Podcasts about what we owe

Should we sacrifice the present for a better future?Join the team at the IAI for three articles about effective altruism, longtermism, and the complex evolution of moral thought. Written by William MacAskill, James W. Lenman, and Ben Chugg, these three articles pick apart the ethical movement started by Peter Singer, analysing its strengths and weaknesses for both individuals and societies.William MacAskill is a Scottish philosopher and author, best known for writing 2022's "What We Owe the Future." James W. Lenman is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, as well as the former president of the British Society for Ethical Theory. Ben Chugg is a BPhD student in the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon University. He also co-hosts the Increments podcast.To witness such debates live buy tickets for our upcoming festival: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/And visit our website for many more articles, videos, and podcasts like this one: https://iai.tv/You can find everything we referenced here: https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jan Romportl je špičkový expert na umělou inteligenci. Byl vyhlášen českou Osobností AI roku 2024 a jeho startup Elin.ai bodoval v AI Awards 2024. V našem novém rozhovoru po 2 letech komentuje do hloubky fungování a budoucnost AI modelů, svůj názorový posun i tržní a politické AI trendy v USA. Hlavně ovšem připravuje posluchače na svět, který umělá inteligence změní k nepoznání.

181 What if a gap year wasn't only reserved for high school grads trying to find themselves? Writer, hiker, and anti-capitalist tiny biz owner, Nic Antoinette, discusses the inspiration behind her 2025 grown up gap year, and Nadine opens up about the moment of jealousy that led to her "apprentice year." This is not a new-year-new-you, live-your-best-life episode. Instead, Nic and Nadine talk openly about how they are trying to be real with their plans and expectations for 2025. Nic also discusses the other ways she has curated a values-aligned life and career. In this inspiring and permission-granting conversation, you'll feel encouraged to make choices that challenge the norm in order to live a life that is a right fit for you. Covered in this episode: Why Nic writes so transparently about money How honesty and privacy can exist at the same time Creating a values-aligned approach to work and lifeThe burnout that comes from being accessible to too many people How we can be honest with ourselves with no pressure to do anything about it How Nadine and Nic have pivoted in their lives and careersThe key question that will help us take imperfect action The price of admission that Nic was willing to pay for peace of mindHow Nic's divorce impacted her outlook on changeWhat Nic and Nadine are doing during their gap and apprentice yearTheir worries about how these changes will impact their lives and careersNurturing our off-line livesAbout Nic:Nic Antoinette is a writer, long-distance hiker, and anti-capitalist tiny business owner. She writes a weekly personal essay series on Substack called Wild Letters, and is the author of two adventure memoirs: How To Be Alone and What We Owe to Ourselves. LinksSubstack: https://nicantoinette.substack.com/Website: https://www.nicoleantoinette.com/Gap year essay: https://nicantoinette.substack.com/p/im-taking-a-grown-up-gap-year-inAbout Nadine:Want to write with Nadine in 2025? Try a free class on Monday, Jan 13!Nadine Kenney Johnstone is a holistic writing coach who helps women develop and publish their stories. She is the proud founder of WriteWELL, an online community that helps women reclaim their writing time, put pen to page, and get published. The authors in her community have published countless books and hundreds of essays in places like The New York Times, Vogue, The Sun, The Boston Globe, Longreads, and more. Her infertility memoir, Of This Much I'm Sure, was named book of the year by the Chicago Writer's Association. Her latest book, Come Home to Your Heart, is an essay collection and guided journal that helps readers tap into their inner wisdom and fall back in love with...

Episode 134I spoke with Pete Wolfendale about:* The flaws in longtermist thinking* Selections from his new book, The Revenge of Reason* Metaphysics* What philosophy has to say about reason and AIEnjoy—and let me know what you think!Pete is an independent philosopher based in Newcastle. Dr. Wolfendale got both his undergraduate degree and his Ph.D in Philosophy at the University of Warwick. His Ph.D  thesis offered a re-examination of the Heideggerian Seinsfrage, arguing that Heideggerian scholarship has failed to fully do justice to its philosophical significance, and supplementing the shortcomings in Heidegger's thought about Being with an alternative formulation of the question. He is the author of Object-Oriented Philosophy: The Noumenon's New Clothes and The Revenge of Reason. His blog is Deontologistics.Find me on Twitter for updates on new episodes, and reach me at editor@thegradient.pub for feedback, ideas, guest suggestions. I spend a lot of time on this podcast—if you like my work, you can support me on Patreon :) You can also support upkeep for the full Gradient team/project through a paid subscription on Substack!Subscribe to The Gradient Podcast:  Apple Podcasts  | Spotify | Pocket Casts | RSSFollow The Gradient on TwitterOutline:* (00:00) Intro* (01:30) Pete's experience with (para-)academia, incentive structures* (10:00) Progress in philosophy and the analytic tradition* (17:57) Thinking through metaphysical questions* (26:46) Philosophy of science, uncovering categorical properties vs. dispositions* (31:55) Structure of thought and the world, epistemological excess* (40:25) * (49:31) What reason is, relation to language models, semantic fragmentation of AGI* (1:00:55) Neural net interpretability and intervention* (1:08:16) World models, architecture and behavior of AI systems* (1:12:35) Language acquisition in humans and LMs* (1:15:30) Pretraining vs. evolution* (1:16:50) Technological determinism* (1:18:19) Pete's thinking on e/acc* (1:27:45) Prometheanism vs. e/acc* (1:29:39) The Weight of Forever — Pete's critique of What We Owe the Future* (1:30:15) Our rich deontological language and longtermism's limits* (1:43:33) Longtermism and the opacity of desire* (1:44:41) Longtermism's historical narrative and technological determinism, theories of power* (1:48:10) The “posthuman” condition, language and techno-linguistic infrastructure* (2:00:15) Type-checking and universal infrastructure* (2:09:23) Multitudes and selfhood* (2:21:12) Definitions of the self and (non-)circularity* (2:32:55) Freedom and aesthetics, aesthetic exploration and selfhood* (2:52:46) OutroLinks:* Pete's blog and Twitter* Book: The Revenge of Reason* Writings / References* The Weight of Forever* On Neorationalism* So, Accelerationism, what's that all about? Get full access to The Gradient at thegradientpub.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to the inaugural episode of "Arguable," where friends and debate enthusiasts Utkarsh Amitabh and Dhruva Bhat kick off a series designed to challenge your thinking and sharpen your ability to navigate tricky debates. In this episode, they tackle a compelling question: can you achieve more good by earning as much money as possible and donating it, or by choosing a career with a direct impact? Along the way, we dissect the principles of Effective Altruism, explore the power of role models, and analyze the balance between following one's passion and pursuing practicality in career choices. What can the examples of Tesla and Edison tell us about how to make change in the world? What is the role of the arts in doing good? And what does this mean for your life and career? Mentioned: * 80,000 Hours: https://80000hours.org/ * “What “We Owe the Future by Will MacAskill * "The Infinite Game" by Michael Lewis * "How to Be Famous" by Cass Sunstein Utkarsh Amitabh is the founder of Network Capital (networkcapital.tv), one of the world's largest mentorship platforms that empowers 7.5 million school students and 200,000+ young professionals to build meaningful careers. He is a writer at Harvard Business Review and the author of two best-selling books on work. An engineer by training, Utkarsh received his MBA from INSEAD, and is working on a doctorate at the University of Oxford. Dhruva Bhat co-founded and directs Lumiere Education, a company that delivers advanced extracurricular programs to thousands of high school students worldwide. n the past, he has coached the Indian national debate team to win the World Schools Debating Championships. Dhruva graduated from Harvard with an A.B. in economics and from Oxford with a Ph.D. in international development as a Rhodes Scholar.

A new MP3 sermon from Covenant Presbyterian Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: What We Owe to The Reformation Subtitle: Reformed Theology Conference Speaker: Joseph A. Pipa Jr. Broadcaster: Covenant Presbyterian Church Event: Sunday Service Date: 5/4/2024 Length: 49 min.

Welcome your robot overlords! In episode 101 of Overthink, Ellie and David speak with Dr. Shazeda Ahmed, specialist in AI Safety, to dive into the philosophy guiding artificial intelligence. With the rise of LLMs like ChatGPT, the lofty utilitarian principles of Effective Altruism have taken the tech-world spotlight by storm. Many who work on AI safety and ethics worry about the dangers of AI, from how automation might put entire categories of workers out of a job to how future forms of AI might pose a catastrophic “existential risk” for humanity as a whole. And yet, optimistic CEOs portray AI as the beginning of an easy, technology-assisted utopia. Who is right about AI: the doomers or the utopians? And whose voices are part of the conversation in the first place? Is AI risk talk spearheaded by well-meaning experts or investor billionaires? And, can philosophy guide discussions about AI toward the right thing to do?Check out the episode's extended cut here!Nick Bostrom, SuperintelligenceAdrian Daub, What Tech Calls ThinkingVirginia Eubanks, Automating InequalityMollie Gleiberman, “Effective Altruism and the strategic ambiguity of ‘doing good'”Matthew Jones and Chris Wiggins, How Data HappenedWilliam MacAskill, What We Owe the FutureToby Ord, The PrecipiceInioluwa Deborah Raji et al., “The Fallacy of AI Functionality”Inioluwa Deborah Raji and Roel Dobbe, “Concrete Problems in AI Safety, Revisted”Peter Singer, Animal LiberationAmia Srinivisan, “Stop The Robot Apocalypse” Patreon | patreon.com/overthinkpodcast Website | overthinkpodcast.comInstagram & Twitter | @overthink_podEmail |  Dearoverthink@gmail.comYouTube | Overthink podcastSupport the show

“You do not need to cannibalize your healing for content.” Today, I'm in conversation with longtime blog-turned-IRL friend Nic Antoinette, diving deeper into her decision to shut down her Patreon community (taking a $30,000/year haircut to do so), then pivoting to a private paid Substack while she navigated her way through decisions about what might follow. We discuss the generosity of being honest, the trap of wanting to be special, knowing where to draw the line on how much or how little you share, and much more. Be sure to also check out our earlier Pivot conversation in episode 342: “Whatever Comes Through Me Comes for Me First,” with Nicole Antoinette. More About Nic: Nicole Antoinette is a writer, long-distance hiker, and former indoor kid who never imagined she'd wind up spending months of each year pooping in the woods. In 2017, stuck in a loop of codependency and people-pleasing, Nicole set off to find her self-belief and inner resilience by doing something she did not for one second believe she could actually do. The results are two adventure memoirs, How To Be Alone: An 800-mile hike on the Arizona Trail, and What We Owe to Ourselves, and a weekly Substack newsletter called Wild Letters.

