By William MacAskill
A moral case for longtermism
Subject
Themes
Longtermism begins with three premises that, taken together, carry extraordinary weight. Future people matter morally no less than those alive today. The number of people who could exist in the future is astronomically large, potentially outnumbering everyone who has ever lived by a factor of ten thousand or more. And the actions taken by the present generation genuinely shape what kind of future those people will inherit. From these foundations, a single conclusion emerges: positively influencing the long-term trajectory of civilisation is among the most important things anyone can do.
Longtermism begins with three premises that, taken together, carry extraordinary weight. Future people matter morally no less than those alive today. The number of people who could exist in the future is astronomically large, potentially outnumbering everyone who has ever lived by a factor of ten…
What We Owe the Future appeared in August 2022 at a moment of extraordinary convergence for the ideas it champions. The effective altruism movement, which had spent over a decade building institutional credibility through organisations like GiveWell, 80,000 Hours, and the Centre for Effective…
Temporal impartiality is the principle that a person's moral status does not diminish simply because they happen to be born later rather than sooner. A child who will be harmed in a century matters just as much as a child who will be harmed tomorrow. This idea, deceptively simple in its formulation,…
Throughout history, moments of political consolidation have determined which sets of values persist and which are eliminated. The most vivid illustration comes from ancient China. During the Warring States era following the collapse of the Zhou dynasty, four major philosophical traditions competed…
Human civilisation is far more fragile than it appears. The Roman Empire, which at its peak in AD 100 possessed central heating, advanced concrete, stadiums seating over 150,000 people, a sophisticated banking system, and international trade networks spanning continents, collapsed so thoroughly that…
Moral progress is real, but it is neither inevitable nor irreversible. The history of slavery provides the most striking demonstration of both claims. Slavery was practised in virtually every human civilisation for millennia. The Roman Empire enslaved at least 10 percent of its population. The Arab…
Technological progress is not a constant. Throughout history, periods of extraordinary advancement, termed "efflorescences," have risen and then stalled. The Islamic Golden Age produced algorithms, algebra, and the Hindu-Arabic number system before its scientific momentum slowed from the twelfth…
Future people count. There could be a lot of them. Present actions can make their lives go better. These three premises form the foundation of longtermism, a moral framework arguing that positively influencing the long-term future is among the most important priorities of our time. The moral…
Prehistoric humans shaped the modern world through choices whose consequences they could never have foreseen. Africa retains far more megafauna than any other continent, not because of its particular environment but because African animals evolved alongside humans and learnt to treat Homo sapiens as…
Slavery was practised nearly everywhere throughout human history. In the Roman Empire, at least 10 percent of the population was enslaved. The Arab slave trade, stretching from modern-day Morocco to Oman, lasted until the twentieth century and enslaved roughly twelve million people from Africa,…
In sixth-century BC China, the collapse of the Zhou dynasty sparked the Warring States era and a golden age of philosophical experimentation later known as the Hundred Schools of Thought. Four leading philosophies competed for influence. Confucianism, associated with Master Kong (Confucius),…
The Spaceguard programme demonstrates that humanity can successfully manage extinction-level risks when it chooses to act. The programme was inspired by Arthur C. Clarke's 1973 novel Rendezvous with Rama, which imagined a government early-warning system for Earth-bound threats from space. For years,…
In AD 100, the Roman Empire represented the pinnacle of human achievement. Roman citizens enjoyed central heating, double glazing for public baths, and concrete that was in some ways more durable than modern equivalents. The Colosseum seated over 50,000 people; the Circus Maximus accommodated…
Throughout history, periods of extraordinary technological and economic progress have repeatedly risen and then stalled. The Islamic Golden Age, centred in Baghdad during the eleventh century, produced an astonishing array of innovations. The words "algorithm" and "algebra" both come from Arabic,…
Derek Parfit, widely regarded as one of the most important moral philosophers of the twentieth century, dedicated over four decades at All Souls College, Oxford, to confronting the deepest questions in ethics. His daily routine was deliberately austere: the same outfit, the same meals, every day,…
Returning to the thought experiment of living every sentient life in chronological order, the picture transforms dramatically once non-human animals enter the calculation. The total vertebrate experience across Earth's history amounts to roughly a hundred billion trillion years, of which…
The Aymara people of South America possess a linguistic feature found in almost no other culture: their language places the future behind the speaker and the past in front. The rationale is elegant. The past is known and visible, like something you can see before your eyes, while the future is…
By William MacAskill
Subject
Themes
Longtermism begins with three premises that, taken together, carry extraordinary weight. Future people matter morally no less than those alive today. The number of people who could exist in the future is astronomically large, potentially outnumbering everyone who has ever lived by a factor of ten thousand or more. And the actions taken by the present generation genuinely shape what kind of future those people will inherit. From these foundations, a single conclusion emerges: positively influencing the long-term trajectory of civilisation is among the most important things anyone can do.