# Straight Dope 1/13/2023: Is longtermism the world's most dangerous belief system? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [January 13, 2023, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173 "2023-01-13T15:30:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![bretbernhoft](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bretbernhoft/32/13007_2.png) [@bretbernhoft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bretbernhoft)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/44 "2023-01-14T15:53:45Z")
I’m honestly in support of longtermism. I don’t see too much of a problem with envisioning humanity’s future, deep along the shared timeline of our species. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/45 "2023-01-14T16:00:12Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > If these people were really interested in “altruism”, the would be looking to invent something that solves real world problems for regular people. Yeah, they could invent a slogan, something like ‘promote the general welfare’. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/46 "2023-01-14T16:09:46Z")
> [@bretbernhoft](#): > > I’m honestly in support of longtermism. I don’t see too much of a problem with envisioning humanity’s future, deep along the shared timeline of our species. If this were all it were, I agree. But it, **from what I’m reading here and in the article** , LT apparently argues that investing in bettering the world _now_ is suboptimal to bettering the world _later_, and, well, that leaves me wondering (as above) when ‘later’ becomes ‘now’. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/47 "2023-01-14T16:40:20Z")
Basically, it seems to discount the worth of actual, living breathing humans no for the speculative worth of future humans on the assumption that they will surely exist in quantity. As if all the problems that might lead to a bottleneck in the human population will be surely solved eventually by… someone. Just not the longtermists. They’re like underpants gnomes: Phase 1) Extract and concentrate wealth and resources from the rest of humanity Phase 2) ? Phase 3) Utopia! ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/48 "2023-01-14T17:13:25Z")
> [@ParallelLines](#): > > The character responsible for the science’s creation, [Hari Seldon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hari_Seldon), established two [axioms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom) > - that the population whose behaviour was modelled should be sufficiently large > - that the population should remain in ignorance of the results of the application of psychohistorical analyses because if it is aware, the group changes its behaviour. The first axiom is pretty self-evident and the second is the well-known problem that any anthropologist who studies a primitive society will inevitably change that society by their very presence. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/49 "2023-01-14T18:13:52Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Third, I do have a plan for dealing with all of those potential population-ending catastrophes. All of them, including the ones that neither you nor I nor anyone else has yet anticipated. My plan is to give everyone currently on the planet the opportunity for education and the standard of living to allow for time to think, so that we’ll have the maximum possible number of well-equipped thinkers to try to anticipate the catastrophes, and to come up with ways to solve them once they become apparent. And the very first step of this plan is that we need to save all of those people from global warming and all of the other current threats. Yup. That’s the best chance we’ve got. There’s absolutely no way of telling whether some person whose misery right now isn’t supposed to matter is the one who, with access to education and good enough living conditions to be able to think straight and enough respect that somebody will listen to them, will have the solution to whichever problem(s) will otherwise finish us all off. Or who, among all the people who right now don’t have those things, that person or people might be. > [@bretbernhoft](#): > > I’m honestly in support of longtermism. I don’t see too much of a problem with envisioning humanity’s future, deep along the shared timeline of our species In the “shared timeline of our species”, most of our species are gone. Ours will be too, eventually. That’s not an essential disaster; it’s the way life works. Maybe we’ll have descendents. And there certainly is no problem with “envisioning humanity’s future”. It’s a really good idea. The problem is with attempting to ignore humanity’s (and other species’) present, in favor of an imaginary future that’s highly unlikely to even be what actually happens. As I said upthread: some of the problem with this is that it uses terminology for something we ought to be doing for the purpose of attempting to prevent us from actually doing it. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/50 "2023-01-14T19:39:03Z")
Heck, I’m just reminded of Cuffy Meigs, a character in _Atlas Shrugged_, whose response to concerns about long-term problems was “In the long run, we’ll all be dead.” It’s a convenient excuse for _any_ short-term destructive actions for immediate gain, because none of it will matter anyway. Anyone who objects to a long-termist’s ideas can be overruled by accusing them of not thinking long-term _enough_. Sure, you say my fracking operation will poison local drinking water, but ten thousand years from now our descendants will be too busy living on space colonies to worry about it. Why do you hate the idea of space colonies? What are _you_ doing to help advance progress toward space colonies? _I’m_ suppling _energy!_ ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/51 "2023-01-14T20:07:02Z")