“So many things in my past were painful because I stayed on too long.” How do you know when it's time to say goodbye to something, no matter how good it may seem or how hard it is to leave? For today's guest, Nicole Antoinette, staying too long created a pattern of “scorched earth change,” where dramatic moves became the only way out. In this conversation, we discuss where she thinks the creator economy is heading, why she shut down her successful Patreon, and how she makes tough decisions about what to leave behind: whether it's a romantic relationship, a job, a friendship, alcohol, or one of her biggest income streams. More About Nicole: Nicole Antoinette is a writer, long-distance hiker, and former indoor kid who never imagined she'd wind up spending months of each year pooping in the woods. In 2017, stuck in a loop of codependency and people-pleasing, Nicole set off to find her self-belief and inner resilience by doing something she did not for one second believe she could actually do. The results are two adventure memoirs, How To Be Alone: An 800-mile hike on the Arizona Trail, and What We Owe to Ourselves, and a weekly newsletter on Substack called Wild Letters.

In this episode we continue our explorations in view of the Summit of the Future. The Summit of the Future (in 2024) will be a key moment to reaffirm and recommit to effective multilateralism in the interest of both people and the planet.   But how do we set out to redesign multilateralism and craft the future we all want in our era of ultra-rapid technological change? And how do we factor in our decisions of today the interests of future generations? Can we still rely solely on classical forms of decision making? Can we trust AI and other emerging technologies to remain tools at our service instead of becoming our masters? We talk with Konrad Seifert who is the co-founder of the Simon Institute. He also co-founded and led Effective Altruism Switzerland, developing theories of change and looking at the future beyond the current generation. Resources Simon Institute : https://www.simoninstitute.ch/ Longtermism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_We_Owe_the_Future   Where to listen to this episode  Apple podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-next-page/id1469021154 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/10fp8ROoVdve0el88KyFLy YouTube: Content    Speaker: Konrad Seifert Host: Francesco Pisano, Director, UN Library & Archives Producer: Amy Smith Editing & social media: Amy Smith & Nadia Al Droubi Recorded & produced at the United Nations Library & Archives Geneva 

DL and Krispin talk about S1 E6 titled “What We Owe to Each Other.” We talk about the ethics (and exploitation) of promises, the TV show Friends, and much much more! DL mentions the book Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown.  Also, here's the interview with T.M. Scanlon where they ask him how he felt about their use of his book in The Good Place. We use the audio from The Good Place Podcast. Leave us a voicemail at (503) 912-4130 or send a voice memo to propheticimaginationstation@gmaill.com. You can Join our patreon comamunity to support this podcast and gain access to two extra episodes each month, our facebook community, as well as the backlog of patreon-only episodes covering evangelical media, spiritual abuse, and more. You can follow The Bad Place Podcast on Twitter and Instagram. You can follow Krispin on Instagram here and Danielle on Instagram here.  Head to our website for transcripts of the episodes. 

In this episode, we are joined by researcher and video essayist John Duncan (@Johntheduncan) to talk about the Effective Altruism movement and why it is so comprehensively awful. Granted, it's got some pretty solid marketing: who could be against altruism, especially if it's effective? But consider: from its individualism to its focus on cost-effectiveness and rates of return, from its idealist historiography to its refusal to cop to its obvious utilitarianism, from its naive empiricism to its wild-eyed obsession for preventing the Singularity—it's really just the spontaneous ideology of 21st century capitalism cosplaying as ethics. Look, if your moral project involves you working in finance or for DARPA, sees new sweatshops in the global south as a good thing, and is beloved by tech bro billionaires, you've made a wrong turn somewhere. It's deeply embarrassing and accordingly we drag it for filth.leftofphilosophy.com | @leftofphil https://www.youtube.com/@JohntheDuncanReferences:William MacAskill, “The Definition of Effective Altruism”, in Effective Altruism: Philosophical Issues, eds. Hilary Greaves and Theron Plummer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).  William MacAskill, What We Owe the Future (New York: Hachette, 2022)  Adams et. al., The Good It Promises, The Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023).  Music:  Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

What We Owe

What major trends will shape the next two decades? How can futures analysis be used to manage risk and harness opportunities? And how can governments better integrate futures thinking into public administration? In this episode of the National Security Podcast, Dr Joseph Voros, Odette Meli and Dr Ryan Young join Dayle Stanley to discuss the intricacies and applications of future analysis. Dr Joseph Voros is a physicist and futurist with over 25 years of experience in futures analysis. Odette Meli has more than 25 years of professional experience at the Australian Federal Police, where she established and led the Strategic Insights Centre. Dr Ryan Young is the Director, Research & Methods at the NSC Futures Hub. Dayle Stanley is the Director, Strategy and Engagement at the NSC Futures Hub. Show notes: ANU National Security College academic programs: find out more FuturePod: find out more Future Shock by Alvin Toffler: find out more What We Owe the Future by William Macaskill: find out more ANZPAA Futures and Strategic Foresight Toolkit: find out more Futures Hub at the ANU National Security College: find out moreJoseph Voros' Voroscope blog: find out more UK: Government Office on Foresight: find out more Canada: Policy Horizons: find out more Singapore: Centre for Strategic Futures: find out more US: National Intelligence Council Publications: find out more New Zealand: Futures thinking: find out more To connect with the Futures Hub about their work or possible employment opportunities, email the team at futureshub.nsc@anu.edu.au. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The human species has been around for some 300,000 years. A typical mammal lasts for a million years. We are not typical.  ”You might think we are in the middle of history. But given the grand sweep, we are the ancients, we are at the very beginning of time. We live in the distant past compared to everything that will ever happen”, says William MacAskill, associate professor in philosophy at Oxford university. MacAskill is the initiator of the Effective Altruism movement, which is about optimizing the good you can do for this world. In his latest book, What We Owe the Future, he discusses how we should think and act to plan for an extremely long human future. The book is basically optimistic. MacAskill thinks we have immense opportunities to improve the world significantly. But it dwells on the potential risks and threats that we must deal with. MacAskill highlights four categories of risks: Extinction (everyone dying), collapse (so much destroyed that civilization doesn't recover), lock-in (a long future but governed by bad values) and stagnation (which may lead to one of the former). As for the risk of extinction, he concludes that newer risks that are less under control tend to be the largest, such as pandemics caused by man-made pathogens and catastrophes set off by artificial intelligence. Known risks like nuclear war and direct hits by asteroids have a potential to wipe out humankind, but since we are more aware of them we have some understanding of how to mitigate them or at least prepare for them. Climate change tops the global agenda today, but although it is a problem we need to address, it is not an existential threat. Artificial intelligence could lead to intense concentration of power and control. But AI could also have huge benefits. It can speed up science, and it can automate away all monotonous work and give us more time with family and friends and for creativity. ”The scale of the upside is as big as our imagination can take us.” Humans have invented dangerous technology before and not used it to its full detrimental capacity. ”It is a striking thing about the world how much destruction could be reaped if people wanted to. That is actually a source of concern, because AI systems might not have those human safeguards.” One prerequisite to achieve a better future is to actively change our values. There has been tremendous moral progress over the last couple of centuries, but we need to expand our sphere of moral concern, according to MacAskill. ”We care about family and friends and perhaps the nation, but I think we should care as much about everyone, and much more than we do about non-human animals. A hundred billion land animals are killed every year for food, and the vast majority of them are kept in horrific suffering.” William MacAskill thinks some aspects of the course of history are inevitable, such as population growth and technological advancement, but when it comes to moral changes he is not sure. ”We shouldn't be complacent. Moral collapse can happen again.” William thinks we are at a crucial juncture in time. ”The stakes are much higher than before, the level of prosperity or doom that we could face.” William and I have a discussion about the possibility that alien civilizations are monitoring us or have visited Earth. William is not convinced that the recent Pentagon disclosures actually prove alien presence, but he is open to it, and he has some thoughts on what a close encounter would entail. We also talk briefly about the possibility of a lost human civilization and the cause of the extinction of the megafauna during the Younger Dryas. We have some differing views on that. My final question is a biggie: Could humankind's next big leap be an inward leap, a raise in consciousness? ”It is a possibility. Maybe the best thing is not to spread out and become ever bigger but instead have a life of spirituality.”

