Imagine just the best day that you've ever had.
Imagine if your entire life was as good as that,
or maybe even 100 times better.
That’s how good the future could get
if we manage to continue with moral, political,
and technological progress.
[BASIC BOOKS PRESENTS]
[VICE WORLD NEWS MEETS WILLIAM MACASKILL]
[BASIC BOOKS
If you had the choice to save one life today
or ten in 100 years’ time,
what would you choose?
What if it was 100 lives or a million?
If we work on the premise that saving more lives is better than less,
then there’s an argument to be made to save the greater number of lives,
which is the future people.
To put this into perspective,
there are currently 8 billion people living on the planet right now.
And whilst there are concerns about the extinction of humanity
being brought about by man-made issues,
like unchecked AI, artificially created pathogens,
and climate change,
if these issues could be dealt with or eradicated,
the human race could continue growing.
And should we not be concerned about those future generations?
This is the center argument
of a new book that’s come out by William MacAskill,
which puts forward the case for long-term thinking.
He believes that humans may not get as far as we could do
because we’re all thinking far too short-term.
So could you explain to me what longtermism is?
It's the subject of the book, but what does it mean?
Longtermism is about thinking
what the events that could occur in our lifetimes
that would have an impact not just on the present day
but that could impact the entire course of the human story.
And then it’s going to ask,
what can we do to help navigate those challenges
so that we help humanity go onto a better path?
You say in the book that initially you felt cold
when you came to the idea of longtermism.
How did you go from that to wanting to write a book about it?
Honestly, there was no particular moment
at which I switched from focusing on global health and development
to concern about the long-term.
It was this slow progress of...
the arguments in favor of the long-term weighing on me,
starting to realize that future generations were disenfranchised;
we weren’t listening to their voices.
And then, most importantly, appreciating over time that
we really can take action to stop worst-case pandemics,
to safely navigate the rise of artificial intelligence,
to reduce the chance of a third world war.
And these are not speculative scenarios.
These are things we could be doing right now
and making a real progress.
One way that you spoke about the future generations,
which was quite interesting,
you describe them as almost being disenfranchised.
And you compared them, in a way,
to people who fought for the civil rights movement
or the suffragettes.
Could you explain how that works in your mind:
how they exist as disenfranchised when they don’t yet exist?
So I think it’s perfectly common sense
that the interests of future people matter morally.
If you go hiking and you drop some glass on a trail,
and someone later cuts their hand on that glass,
now you’ve harmed them by not cleaning up after yourself.
Does it matter whether that happened in a week's time or a year's time
or 100 years’ time or 1,000 years’ time?
I don’t think so.
I don’t think intuitively it does.
Harm is harm, no matter when it occurs.
But even though their interests matter morally,
do future generations get a say over what happens today?
And the answer is no.
It’s not like they’re on the boards of companies.
It's not like they have a vote.
Nor even can they tweet at us
or write articles about the ways in which we’ve impacted their lives.
And that means that their interests are enormously neglected.
They have no representation in government,
and that means we can do an enormous amount of good for them
if we start taking their interests more seriously.
Do you worry that by putting this focus on the future
and future generations,
that if these kind of equations about the risks in the future don’t add up
and things don’t turn out the way that we thought
that you might not have maybe put the effort into the people now,
and that would be a regret?
Is that something that you worry about or find concerning?
I think two things in response.
One is that the issues I’m talking about—
another world war, future pandemics, the rise of artificial intelligence—
are going to impact people in the present,
and the actions that I recommend
have positive impacts for the present generation.
Very significant ones, in fact,
as well as positive impacts over the very long-term.
But then the second is just that you can flip this on its head to where
suppose that you were ignoring future generations altogether
and just focusing on needs of the present.
Well, then we should worry that, from the perspective of the future,
people would think, “What? These people were so myopic.
They would just focus on the problems ahead of them,
and now we’re living in this dystopian wasteland.”
That worries me too.
And we need to think rationally and carefully
in order to try and figure out
where can we make the most difference.
And that does mean weighing up both the probability of success
with just how big a deal that would be,
how high the stakes are.
So when you’re talking about some of these really big issues,
like artificially created pathogens,
that can feel quite inaccessible for individuals.
At what point does the responsibility lie at the feet of the government
or bigger organizations?
How much could a person do by themselves
when it comes to longtermism?
I think individuals can make enormous differences.
So you can donate
to support organizations that lobby the government.
If you’re willing to switch your career,
then you can be the people who are working at the government
or at think tanks or at some of these nonprofits, too.
And so I think we should caution against the idea of,
“Oh, well, it’s the government’s responsibility.
It’s not an individual responsibility.”
because individuals can make an enormous impact.
You use the analogy of molten glass
and about it being kind of soft and malleable at one point
and then getting rigid and hard.
What is it that you’re trying to say when you use that example?
I give this analogy of history as being like molten glass.
And when glass is molten, when you’re blowing glass,
you can blow it potentially into one of many shapes.
But once it cools,
suddenly change is much harder.
And that could be how humanity's moral trajectory goes as well,
where enormous amounts of change now,
but then because of future technology,
and again, in particular, AI,
suddenly we lock into some set of values.
And I think for most values we could lock into,
that future would be much, much worse
than the future we could potentially get.
When you talk about those things,
it does sound quite scary.
And people maybe want to bury their heads in the sand and think,
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
Do you feel optimistic about the future, though?
Having written this book, how do you feel looking forward?
I agree that these issues are terrifying,
but ultimately I am an optimist.
I think it’s more likely than not
that we navigate all of these challenges well.
And I think there’s a significant chance,
very significant chance,
that the future could be much better than the present day.
So if there was one thing that you wanted people to take away
from reading your book about longtermism,
what would it be?
If there’s one thing I want people to take away,
it’s to feel inspired
and appreciate that you as an individual
truly can make an enormous difference to the world,
making the world better, not just for this generation,
not just for your kids,
but for their grandkids and their grandkids in turn.
Thanks, Will, for talking to me about your book.
I found it really, really interesting going through all the details,
and best of luck with it.
Thank you so much.
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