as you thought I was. Climate change is very VERY bad thing that has been building for decades, exxon even discovered the dangers of it in the 70s and did everything they could to put it under wraps until they couldn't deny it anymore. And have you seen the newest IPCC report to come out a few months ago? It's terrifying, we have only about 30 years to change things or there's basically nothing we can do. Capitalism is a pretty simple idea actually, it simply means the existence of private business, if you are one of those people who have been told that "socialism = when the government does stuff" I don't blame you, as that's a common narrative but couldn't be further from the truth, in fact socialism actually just means that the workers own and run the businesses, democratically, and not just a single individual or shareholders as under capitalism. It's funny, socialism actually has nothing to do with the government and can actually be run completely without a government! People like to *say* that capitalism = freedom and democracy, but when was the last time you got to vote for a manager or the CEO? It seems if we were truly democratic and free it would extend to our workplaces where we literally make our livelihoods, don't you think? 🤔 plus if left wing meant "more government" and right wing meant "less government" why does the right wing wanna constantly spend expand the military, police, and servailence on its own citizens. If you ask me a giant military, police force and spying on all our data without even us knowing what their looking at is pretty much the opposite of "small government" 😂 And here's the craziest thing, North Korea may say their "communist" but they also say they're democratic, and the best country on earth, and the Kim Jong un was born under a double rainbow at the top of a mountain! Like for REAL lol you wouldn't believe the stuff they say is true over there 😂😳, they lie about EVERYTHING, so why does everyone seem to think they would be honest about their economic system? In fact, the word communism actually means "stateless, classless and moneyless society where everyone has an equal (or democratic) ownership over everything" it's almost like anarchism! And I'm not lying that's the actual definition of communism Here's the Wikipedia page on it en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism "the absence of social classes, money, and the state" So then why, you might be asking, was USSR and China, and North Korea and everyone who ever said they were communist were authoritarians with higher and lower social classes and oh yeah, ALL have money? 😂🤔 Well remember how north Korea lies about everything? That's littlerally it! It's all lies instead of adding democracy and giving the power to the people (like they said they were doing) they just took ownership from the business people and gave it all to the government, it's actually more accurate to call so called "authoritarian communism" "state capitalism" because they just moved ownership from the capitalists, to the state! Which is where this myth that "socialism = government" thing came from even though capitalism is basically the same thing only instead of the government taking all the businesses the businesses want to take over the government. So wait? If the government taking over business is bad, and the business taking over government is also bad, what's the answer? 😳 THE WORKERS! Everyone! What we need is not just a "different" group of people making all the rules so they can have all the power but to actually do DEMOCRACY. Let people vote inside their jobs for their bosses, and make sure those at the top pay taxes so that people who need help can get it, you've heard "it takes money to make money" right? Why is it that in the richest country in the world, the US, we still have homelessness and children who can't afford to eat? We have some of the richest people in the world and the poorest at the same time. People say that "communism" (state capitalism, or another term is command economies) killed a lot of people, and they did (not as many as they say) but believe it or not capitalism has killed waaaaay more and is still killing people to this day, hunger, not being able to get healthcare and not to mention all the constant war that is going on What we need, what we ACTUALLY need, is to give everyone the basics, healthcare, education, housing, food, etc (not mansions and filet minón for everyone obviously 😂) but enough to have a a bed, food, and go to school to get the job they want and then have democratic freedom WITHIN that job. It's actually really simple. And don't let anyone say "well who's gonna pay for it?" Because those same people have no problem putting the US in debt for military spending, enhancing police budgets, giving bailouts, tax breaks and contracts to all kinds of large companies (including the ones causing climate change) and in fact we could littlerally cut our military spending in half and STILL have the largest military budget in the world upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Military_Expenditures_2018_SIPRI.png (this is a graph of military budgetc the US is literally 1/3rd of the ENTIRE military budget for the WHOLE WORLD) like I said, we could cut our budget in half right this second and still have a bigger military than anyone else by a lot, BUT we could ALSO have free healthcare, education and basic housing and food for everyone WITH MONEY TO SPARE (in fact there are more EMPTY homes in the US right now than homeless people because it makes more money for home builders to build big houses for rich people than make affordable homes for regular people) This was a lot but everything I say here is true and it's pretty important so I hope you read it. We could fix all the problems we have basically overnight if we wanted to but we don't, because those in power are so rich and powerful that they just want to keep things the way they are and let us all die because it makes them more money. It sounds unbelievable, it sounds almost like a joke really, but it's true. Check the links or look up anything I've said for yourself it's there. I hope you read this, because we have the power and time to make humanity the best it can be, we just have to actually *do* it, and it's simple we just need to move past capitalism to something more democratic, free and based on humanity working together and not greed and we can live a future we can't even begin to imagine

@@mishafinadorin8049 hey I'm sorry that comment is so long, you can skim it if you need to but I littlerally tried to make it as short as I could and that's how long it still was 😩 but even if you just read around and click the links I can answer any questions you or anyone might have, it's all true to the best of my knowledge and you can look up anything you want, some things are simplified but everything is true. The thing is we can fix the world but capitalism is the problem and moving past it to something based on democracy, mutual aid, and improving humanity, Whatever you wanna call it is the answer and it's 100% possible

@@smileyp4535 You have a very US outlook on things. And there are indeed things that could be done better there, at least for the common people. Still, developed European nations have all of the things you described without resorting to communism. USSR has lost the economic battle with the US long before it fell and China was as dirt-poor as North Korea is now before they accepted western investment and ran toward 'capitalism' without looking back. If you want to know what living and thinking was like in the Sovied Union, read Solzhenitsyn, and if you don't trust him, read some of Varlam Shalamov's work. No amount of discrimination, unemployment and class division in the US at the time comes even close to the horrors that happened in the USSR. And it was the same in China, Vietnam, Korea, Cambodia, Ethiopia and all of the other places where that foul ideology took hold.

Yes, but not before fans and backrubs! 😉

Do you place moral value on future, yet to exist human persons?

@@introprospector on some of them, sure.

@@eliharman You know that future persons don't exist, don't suffer and don't feel pain, right? They're literally a thought experiment.

honestly fuck potential lives

humans dont need to reproduce so much, because our lifespan is pretty good and we alredy cause many issues on the nature just for existing. Actually, it would be better to have 1 or 0 children, investing more resources in 1 and not in 10... but people forget to wear condoms i gues...

In the future we will have flying cars - The Research Paper

And not even integrated over their whole lifetime. Averaged over their lifetime, with a longer lifespan only indirectly factoring in as it can increase happiness.

I also reject the notion that the most moral or best action is the one that facilitates the most life forms existing in the future. I reject the notion of valuing the quality of life of entities that don't exist yet at all. If you go down that path, contraception is immoral, it is immoral to stop a woman from being raped, and the most moral thing to do is to kill all humans and replace them with AIs that use as little power as possible to stretch the energy use.

Setting aside the question of whether technology improves our lives (which it does, thank you medicine) technology facilitates the creation of larger populations of humans that can enjoy the other things that do make life worth living. Secondly, if life does have any inherent value, then we must find a way to insure Earth’s life against the inevitable incineration of Earth by the Sun when it becomes a Red Giant. Doing so would of course require lots of technology and industry that we don’t yet have and must create.