In this episode, I speak with Kaddu Sebunya. Kaddu is passionate about nature conservation. In his role as CEO of African Wildlife Foundation, he rallies African elites to lead the fight against the destruction of valuable habitats and wildlife. He believes that conservation by Africans for Africans is at the heart of addressing the continent's challenges around economic development and equality, it's the right place to start. I'm delighted to be having this conversation with Kaddu, he has such an important message that he shares with an infectious energy that I hope will inspire you too!The book that Kaddu mentions is What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill.Recorded on 16 January 2023.Instagram: @at.the.coalfaceConnect with Kaddu on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/kaddu-kiwe-sebunya-384b4658 and on Twitter @AWFCEO.Please subscribe to At the Coalface wherever you get your podcasts to receive a new episode every two weeks: Apple Podcasts  |  Spotify  |  Google PodcastsHelp us produce more episodes by becoming a supporter. Your subscription will go towards our hosting and production costs. Supporters get the opportunity to join behind the scenes during upcoming recordings. Thank you.Support the show

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: On Philosophy Tube's Video on Effective Altruism, published by Jessica Wen on February 24, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. tl;dr: I found Philosophy Tube's new video on EA enjoyable and the criticisms fair. I wrote out some thoughts on her criticisms. I would recommend a watch. Background I've been into Abigail Thorn's channel Philosophy Tube for about as long as I've been into Effective Altruism. I currently co-direct High Impact Engineers, but this post is written from a personal standpoint and does not represent the views of High Impact Engineers. Philosophy Tube creates content explaining philosophy (and many aspects of Western culture) with a dramatic streak (think fantastic lighting and flashy outfits - yes please!). So when I found out that Philosophy Tube would be creating a video on Effective Altruism, I got very excited. I have written this almost chronologically and in a very short amount of time, so the quality and format may not be up to the normal standards of the EA Forum. I wanted to hash out my thoughts for my own understanding and to see what others thought. Content, Criticisms, and Contemplations EA and SBF Firstly, Thorn outlines what EA is, and what's happened over the past 6 months (FTX, a mention of the Time article, and other critical pieces) and essentially says that the leaders of the movement ignored what was happening on the ground in the community and didn't listen to criticisms. Although I don't think this was the only cause of the above scandals, I think there is some truth in Thorn's analysis. I also disagree with the insinuation that Earning to Give is a bad strategy because it leads to SBF-type disasters: 80,000 Hours explicitly tells people to not take work that does harm even if you expect the positive outcome to outweigh the harmful means. EA and Longtermism In the next section, Thorn discusses Longtermism, What We Owe the Future (WWOTF), and The Precipice. She mentions that there is no discussion of reproductive rights in a book about our duties to future people (which I see as an oversight – and not one that a woman would have made); she prefers The Precipice, which I agree is more detailed, considers more points of view, and is more persuasive. However, I think The Precipice is drier and less easy to read than WWOTF, the latter of which is aimed at a broader audience. There is a brief (and entertaining) illustration of Expected Value (EV) and the resulting extreme case of Pascal's Mugging. Although MacAskill puts this to the side, Thorn goes deeper into the consequences of basing decisions on EV and the measurability bias that results – and she is right that although there is thinking done on how to overcome this in EA (she gives the example of Peter Singer's The Most Good You Can Do, but also see this, this and this for examples of EAs thinking about tackling measurability bias), she mentions that this issue is never tackled by MacAskill. (She generalises this to EA philosophers, but isn't Singer one of the OG EA philosophers?) EA and ~The System~ The last section is the most important criticism of EA. I think this section is most worth watching. Thorn mentions the classic leftist criticism of EA: it reinforces the 19th-century idea of philanthropy where people get rich and donate their money to avoid criticisms of how they got their money and doesn't directly tackle the unfair system that privileges some people over others. Thorn brings Mr Beast into the discussion, and although she doesn't explicitly say that he's an EA, she uses Mr Beast as an example of how EA might see this as: “1000 people were blind yesterday and can see today – isn't that a fact worth celebrating?”. The question that neither Mr Beast nor the hypothetical EA ask is: “how do we change the world?”. Changing the world, she implies, necessitates chang...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Maybe longtermism isn't for everyone, published by BrownHairedEevee on February 10, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. I've noticed that the EA community has been aggressively promoting longtermism and longtermist causes: The huge book tour around What We Owe the Future, which promotes longtermism itself There was a recent post claiming that 80k's messaging is discouraging to non-longtermists, although the author deleted (Benjamin Hilton's response is preserved here). The post observed that 80k lists x-risk related causes as "recommended" causes while neartermist causes like global poverty and factory farming are only "sometimes recommended". Further, in 2021, 80k put together a podcast feed called Effective Altruism: An Introduction, which many commenters complained was too skewed towards longtermist causes. I used to think that longtermism is compatible with a wide range of worldviews, as these pages (1, 2) claim, so I was puzzled as to why so many people who engage with longtermism could be uncomfortable with it. Sure, it's a counterintuitive worldview, but it also flows from such basic principles. But I'm starting to question this - longtermism is very sensitive to the rate of pure time preference, and recently, some philosophers have started to argue that nonzero pure time preference can be justified (section "3. Beyond Neutrality" here). By contrast, x-risk as a cause area has support from a broader range of moral worldviews: Chapter 2 of The Precipice discusses five different moral justifications for caring about x-risks (video here). Carl Shulman makes a "common-sense case" for valuing x-risk reduction that doesn't depend on there being any value in the long-term future at all. Maybe it's better to take a two-pronged approach: Promote x-risk reduction as a cause area that most people can agree on; and Promote longtermism as a novel idea in moral philosophy that some people might want to adopt, but be open about its limitations and acknowledge that our audiences might be uncomfortable with it and have valid reasons not to accept it. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Not sure about you, but it seems like I spend most of my time in the future. We're told to live in the present, of course—and I try. But at any opportunity my mind just races ahead, like an eager puppy. I'm planning my next meal, dwelling on that looming deadline, imagining the possibilities that lie ahead. In one sense, all this time spent puttering around tomorrow-land is kind of regrettable. But in another sense it's really quite extraordinary. When we think ahead, when we cast our thoughts into the future, we're exercising an ability that some consider uniquely human.  My guest today is Dr. Adam Bulley. Adam is a psychologist and Postdoctoral Fellow affiliated with the University of Sydney and Harvard. Along with his co-authors Thomas Suddendorf & Jonathan Redshaw, Adam recently published a book titled, The Invention of Tomorrow: A Natural History of Foresight. In this conversation, Adam and I talk about two constructs central to the book—"mental time travel" and foresight. We discuss how these constructs relate to memory and to imagination. We dig into the question of whether our abilities to think ahead are really uniquely human. We review the archeological evidence for the emergence of foresight in our species' evolution. And we also touch on—among other topics and tidbits— hoarding behavior in squirrels, tool use in chimpanzees, the Bischof-Köhler hypothesis, the control of fire, Incan quipus, hand axes, and longtermism. Foresight is one of those especially tentacly topics. It connects to so many different other abilities and to so many questions about minds, culture, evolution. Both in the book and here in this conversation, Adam proves to be quite a skilled guide to all these connections.  There's also something else notable about Adam: he's an alum of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI). In fact, he was a participant in the first iteration of the program, back in 2018. So if you too aspire to do cool research, write cool books, and be interviewed on the coolest podcasts around, you might consider applying. Just note that review of applications begins soon: Feb 13. More info at: disi.org  Alright, friends, on to my chat with Adam Bulley. Enjoy!   A transcript of this episode will be available soon.    Notes and links 3:30 – A paper comparing performance on the “forked tube task” in human children and great apes. 6:30 – A now-classic article by Dr. Suddendorf and Michael Corballis on “mental time travel” and the evolution of foresight. 13:00 – An article by Dr. Suddendorf directly comparing memory and foresight. Another take on the same question. 22:00 – A recent paper by Johannes Mahr on the functions of episodic memory.  27:00 – A recent review article on the notion of “cognitive offloading.” The study by Adam and colleagues looking at the development of cognitive offloading in young children.   32:00 – For an earlier discussion of animal caching behavior, see our episode with Dr. Nicky Clayton. 35:00 – An examination of the Bischof–Köhler hypothesis in rhesus monkeys. 40:00 – A recent chapter by Adam and Dr. Redshaw reviewing the evidence for future thinking in animals.  41:00 – For a brief discussion of delayed gratification in cephalopods, see our episode with Dr. Alex Schnell. See also a recent research paper on the question in fish, and a recent paper by Adam and colleagues looking at the psychology of delayed rewards in humans.  45:00 – For an extended foray into (allegedly) uniquely human traits—aka “human autapomorphies” or “human uniquals”—see our earlier essay on the topic.  47:30 – The exchange in Trends in Cognitive Sciences between Dr. Suddendorf and Dr. Corballis on the question of foresight in animals.  49:30 – A book by Richard Wrangham on the role of fire and cooking in human evolution. A more recent article by Dr. Wrangham on the same topic. 54:00 – An episode of the Tides of History podcast about Ötzi the Iceman. 59:00 – For our earlier discussion of bags with Dr. Michelle Langley, see here.   1:03:00 – A book on the Incan quipus. 1:13:00 – The classic treatment of “displacement” in human language, by Charles Hockett, is here. 1:18:00 – Recent books on long term future thinking include What We Owe the Future, The Good Ancestor, Longpath, and others.   Dr. Bulley recommends: The Gap, by Thomas Suddendorf The Optimism Bias, by Tali Sharot Know Thyself, by Stephen Fleming You can read more about Adam's work on his website and follow him on Twitter.   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) (https://disi.org), which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd (https://www.mayhilldesigns.co.uk/). Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala (https://sarahdopierala.wordpress.com/). You can subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.  **You can now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!** We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com.  For updates about the show, visit our website (https://disi.org/manyminds/), or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Replace Neglectedness, published by Indra Gesink on January 16, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. for example with Leverage, as featured in Will MacAskill's What We Owe the Future. The second bullet point featured in the website introduction to effective altruism is the ITN framework. This exists to prioritize problems. The framework does so by considering the Importance — or scale, S — of a problem, as the number of people or quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) affected, multiplied with the Tractability, as the potential that this problem can be addressed, and Neglectedness, as the number of people already working to address this problem (ITN-framework, including Leverage). Tractibility is sometimes also called Solvability, and non-neglectedness crowdedness. Some criticisms and difficulties in interpreting the framework (1, 2, 3, 4) have preceded this forum post. The ITN framework can be interpreted - as also in the final paragraph of (1) - such that IT represents the potential that a problem can be addressed, while ITN considers the difference that any one individual can make to that problem, particularly the next individual. How much impact can the next individual make, choosing to work on this problem, on average? Why do I add “on average”? We are still ignoring the person's unique qualities, and instead more abstractly consider an average person. Adding “personal fit” as another multiplicative factor would make it personal as well. So “How much impact can the next individual make on this problem?” really asks for the marginal counterfactual impact. Respectively this is the amount of impact that this one individual adds to the total impact so far, which would not happen otherwise. The ITN-factor Neglectedness assumes that this marginal counterfactual impact is declining — strictly — as more individuals join the endeavor of addressing the particular problem. If this is true, then — indeed — a more neglected problem ceteris paribus — i.e. not varying factors I, T (or personal fit) simultaneously — always yields more impact when fewer individuals are already addressing it. This is however not always true, as also already pointed out in the criticisms referenced above. Consider the following string of examples. Suppose a partial civilizational collapse has occurred, and you consider whether it would be good to go and repopulate the now barren lands. The ITN-framework says that as the first person to do so you make the biggest difference. However, alone you cannot procreate, at least not without far-reaching technological assistance. In fact a sizable group of people deciding to do so might very well still be ineffective, by not bringing in sufficient genetic diversity. This is captured by a well-known term in population biology: the critical or minimally viable population size (to persist). Something similar operates to a lesser extent in the effectiveness of teams. I for example once found the advice to better not join a company as the sole data scientist, as you would not have a team to exchange ideas with. Working together, you become more effective, and develop more. Advocating for policies is another area that is important and where you need teams. Consider there being multiple equally worthwhile causes to protest for, but by the logic of the ITN-framework you always join the least populated protest. And no critical mass is obtained. Doesn't that seem absurd? See also (5). (And the third image in (3), depicting a one-time significant increase in marginal counterfactual impact, as with a critical vote to establish a majority. This graph is also called an indicator function). Effective altruists might similarly often find themselves advocating for policies which are neglected and that are thus not well known to the recipient of such advocacy. As opposed to max...

Czy przejęcie Twittera i fiksacja na punkcie kolonizacji Marsa to po prostu zachcianki ekscentrycznego miliardera, czy może kryje się za tym coś więcej? Dziś opowiemy o tym, czym jest longtermizm i czemu ta filozofia tak podoba się nie tylko Elonowi Muskowi, ale także współzałożycielowi Facebooka Dustinowi Moskovitzowi, a nawet niesławnej dziś, upadłej gwieździe kryptoświata - Samowi Bankmanowi-Friedowi. Postaramy się nie tylko wytłumaczyć, co ich tak pociąga w idei długofalowej troski o przyszłe pokolenia, ale także pokazać, jak od swojego zarania mocno ideologiczna była Dolina Krzemowa i jaki ma to wpływ na kształt otaczających nas technologii. W odcinku: Dlaczego Musk kupił Twittera i chce lecieć na Marsa - 03:05 Trzy cele ludzkości - 13:15 Ideologie Doliny Krzemowej - 16:50 "Wrogie przejęcie" longtermizmu - 27:52 Nowa techreligia - 39:04 Więcej o longtermizmie, ale i innych filozofiach i ideologiach inspirujących Dolinę Krzemową można przeczytać w tych źródłach: Miesięcznik "Znak" zjawisku longtermizmu poświęcił okładkowy blok tekstów: https://www.miesiecznik.znak.com.pl/longtermizm-czyli-pojutrze-ludzkosci/ Jest wśród nich także wywiad z Nickiem Bostromem. Ale warto przeczytać więcej o tym, jak ten filozof widzi idee longtermizmu: https://nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste Polecamy też całą książkę tego Szweda "Superinteligencja. Scenariusze, strategie, zagrożenia", wyd. Helion 2016 r. Kluczowa dla całej filozofii jest jednak książka Williama MacAskilla "What We Owe the Future". Krytyczniej o tej ideologii pisze za to Émile P Torres w serwisie Aeon: https://aeon.co/essays/why-longtermism-is-the-worlds-most-dangerous-secular-credo Teorie - czasem z lekka spiskowe - przejęcia Twittera przez Muska omawia w "Gazecie Wyborczej" Bolesław Breczko: https://wyborcza.biz/biznes/7,177150,29111148,mroczne-otoczenie-elona-muska-i-nieoczywisty-cel-przejecia-twittera.html Do korzeni "świeckich religii" Doliny Krzemowej sięga Tara Isabella Burton w swojej książce "Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World".

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Future Matters #6: FTX collapse, value lock-in, and counterarguments to AI x-risk, published by Pablo on December 30, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. [T]he sun with all the planets will in time grow too cold for life, unless indeed some great body dashes into the sun and thus gives it fresh life. Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress. Charles Darwin Future Matters is a newsletter about longtermism and existential risk by Matthew van der Merwe and Pablo Stafforini. Each month we curate and summarize relevant research and news from the community, and feature a conversation with a prominent researcher. You can also subscribe on Substack, listen on your favorite podcast platform and follow on Twitter. Future Matters is also available in Spanish. A message to our readers Welcome back to Future Matters. We took a break during the autumn, but will now be returning to our previous monthly schedule. Future Matters would like to wish all our readers a happy new year! The most significant development during our hiatus was the collapse of FTX and the fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, until then one of the largest and most prominent supporters of longtermist causes. We were shocked and saddened by these revelations, and appalled by the allegations and admissions of fraud, deceit, and misappropriation of customer funds. As others have stated, fraud in the service of effective altruism is unacceptable, and we condemn these actions unequivocally and support authorities' efforts to investigate and prosecute any crimes that may have been committed. Research A classic argument for existential risk from superintelligent AI goes something like this: (1) superintelligent AIs will be goal-directed; (2) goal-directed superintelligent AIs will likely pursue outcomes that we regard as extremely bad; therefore (3) if we build superintelligent AIs, the future will likely be extremely bad. Katja Grace's Counterarguments to the basic AI x-risk case [] identifies a number of weak points in each of the premises in the argument. We refer interested readers to our conversation with Katja below for more discussion of this post, as well as to Erik Jenner and Johannes Treutlein's Responses to Katja Grace's AI x-risk counterarguments []. The key driver of AI risk is that we are rapidly developing more and more powerful AI systems, while making relatively little progress in ensuring they are safe. Katja Grace's Let's think about slowing down AI [] argues that the AI risk community should consider advocating for slowing down AI progress. She rebuts some of the objections commonly levelled against this strategy: e.g. to the charge of infeasibility, she points out that many technologies (human gene editing, nuclear energy) have been halted or drastically curtailed due to ethical and/or safety concerns. In the comments, Carl Shulman argues that there is not currently enough buy-in from governments or the public to take more modest safety and governance interventions, so it doesn't seem wise to advocate for such a dramatic and costly policy: “It's like climate activists in 1950 responding to difficulties passing funds for renewable energy R&D or a carbon tax by proposing that the sale of automobiles be banned immediately. It took a lot of scientific data, solidification of scientific consensus, and communication/movement-building over time to get current measures on climate change.” We enjoyed Kelsey Piper's review of What We Owe the Future [], not necessarily because we agree with her criticisms, but because we thought the review managed to identify, and articulate very clearly, what we take to be the main c...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Concerns over EA's possible neglect of experts, published by Jack Malde on December 16, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This is a Draft Amnesty Day draft. That means it's not polished, it's probably not up to my standards, the ideas are not thought out, I haven't checked everything, and it's unfinished. I was explicitly encouraged to post something like this!Commenting and feedback guidelines: I'm going with the default — please be nice. But constructive feedback is appreciated; please let me know what you think is wrong. Feedback on the structure of the argument is also appreciated. I am becoming increasingly concerned that EA is neglecting experts when it comes to research. I'm not saying that EA organisations don't produce high quality research, but I have a feeling that the research could be of an even higher quality if we were to embrace experts more. Epistemic status: not that confident that what I'm saying is valid. Maybe experts are utilised more than I realise. Maybe the people I mention below can reasonably be considered experts. I also haven't done an in-depth exploration of all relevant research to judge how widespread the problem might be (if it is indeed a problem) Research examples I'm NOT concerned by Let me start with some good examples (there are certainly more than I am listing here!). In 2021 Open Phil commissioned a report from David Humbird on the potential for cultured meat production to scale up to the point where it would be sufficiently available and affordable to replace a substantial portion of global meat consumption. Humbird has a PhD in chemical engineering and has extensive career experience in process engineering and techno-economic analysis, including the provision of consultancy services. In short, he seems like a great choice to carry out this research. Another example I am pleased by is Will MacAskill as author of What We Owe the Future. I cannot think of a better author of this book. Will is a respected philosopher, and a central figure in the EA movement. This book outlines the philosophical argument for longtermism, a key school of thought within EA. Boy am I happy that Will wrote this book. Other examples I was planning to write up: Modeling the Human Trajectory - David Roodman Roodman seems qualified to deliver this research. Wild Animal Initiative research such as this I like that they collaborated with Samniqueka J. Halsey who is an assistant professor Some examples I'm concerned by Open Phil's research on AI In 2020 Ajeya Cotra, a Senior Research Analyst at Open Phil, wrote a report on timelines to transformative AI. I have no doubt that the report is high-quality and that Ajeya is very intelligent. However, this is a very technical subject and, beyond having a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, I don't see why Ajeya would be the first choice to write this report. Why wouldn't Open Phil have commissioned an expert in AI development / computational neuroscience etc. to write this report, similar to what they did with David Humbird (see above)? Ajeya's report had Paul Christiano and Dario Amodei as advisors, which is good, but advisors generally have limited input. Wouldn't it have been better to have an expert as first author? All the above applies to another Open Phil AI report, this time written by Joe Carlsmith. Joe is a philosopher by training, and whilst that isn't completely irrelevant, it once again seems to me that a better choice could have been found. Personally I'd prefer that Joe do more philosophy-related work, similar to what Will MacAsKill is doing (see above). Climate Change research (removed mention of Founder's Pledge as per jackva's comment) Climate Change and Longtermism - John Halstead John Halstead doesn't seem to have any formal training in climate science. Not sur...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Promoting compassionate longtermism, published by jonleighton on December 7, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This post is in 6 parts, starting with some basic reflections on suffering and ethics, and ending with a brief project description. While this post might seem overly broad-ranging, it's meant to set out some basic arguments and explain the rationale for the project initiative in the last section, for which we are looking for support and collaboration. I go into much greater detail about some of the core ethical ideas in a new book about to be published, which I will present soon in a separate post. I also make several references here to Will MacAskill's What We Owe the Future, because many of the ideas he expresses are shared by many EAs, and while I agree with many of the things he says, there are some important stances I disagree with that I will explain in this post. My overall motivation is a deep concern about the persistence of extreme suffering far into the future, and the possibility to take productive steps now to reduce the likelihood of that happening, thereby increasing the likelihood that the future will be a flourishing one. Summary: Suffering has an inherent call to action, and some suffering literally makes non-existence preferable. For various reasons, there are mixed attitudes within EA towards addressing suffering as a priority. We may not have the time to delay value lock-in for too long, and we already know some of the key principles. Increasing our efforts to prevent intense suffering in the short term may be important for preventing the lock-in of uncompassionate values. There's an urgent need to research and promote mechanisms that can stabilise compassionate governance at the global level. OPIS is initiating research and film projects to widely communicate these ideas and concrete steps that can already be taken, and we are looking for support and collaboration. 1. Some reflections on suffering Involuntary suffering is inherently bad – one could argue that this is ultimately what “bad” means – but extreme, unbearable suffering is especially bad, to the point that non-existence is literally a preferable option. At this level, people choose to end their lives if they can in order to escape the pain. We probably cannot fully grasp what it's like to experience extreme suffering unless we have experienced it ourselves. To get even an approximate sense of what it's like requires engaging with accounts and depictions of it. If not, we may underestimate its significance and attribute much lower priority to it than it deserves. As an example, a patient with a terrible condition called SUNCT whom I provided support to, who at one point attempted suicide, described in a presentation we recently gave together in Geneva the utter hell he experienced, and how no one should ever have to experience what he did. Intense suffering has an inherent call to action – we respond to it whenever we try to help people in severe pain, or animals being tortured on factory farms. There is no equivalent inherent urgency to fill the void and bring new sentient beings into existence, even though this is an understandable desire of intelligent beings who already exist. Intentionally bringing into existence a sentient being who will definitely experience extreme/unbearable suffering could be considered uncompassionate and even cruel. I don't think the above reflections should be particularly controversial. Even someone who would like to fill the universe with blissful beings might still concede that the project doesn't have an inherent urgency – that is, that it could be delayed for some time, or even indefinitely, without harm to anyone (unless you believe, as do some EAs, that every instance of inanimate matter in space and time that isn't being optimally used ...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Announcing: Audio narrations of EA Forum posts, published by peterhartree on December 5, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. We've started making audio narrations of some of the best posts from the EA Forum. As of today, you can subscribe to the podcast: EA Forum (All audio)Audio narrations from the Effective Altruism Forum, including curated posts and other great writing.Subscribe:Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts (soon) | Spotify | RSS You'll also start to see narrations embedded on the EA Forum post pages themselves. If a narration is available, you'll see a blue loudspeaker button: What can I listen to now? Some of the winning entries from the EA Criticism and Red Teaming Contest: Are you really in a race? The cautionary tales of Szilárd and Ellsberg by Haydn Belfield Does economic growth meaningfully improve well-being? by Vadim Albinsky Effective altruism in the garden of ends by Tyler Alterman Notes on effective altruism by Michael Nielsen Biological Anchors external review by Jennifer Lin Some posts that were recently marked as “curated”: Counterarguments to the basic AI risk case by Katja Grace My take on What We Owe the Future by Eli Lifland Population ethics without axiology: A framework by Lukas Gloor 500 million, but not a single one more by jai AGI and lock-in by Lukas Finnveden, Jess Riedel, and Carl Shulman What matters to shrimps? Factors affecting shrimp welfare in aquaculture by Lucas Lewit-Mendes and Aaron Boddy Case for emergency response teams by Gavin and Jan Kulveit What happens on the average day? by Rose Hadshar How bad could a war get? by Stephen Clare and Rani Martin Cool. But I have a lot of things to listen to. Could I just get the curated posts, or maybe just the summaries? Yes. You can subscribe to either of these: EA Forum (Curated posts)Audio narrations of curated posts from the Effective Altruism Forum. Subscribe:Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts (soon) | Spotify | RSSEA Forum (Summaries)Weekly summaries of the best EA Forum posts. Written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities) and narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell.Subscribe:Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts (soon) | Spotify | RSS What about AI narrations? I want to listen to everything! The Nonlinear Library project is currently generating AI narrations of all posts that meet a fairly low karma threshold. Within the next few months, we are hoping to collaborate with Nonlinear to develop a system that generates even better AI narrations for most or all EA Forum posts. We see a path to better pronunciation, emphasis, and tone, and also to much better handling of images, graphs and formulae. Who is working on this? This project is run by the EA Forum Team, in collaboration with TYPE III AUDIO. What about the existing “EA Forum Podcast”? In July 2021, Garrett Baker and David Reinstein started a volunteer project to narrate EA Forum posts. The most recent narration was published in January 2022. Since September they've been publishing Zoe and Coleman's weekly summary episodes. We are grateful to Garrett and David for their work on this. We've not yet heard what they plan to do next—presumably they'll release an update to subscribers in due course. Thoughts, feedback, suggestions? We'd love to hear from you! Please comment below, or write to team@type3.audio. If you're already listening to Nonlinear Library AI narrations, we'd be especially interested to hear what you think of them. What would you most like to see improved? Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Malcolm Clemens Young                                                                        Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, CA 2C51                                            2 Advent (Year A) 8:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. Eucharist                    Sunday 4 December 2022                                                                       Isaiah 11:1-10 Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19 Romans 15:4-13 Matthew 3:1-12 Are There Reasons to Have Hope? An Introduction to the Gospel of Matthew “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that… by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope” (Rom. 15). Let me speak frankly. I see you might be the, “sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from sermons, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store.” “But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst. This is the conclusion you have reached, in your personal life and also in general matters, even international affairs. What about [sermons]? Well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimately this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of [sermons], where you can be lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn't serious.”[1] The twentieth century novelist Italo Calvino (1923-1985) wrote these words about books and I begin here because it is human nature to be wary about hoping too much. We have been disappointed enough in the past to wonder, are there reasons to have hope? I have been reading several recently published books by authors who do not believe in God. I'm grateful to have this chance to walk with them and to try to see the world from their perspectives. Last week I finished reading Kieran Setiya's book Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way. His last chapter describes hope as, “wishful thinking.” He goes on to say, “In the end, it seems, there is no hope: the lights go out.” And later in a slightly more positive vein he says, “We can hope that life has meaning: a slow, unsteady march towards a more just future.”[2] The other book is William MacAskill's What We Owe the Future about how we might try to prevent the collapse of human culture from threats like nuclear war, engineered pathogens, and runaway Artificial General Intelligence. He points out the massive amount of suffering among human beings and animals. He uses a scale from -100 to +100 to measure the lifetime suffering or happiness of an abstract person and wonders if, because of the total amount of suffering, life is even worth living. By the way the question “does life have meaning,” is not something that we see in ancient writings or even in the medieval or early modern period. The phrase, “the meaning of life” originates only 1834.[3] Before that time it did not occur to ask this question perhaps because most people assumed that we live in a world guided by its creator. Although these books might seem so different they share a common spirit. First, you may not know what to expect but it will be a human thing. There is no help for us beyond ourselves. Second, they exaggerate the extent to which human beings can comprehend and control the world. Third, they fail to recognize that there are different stories for understanding our place in the universe and that these have a huge influence on our fulfillment. Well-being is in part subjective: we have to decide whether to accept our life as an accident, or to accept it as a gift. Finally, these authors lack a sense that human beings have special dignity or that we might experience God as present with us. In my Forum conversation with Cornel West the other week he mentioned how much he loved Hans-Georg Gadamer's book Truth and Method. It's about the importance of interpretation in human consciousness and begins with a poem from the twentieth century Austrian writer Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). “Catch only what you've thrown yourself, all is mere skill and little gain; / but when you're suddenly the catcher of a ball / thrown by an eternal partner / with accurate and measured swing / towards you, to your center, in an arch / from the great bridgebuilding of God: / why catching then becomes a power - / not yours, a world's.”[4] How do we catch the world God is offering to us? This morning I am going to discuss an interpretation of the Book of Matthew by my friend the biblical scholar Herman Waetjen. I am not trying to communicate facts to you or to explain something. I long to open a door so that you might experience the truth of hope, the recognition that at the heart of all reality lies the love of God. Today is the second Sunday in the church calendar. Over the next twelve months during worship we will be reading through the Gospel of Matthew. Scholars say that 600 of the 1071 verses in it, along with half of its vocabulary come from the Gospel of Mark. An additional 225 verses come from a saying source and other oral traditions.[5] And yet this Gospel is utterly original. Although the first hearers are highly urban people living in the regional capital of Antioch, really Matthew speaks directly to us. In the year 70 CE a catastrophic event threatened to obliterate the entire religion of the Jews. Roman forces crushed an uprising in Jerusalem destroying God's earthly residence, the temple, and many of the rituals and traditions that defined the Jewish religion. Without the temple a new way of being religious had to be constructed. Let me tell you about three alternative visions for the faith from that time. First there was the way of the Pharisees led by Yohanan ben Zakkai (50-80 CE). Legend held that he had been secreted out of Jerusalem during the destruction in a coffin. HE then made an arrangement with Roman authorities to remain subject to them but with limited powers of self-government. Zakkai asserted that the study of Torah was as sacred as the Temple sacrifices. “He substituted chesed (kindness or love) in place of the demolished temple.”[6] God can be at the center of people's lives through “a reconciliation that is realizable through deeds of mercy that are fulfilled by observing the law.”[7] Waetjen asserts that the Gospel of Matthew criticizes this vision because it leads to a distinction between righteous (moral) people who are clean and sinful outsiders. A second solution to this religious crisis comes from apocalyptic literature about the end of the world, especially the Second Book of Baruch. This author writes about the Babylonian destruction of the Jewish Temple in 487 BCE. In his vision an angel descends to the Temple, removes all the holy things and says, “He who guarded the house has left it” (2 Baruch 8:2). The keys are thrown away almost as if it was de-sanctified. According to this view,“in the present the temple has no significance.” But in the future it will be renewed in glory through the power of God. So the people wait for God's return. Although Matthew is aware of both these answers to the religious crisis he chooses a third way beyond a division between clean and unclean people, or simply waiting for a new Temple. Matthew writes that Jesus as Son of David comes out of a particular people, with its history, etc., but Jesus is also a new creation which Waetjen translates as the Son of the Human Being.[8] We see this dual anthropology in the Hebrew bible with its division of soul/self (or nephesh) and flesh (basar). In Greek this is soul/self (psyche) and body (soma). Jesus says, “Do not continue to fear those who kill the body (soma) but cannot kill the soul; but rather continue to fear the one who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna” (Mt. 10:28). In a physical body Jesus is born in Bethlehem as part of the Jewish community where he teaches and heals those who come to him. Jesus also exists also as soul, as the divine breath that gives all creatures life, as the first human being of the new creation, as one who shows God's love for every person. He teaches that at the heart of all things lies forgiveness and grace. There are no people defined by their righteousness or sinfulness. At the deepest level of our existence we are connected to each other and to God. The novelist Marilynne Robinson writes about how in modern times some people claim that science shows that there are no non-material things, that we do not have a soul. In contrast she writes about our shared intuition that the soul's “non-physicality is no proof of its non-existence… [It is] the sacred and sanctifying aspect of human being. It is the self that stands apart from the self. It suffers injuries of a moral kind, when the self it is and is not lies or steals or murders but it is untouched by the accidents that maim the self or kill it.” She concludes writing, “I find the soul a valuable concept, a statement of the dignity of a human life and of the unutterable gravity of human action and experience.”[9] Can we have hope? Does life have meaning? Let me speak frankly. I see you might be the “sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything.” But you have a soul. God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. At the heart of all reality exists the love of God. The more thankful we are, the more we receive the gift of hope. My last words come from a poem by Mary Oliver called “The Gift.” “Be still, my soul, and steadfast. / Earth and heaven both are still watching / though time is draining from the clock / and your walk, that was confident and quick, / has become slow.// So, be slow if you must, but let / the heart still play its true part. / Love still as you once loved, deeply / and without patience. Let God and the world / know you are grateful. That the gift has been given.”[10] [1] Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller tr. William Weaver (London: Vintage Classics, 1981) 4. [2] Kieran Setiya, Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way (NY: Riverhead Books, 2022) 173, 179, 180. [3] “The meaning of life” first appears in Thomas Carlyle's novel Sartor Resartus. Ibid., 153. [4] Rainer Maria Rilke, “Catch only what you've thrown yourself” in Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd Revised Edition tr. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (NY: Crossroad, 1992). [5] Herman Waetjen, Matthew's Theology of Fulfillment, Its Universality and Its Ethnicity: God's New Israel as the Pioneer of God's New Humanity (NY: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017) 1-17. See also, https://www.biblememorygoal.com/how-many-chapters-verses-in-the-bible/ [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesed [7] Ibid., 2. [8] Ibid., 7. [9] Marilynne Robinson, The Givenness of Things: Essays (NY: Picador, 2015) 8-9. [10] https://wildandpreciouslife0.wordpress.com/2016/09/27/the-gift-by-mary-oliver/

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA needs more humor, published by SWK on December 1, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. In the wake of the FTX collapse, much ink has been spilled on EA reform by people smarter and more experienced in this space than I am. However, as someone who has been engaging with EA over the past few years and who has become increasingly connected with the community, I have a modest proposal I'd like to share: EA needs more humor. Criticism of EA has roots back in the “earning to give” era. This Stanford Social Innovation Review editorial from 2013 describes EA as “cold and hyper-rationalistic,” deeming the idea of numerically judging charities as “defective altruism.” This piece in Aeon from 2014 essentially argues that the EA utilitarian worldview opposes art, aesthetic beauty, and creativity in general. Criticism of EA has only heightened in recent years with the rise of longtermism. Another Aeon editorial from 2021 characterizes the “apocalypticism” of longtermist thought as “profoundly dangerous” while also lampooning EA organizations like the “grandiosely named Future of Humanity Institute” and “the even more grandiosely named Future of Life Institute.” In the last few months before the FTX situation, criticism was directed at Will MacAskill's longtermist manifesto, What We Owe the Future. A Wall Street Journal review concludes that “‘What We Owe the Future' is a preposterous book” and that it is “replete with highfalutin truisms, cockamamie analogies and complex discussions leading nowhere.” A Current Affairs article once again evokes the phrase “defective altruism” and asserts that MacAskill's book shows how EA as a whole “is self-righteous in the most literal sense.” The above example are, of course, just a small snapshot of the criticism EA has faced. However, I think these examples capture a common theme in EA critiques. Overall, it seems that critics tend to characterize EA as a community of cold, calculating, imperious, pretentious people who take themselves and their ostensible mission to “save humanity” far too seriously. To be honest, a lot of EA criticism seems like it's coming from cynical, jaded adults who relish in the opportunity to crush young people's ambitious dreams about changing the world. I also think many critics don't really understand what EA is about and extrapolate based on a glance at the most radical ideas or make unfair assumptions based on a list of EA's high-profile Silicon Valley supporters. However, there is a lot of truth to what critics are saying: EA's aims are incredibly ambitious, its ideas frequently radical, and its organizations often graced with grandiose names. I also agree that the FTX/SBF situation has exposed glaring holes in EA philosophy and shortcomings in the organization of the EA community. However, my personal experience in this community has been that the majority of EAs are not cold, calculating, imperious, pretentious people but warm, intelligent, honest, and altruistic individuals who wholeheartedly want to “do good better.” I think one thing the EA community could do moving forward to improve its external image and internal function is to embrace a bit more humor. EA could stand to acknowledge and make fun of the craziness of comparing the effectiveness of charities as disparate as a deworming campaign and a policy advocacy group, or the absurdity of a outlining a superintelligent extinction event. I say these ideas are absurd not because I don't believe in them; I have the utmost respect for rigorous charity evaluators like GiveWell and am convinced that AI is indeed the most important problem facing humanity. But I think that acknowledging the external optics of these ideas and, to a degree, joking about how crazy they may seem could make EA less disagreeable for many people on the outside looking in. There ...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: A Letter to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, published by John G. Halstead on November 23, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Tldr: This is a letter I wrote to the Climate Contributing Editor of the Bulletin Atomic Scientists, Dawn Stover, about Emile Torres' latest piece criticising EA. In short: In advance of the publication of the article, Ms Stover reached out to us to check on what Torres calls their most "disturbing" claim viz. that Will MacAskill lied about getting advice from five climate experts. We showed them that this was false. The Bulletin published the claim anyway, and then tweeted it. In my opinion, this is outrageous, so I have asked them to issue a correction and an apology. Dear Ms Stover, I have long admired the work of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. However, I am extremely disappointed by your publication of the latest piece by Emile Torres. I knew long ago that Torres would publish a piece critical of What We Owe the Future, and on me following my report on climate change. However, I am surprised that the Bulletin has chosen to publish this particular piece in its current form. There are many things wrong with the piece, but the most important is that it accuses Will MacAskill and his research assistants of research misconduct. Specifically, Torres contends that five of the climate experts we listed in the acknowledgements for the book were not actually consulted. Ms Stover: you contacted us about this claim in advance of the article's publication, and we informed you that it was not true. Overall, we consulted around 106 experts in the research process for What We Owe The Future. Torres suggests that five experts were never consulted at all, but this is not true — as Will stated in his earlier email to you, four of those five experts were consulted. I am happy to provide evidence for this. The article would have readers think that we made up the citations out of thin air. One of them was contacted but didn't have time to give feedback, and was incorrectly credited in the acknowledgements, which we will change in future editions: this was an honest mistake. The Bulletin also went on to tweet the false claim that multiple people hadn't been consulted at all. The acknowledgements are also clear that we are not claiming that those listed checked and agreed with every claim in the book. Immediately after the acknowledgements of subject-matter experts, Will writes: “These advisers don't necessarily agree with the claims I make in the book, and all errors in the book are my responsibility alone.” To accuse someone of research misconduct is a very serious allegation. After you check it and find out that it is false, it is extremely poor form to let the claim go out anyway and then to tweet it. The Bulletin should issue a correction to the article, and to the false claim they put out in a tweet. I also have concerns about the nature of Torres' background work for article — they seemingly sent every person that was acknowledged for the book a misleading email, telling them that we lied in the acknowledgements, and making some reviewers quite uncomfortable. To reiterate, I am very disappointed by the journalistic standards demonstrated in this article. I will be publishing something separately about Torres' (as usual) misrepresented substantive claims, but the most serious allegation of research misconduct needs to be retracted and we need an apology. (Also, a more minor point: it's not true that I am Head of Applied Research at Founders Pledge. I left that role in 2019.) John Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Sean Illing talks with technologist, media theorist, and author Douglas Rushkoff, whose new book Survival of the Richest explains how the ultra-wealthy are obsessed with preparing for the end of the world — and the troubling mindset that leads many rich and powerful people down this road. They discuss the blend of tech utopianism and fatalism behind this doomsday prepping, how Silicon Valley and "tech bro" culture have incentivized a kind of misanthropy, and why the world's billionaire class can't see that the catastrophes they fear are of their own making. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area Guest: Douglas Rushkoff (@rushkoff), author; professor, media studies, CUNY Queens College References:  Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires by Douglas Rushkoff (W.W. Norton; 2022) "Epson boobytrapped its printers" by Cory Doctorow (Medium; Aug. 7) "Cosmism: Russia's religion for the rocket age" by Benjamin Ramm (BBC; Apr. 20, 2021) The Selfish Gene (1976) and The God Delusion (2006) by Richard Dawkins Francis Bacon, Redargutio Philosophiarum (1608), tr. by Benjamin Farrington in The Philosophy of Francis Bacon (1964): "Nature must be taken by the forelock . . . lay hold of her and capture her" (p. 130). "Power changes how the brain responds to others" by Jeremy Hogeveen, et al., Journal of Experiential Psychology (Apr. 2014) What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill (Basic Books; 2022) Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff (W.W. Norton; 2021)   Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Support Vox Conversations by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts This episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We are living in a time of incredible technological advances that pose both opportunities and risks to the human species. Andy speaks with futurist William MacAskill about some of the ways humanity could end, from nuclear war to artificial intelligence, and how to take steps now to prevent our own extinction. He explains his approach to living with a long term mindset and the ways in which the future could be a thousand times greater than it is today. Keep up with Andy on Twitter @ASlavitt. Follow William MacAskill on Twitter @willmacaskill. Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium.    Support the show by checking out our sponsors! CVS Health helps people navigate the healthcare system and their personal healthcare by improving access, lowering costs and being a trusted partner for every meaningful moment of health. At CVS Health, healthier happens together. Learn more at cvshealth.com. Click this link for a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this show and all Lemonada shows: https://lemonadamedia.com/sponsors/    Check out these resources from today's episode:  Order William's book, “What We Owe the Future”: https://whatweowethefuture.com/ Learn about William's organization, Giving What We Can: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/ Learn about 80,000 Hours, an organization that helps students and graduates find careers that tackle the world's most pressing problems: https://80000hours.org/ Find vaccines, masks, testing, treatments, and other resources in your community: https://www.covid.gov/ Order Andy's book, “Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response”: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250770165  Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.  For additional resources, information, and a transcript of the episode, visit lemonadamedia.com/show/inthebubble.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If the human race lasts as long as a typical mammalian species and our population continues at its current size, then there are 80 trillion people yet to come. Oxford philosophy professor William MacAskill says it's up to us to protect them. In his bold new book, "What We Owe the Future," MacAskill makes a case for longtermism. He believes that how long we survive as a species may depend on the actions we take now. --- To hear the Book Bite for "What We Owe the Future," download the Next Big Idea app at nextbigideaclub.com/app

Like moths to a flame, we come back to longtermism once again. But it's not our fault. Will MacAskill published a new book, What We Owe the Future, and billions (trillions!) of lives are at stake if we don't review it. Sisyphus had his task and we have ours. We're doing it for the (great great great ... great) grandchildren. We discuss: - Whether longtermism is actionable - Whether the book is a faithful representation of longtermism as practiced - Why humans are actually cool, despite what you might hear - Some cool ideas from the book including career advice and allowing vaccines on the free market - Ben's love of charter cities and whether he's is a totalitarian at heart - The plausability of "value lock-in" - The bizarro world of population ethics Contact us - Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani - Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ - Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link How long is your termist? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Oxford Philosophy professor William MacAskill has quickly become noteworthy as the guru of the "effective altruism" movement. This movement supposedly applies a rational, data-driven perspective to selecting the charitable causes that do the most good. In his latest book, What We Owe the Future, MacAskill claims that true effective altruists pay careful attention to the welfare of the people of the distant future. Should we be concerned about the kinds of future doomsday scenarios MacAskill conjures -- rule by artificial intelligence, global nuclear war, environmental catastrophe? Do we have obligations to people in the distant future? Join Don Watkins, Mike Mazza, and Ben Bayer to discuss what MacAskill's focus reveals about the core premises of the "effective altruist" movement, and about the moral code of altruism as such.

Russia coerces Ukrainians into voting in favor of joining the Russian Federation, Ronny Chieng teaches a class on K-pop, and William MacAskill discusses his book "What We Owe the Future."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on the show, Andrew and I talk about: The importance of owning your own DVDs and CDs Blank Street Coffee, the stranger-than-parody coffee shop taking over NYC (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/29/dining/blank-street-coffee.html) "What We Owe the Future" (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1541618629) Slate Star Codex's review of the same (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-what-we-owe-the-future) J.K. Rowling's crime fiction (https://robert-galbraith.com/stories/) Nerdrotic's "The Rings of Power is ABYSMAL" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnEXip1KsLk&ab_channel=Nerdrotic) Send your feedback to zac@creedalpodcast.com!

The world is so much richer than it was 150 years ago that past generations might look at society today and declare it a utopia.  But how did we get here, and are we really living in utopia? Economist Brad DeLong joins the podcast to discuss his new book, Slouching Towards Utopia.  We discuss the key factors that allowed economic growth to explode around 1870, why Brad builds a grand narrative around the 'long 20th century', and why economic growth is the most important lens for understanding human history in the last 150 years. Recommended reading: Slouching Towards Utopia - https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/j-bradford-delong/slouching-towards-utopia/9780465019595/ What We Owe the Future - https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/william-macaskill/what-we-owe-the-future/9781541618633/ The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order - https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-neoliberal-order-9780197519646?cc=us&lang=en& To make sure you hear every episode, join our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/neoliberalproject. Patrons get access to exclusive bonus episodes, our sticker-of-the-month club, and our insider Slack.  Become a supporter today! Got questions for the Neoliberal Podcast?  Send them to mailbag@neoliberalproject.org Follow us at: https://twitter.com/ne0liberal https://www.instagram.com/neoliberalproject/ https://www.twitch.tv/neoliberalproject   Join a local chapter at https://neoliberalproject.org/join

Philosopher William MacAskill of the University of Oxford and a founder of the effective altruism movement talks about his book What We Owe the Future with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. MacAskill advocates "longtermism," giving great attention to the billions of people who will live on into the future long after we are gone. Topics discussed include the importance of moral entrepreneurs, why it's moral to have children, and the importance of trying to steer the future for better outcomes.

Sign up for Intelligence Squared Premium here: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/ for ad-free listening, bonus content, early access and much more. See below for details. Will MacAskill is the philosopher thinking a million years into the future who is also having a bit of a moment in the present. As Associate Professor in Philosophy and Research Fellow at the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford, he is co-founder of the effective altruism movement, which uses evidence and reason as the driver to help maximise how we can better resource the world. MacAskill's writing has found fans ranging from Elon Musk to Stephen Fry and his new book is What We Owe the Future: A Million-Year View. Our host on the show is Max Roser, Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development and founder and editor of Our World in Data. … We are incredibly grateful for your support. To become an Intelligence Squared Premium subscriber, follow the link: https://iq2premium.supercast.com/  Here's a reminder of the benefits you'll receive as a subscriber: Ad-free listening, because we know some of you would prefer to listen without interruption  One early episode per week Two bonus episodes per month A 25% discount on IQ2+, our exciting streaming service, where you can watch and take part in events live at home and enjoy watching past events on demand and without ads  A 15% discount and priority access to live, in-person events in London, so you won't miss out on tickets Our premium monthly newsletter  Intelligence Squared Merch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is Will MacAskill. Will is an associate professor of philosophy at Oxford University. He is the co-founder and president of the Centre for Effective Altruism. Will is also the director of the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research. In this episode, we discuss his new book "What We Owe the Future". We talk about whether we have a moral obligation to the billions of humans that will be born in the next several 1000 years, and how to weigh those obligations against those of living humans. We discuss population ethics in general, and Derek Parfit's Repugnant Conclusion thought experiment. We discuss the role of economic growth in humanity's long-term future and how to weigh that against present-day wealth inequality. We talk about the ethics of abortion, and the notion of moral progress. We also discuss the possible AI futures that lie ahead of us and much more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is Will MacAskill. Will is an associate professor of philosophy at Oxford University. He is the co-founder and president of the Centre for Effective Altruism. Will is also the director of the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research.In this episode, we discuss his new book "What We Owe the Future". We talk about whether we have a moral obligation to the billions of humans that will be born in the next several 1000 years, and how to weigh those obligations against those of living humans. We discuss population ethics in general, and Derek Parfit's Repugnant Conclusion thought experiment. We discuss the role of economic growth in humanity's long-term future and how to weigh that against present-day wealth inequality. We talk about the ethics of abortion, and the notion of moral progress. We also discuss the possible AI futures that lie ahead of us and much more. -Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code [20COLEMAN] at Manscaped.com. That's 20% off with free shipping at manscaped.com and use code [20COLEMAN].-Sign up through wren.co/coleman to make a difference in the climate crisis, and Wren will plant 10 extra trees in your name!-Sign up today at butcherbox.com/COLEMAN to get two, 10 oz New York strip steaks and 8 oz of lobster claw and knuckle meat FREE in your first order.

My guest today is Will MacAskill. Will is an associate professor of philosophy at Oxford University. He is the co-founder and president of the Centre for Effective Altruism. Will is also the director of the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research.In this episode, we discuss his new book "What We Owe the Future". We talk about whether we have a moral obligation to the billions of humans that will be born in the next several 1000 years, and how to weigh those obligations against those of living humans. We discuss population ethics in general, and Derek Parfit's Repugnant Conclusion thought experiment. We discuss the role of economic growth in humanity's long-term future and how to weigh that against present-day wealth inequality. We talk about the ethics of abortion, and the notion of moral progress. We also discuss the possible AI futures that lie ahead of us and much more. -Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code [20COLEMAN] at Manscaped.com. That's 20% off with free shipping at manscaped.com and use code [20COLEMAN].-Sign up through wren.co/coleman to make a difference in the climate crisis, and Wren will plant 10 extra trees in your name!-Sign up today at butcherbox.com/COLEMAN to get two, 10 oz New York strip steaks and 8 oz of lobster claw and knuckle meat FREE in your first order.

Most of us worry about money sometimes, but what if we changed the way we thought about our relationship to finances? Today's guest, William MacAskill, offers a framework in which to do just that. He calls it effective altruism. One of the core arguments of effective altruism is that we all ought to consider giving away a significant chunk of our income because we know, to a mathematical near certainty, that several thousand dollars could save a life.Today we're going to talk about the whys and wherefores of effective altruism. This includes how to get started on a very manageable and doable level (which does not require you to give away most of your income), and the benefits this practice has on both the world and your own psyche.MacAskill is an associate professor of philosophy at Oxford University and one of the founders of the effective altruism movement. He has a new book out called, What We Owe the Future, where he makes a case for longtermism, a term used to describe developing the mental habit of thinking about the welfare of future generations. In this episode we talk about: Effective altruismWhether humans are really wired to consider future generationsPractical tips for thinking and acting on longtermismHis argument for having childrenAnd his somewhat surprising take on how good our future could be if we play our cards rightPodcast listeners can get 50% off What We Owe the Future using the code WWOTF50 at Bookshop.org.Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/william-macaskill-491See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We might consider how our actions will affect the lives of our children and grandchildren. But what about the dozens of generations that hopefully come next? William MacAskill is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford and co-founder of the Centre for Effective Altruism. He joins host Krys Boyd to discuss why we must make long-term thinking a priority if we truly care about the descendants we'll never meet. His book is called “What We Owe the Future.”

Our existential risk – the probability that we could wipe ourselves out due to AI, bio-engineering, nuclear war, climate change, etc. in the next 100 years – currently sits at 1 in 6. Let that sink in! Would you get on a plane if there was a 17% chance it would crash? Would you do everything you could to prevent a calamity if you were presented with those odds? My chat today covers a wild idea that could – and should - better our chances of existing as a species…and lead to a human flourishing I struggle to even imagine. Long Termism argues that prioritisng the long term future of humanity has exponential ethical and existential boons. Flipside, if we don't choose the long termist route, the repercussions are, well, devastating.Will MacAskill is one of the world's leading moral philosophers and I travel to Oxford UK, where he runs the Global Centre of Effective Altruism, the Global Priorities Institute and the Forethought Foundation, to talk through these massive moral issues. Will also explains that right now is the most important time in humanity's history. Our generation singularly has the power and responsibility to determine two diametrically different paths for humanity. This excites me; I hope it does you, too.Learn more about Will MacAskill's work Purchase his new book What We Owe the Future: A million year view If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversations. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram! It's where I interact the most. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's always a little humbling to think about what affects your words and actions might have on other people, not only right now but potentially well into the future. Now take that humble feeling and promote it to all of humanity, and arbitrarily far in time. How do our actions as a society affect all the potential generations to come? William MacAskill is best known as a founder of the Effective Altruism movement, and is now the author of What We Owe the Future. In this new book he makes the case for longtermism: the idea that we should put substantial effort into positively influencing the long-term future. We talk about the pros and cons of that view, including the underlying philosophical presuppositions.Mindscape listeners can get 50% off What We Owe the Future, thanks to a partnership between the Forethought Foundation and Bookshop.org. Just click here and use code MINDSCAPE50 at checkout.Support Mindscape on Patreon.William (Will) MacAskill received his D.Phil. in philosophy from the University of Oxford. He is currently an associate professor of philosophy at Oxford, as well as a research fellow at the Global Priorities Institute, director of the Forefront Foundation for Global Priorities Research, President of the Centre for Effective Altruism, and co-founder of 80,000 hours and Giving What We Can.Web sitePhilPeople profileGoogle Scholar publicationsWikipediaTwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Longtermism is a moral philosophy that is increasingly gaining traction around the United Nations and in foreign policy circles. Put simply, Longtermism holds the key premise that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time. The foreign policy community in general and the the United Nations in particular are beginning to embrace longtermism.  Next year at the opening of the UN General Assembly in September 2023, the Secretary General is hosting what he is calling a Summit of the Future to bring these ideas to the center of debate at the United Nations. Will MackAskill is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He is the author of the new book "What We Owe the Future" which explains the premise and implications of Longtermism including for the foreign policy community, particularly as it relates to mitigating catastrophic risks to humanity.       

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with William MacAskill about his new book, What We Owe the Future. They discuss the philosophy of effective altruism (EA), longtermism, existential risk, criticism of EA, problems with expected-value reasoning, doing good vs feeling good, why it's hard to care about future people, how the future gives meaning to the present, why this moment in history is unusual, the pace of economic and technological growth, bad political incentives, value lock-in, the well-being of conscious creatures as the foundation of ethics, the risk of unaligned AI, how bad we are at predicting technological change, and other topics. SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.  

Today's show is built around three simple sentences: “Future people count. There could be a lot of them. And we can make their lives better.” Those sentences form the foundation of an ethical framework known as “longtermism.” They might sound obvious, but to take them seriously is a truly radical endeavor — one with the power to change the world and even your life.That second sentence is where things start to get wild. It's possible that there could be tens of trillions of future people, that future people could outnumber current people by a ratio of something like a million to one. And if that's the case, then suddenly most of the things we spend most of our time arguing about shrink in importance compared with the things that will affect humanity's long-term future.William MacAskill is a professor of philosophy at Oxford University, the director of the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research and the author of the forthcoming book, “What We Owe the Future,” which is the best distillation of the longtermist worldview I've read. So this is a conversation about what it means to take the moral weight of the future seriously and the way that everything — from our political priorities to career choices to definitions of heroism — changes when you do.We also cover the host of questions that longtermism raises: How should we weigh the concerns of future generations against those of living people? What are we doing today that future generations will view in the same way we look back on moral atrocities like slavery? Who are the “moral weirdos” of our time we should be paying more attention to? What are the areas we should focus on, the policies we should push, the careers we should choose if we want to guarantee a better future for our posterity?And much more.Mentioned:"Is A.I. the Problem? Or Are We?" by The Ezra Klein Show "How to Do The Most Good" by The Ezra Klein Show "This Conversation With Richard Powers Is a Gift" by The Ezra Klein ShowBook Recommendations:“Moral Capital” by Christopher Leslie Brown“The Precipice” by Toby Ord“The Scout Mindset” by Julia GalefThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.​​“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Will MacAskill of Effective Altruism Fame — The Value of Longtermism, Tools for Beating Stress and Overwhelm, AI Scenarios, High-Impact Books, and How to Save the World and Be an Agent of Change | Brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs recruitment platform with 800M+ users, Vuori comfortable and durable performance apparel, and Theragun percussive muscle therapy devices. More on all three below. William MacAskill (@willmacaskill) is an associate professor in philosophy at the University of Oxford. At the time of his appointment, he was the youngest associate professor of philosophy in the world. A Forbes 30 Under 30 social entrepreneur, he also cofounded the nonprofits Giving What We Can, the Centre for Effective Altruism, and Y Combinator-backed 80,000 Hours, which together have moved over $200 million to effective charities. You can find my 2015 conversation with Will at tim.blog/will. His new book is What We Owe the Future. It is blurbed by several guests of the podcast, including Sam Harris, who wrote, “No living philosopher has had a greater impact upon my ethics than Will MacAskill. . . . This is an altogether thrilling and necessary book.” Please enjoy! *This episode is brought to you by Vuori clothing! Vuori is a new and fresh perspective on performance apparel, perfect if you are sick and tired of traditional, old workout gear. Everything is designed for maximum comfort and versatility so that you look and feel as good in everyday life as you do working out.Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at VuoriClothing.com/Tim. Not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but you'll also enjoy free shipping on any US orders over $75 and free returns.*This episode is also brought to you by Theragun! Theragun is my go-to solution for recovery and restoration. It's a famous, handheld percussive therapy device that releases your deepest muscle tension. I own two Theraguns, and my girlfriend and I use them every day after workouts and before bed. The all-new Gen 4 Theragun is easy to use and has a proprietary brushless motor that's surprisingly quiet—about as quiet as an electric toothbrush.Go to Therabody.com/Tim right now and get your Gen 4 Theragun today, starting at only $199.*This episode is also brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Whether you are looking to hire now for a critical role or thinking about needs that you may have in the future, LinkedIn Jobs can help. LinkedIn screens candidates for the hard and soft skills you're looking for and puts your job in front of candidates looking for job opportunities that match what you have to offer.Using LinkedIn's active community of more than 800 million professionals worldwide, LinkedIn Jobs can help you find and hire the right person faster. When your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn Jobs. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit LinkedIn.com/Tim.*For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsorsSign up for Tim's email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim's books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissYouTube: youtube.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How do we find our way forward when we don't have role models or road maps?In today's episode, Nicole Antoinette joins me to discuss how she cultivates a perpetual conversation with herself. Together we explore the pressure to conform our creativity & our careers to societal expectations, the guilt that arises around meeting our needs, and the release of letting something end.Nicole Antoinette is totally obsessed with the question of how we close the gap between what we say we want and what we actually do—without being assholes to ourselves along the way. She works as a community-funded writer (Wild Letters) and podcast host (The Pop-Up Pod), and facilitates a variety of retreats and co-working groups. Offline you can probably find Nicole in the mountains—she's a long-distance hiker with 4,700 miles of experience who loves nothing more than sitting in the dirt and eating her favorite snacks after a full day of putting one foot in front of the other.Tune in to hear more about…Cultivating community and digital intimacyStruggling to find role models for honoring desire and working differentlyHaving honest conversations with ourselvesLearning to quit negotiating with our needsAccepting how our needs shift and changeChampioning more graceful endingsHang with Nicole:Find Nicole on InstagramVisit Nicole's websiteListen to Nicole's podcast, The Pop-Up PodBuy Nicole's new trail journal, What We Owe to OurselvesLove Needy? Pretty please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave a rating & review.Really love Needy? Join the Needy Podcast Inner Circle! Courses, discounts, quarterly Q&As and more for a one-time or monthly donation of any amount. Exclusively for folks who love the Needy podcast. THANK YOU.Your needs matter.