I’m reminded of [The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fable_of_the_Dragon-Tyrant), and the life-extension crowd’s argument that every year, every _day_ we put off research into defeating aging condemns untold numbers of people to premature death. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/52 "2023-01-14T20:09:51Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > The first axiom is pretty self-evident and the second is the well-known problem that any anthropologist who studies a primitive society will inevitably change that society by their very presence. Marketing, public relations, politics, entertainment, fashion, social media thrive on manipulating their audiences essentially invisibly. You and I can say that we are aware and behave accordingly but it’s obvious that hundreds of millions are manipulated this way. And you and I don’t know enough to see all the manipulation. Nobody understands the algorithms behind big tech companies interacting with the public. That they work is manifest from the gigantic profits received. There’s Propaganda and there’s propaganda. The former is designed to be visible; the latter to be invisible. Bernays understood the difference 100 years ago, and nothing has changed about western societies since. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/53 "2023-01-14T20:21:23Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Heck, I’m just reminded of Cuffy Meigs, a character in _Atlas Shrugged_, whose response to concerns about long-term problems was “In the long run, we’ll all be dead. The original quote is from John Maynard Keynes, and is one of the principles animating Keynesianism. In a way, it’s the opposite of longtermism: Fix things today by mortgaging the future. After all, in the long run we are all dead anyway. As it turns out, the long run isn’t all that long after all. > [@Chronos](#): > > My plan is to give everyone currently on the planet the opportunity for education and the standard of living to allow for time to think, so that we’ll have the maximum possible number of well-equipped thinkers to try to anticipate the catastrophes, and to come up with ways to solve them once they become apparent. And the very first step of this plan is that we need to save all of those people from global warming and all of the other current threats. Free minds, free markets. The wisdom of crowds. I agree with you completely, which is why I pointed to centralization of power as an existential risk. Communist societies didn’t under-compete the west in innovation because they had worse scientists, they under-competed because they had no mechanism to harness the minds of millions of citizens and incentivize them to be creative, take risks, and build new things. To be clear, it’s not just about educating people and ‘giving them tools’. The Soviet citizens were quite well educated. The key to unleashing that potential is to give them the right to property, the ability to make their lives better from their own efforts, and a stable society in which wealth is not simply stolen by the local warlord every time someone does something successful. You probably also need a high-trust society so people can trade and bargain and cooperate freely, and free but well regulated markets. Those things are hard to build, and easy to lose. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/54 "2023-01-14T20:38:23Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Marketing, public relations, politics, entertainment, fashion, social media thrive on manipulating their audiences essentially invisibly. You and I can say that we are aware and behave accordingly but it’s obvious that hundreds of millions are manipulated this way. “I think I learned that ads work more strongly on the unconscious than even we in the profession had thought. I was shocked repeatedly to hear advertising referred to as “that crap.” I was at first puzzled and then gratified to see it sink in and take effect anyway.” -_The Space Merchants_ ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/55 "2023-01-14T20:54:05Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > “I think I learned that ads work more strongly on the unconscious than even we in the profession had thought. I was shocked repeatedly to hear advertising referred to as “that crap.” I was at first puzzled and then gratified to see it sink in and take effect anyway.” -_The Space Merchants_ Except for all the times it, y’know, _doesn’t_ take effect. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/56 "2023-01-14T21:19:52Z")
> [@Mr.E](#): > > I very much doubt many of the biggest and richest proponents of longtermism are ready to to accept this fact Yeah, every couple generations someone formulates a new philosophy which basically boils down to “I don’t want to stop being a selfish asshole, so here’s some handwaving to justify my pre-existing behavior.” Social Darwinism, Randian objectivism, longtermism, it’s all the same self-serving horseshit. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/57 "2023-01-14T21:32:59Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > > [@Lumpy](#): > > > > “I think I learned that ads work more strongly on the unconscious than even we in the profession had thought. I was shocked repeatedly to hear advertising referred to as “that crap.” I was at first puzzled and then gratified to see it sink in and take effect anyway.” -_The Space Merchants_ > > ⁢ > > Except for all the times it, y’know, _doesn’t_ take effect. ⁢ While it doesn’t affect everyone, it does seem to affect enough people to be valuable. Companies do A/B testing all the time to see if advertising helps or not, and they clearly decide it does help. Though, of course, “unconscious” is inaccurate. It’s just that you subconsciously think about what you’ve been exposed to the most. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/58 "2023-01-14T21:51:39Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > While it doesn’t affect everyone, it does seem to effect enough people to be valuable. Companies do A/B testing all the time to see if advertising helps or not, and they clearly decide it does help. Well, sure; but, since it’s January, let’s take, say, the movies that were in theaters last year. You can’t even say _“the movie with Margot Robbie that flopped and, even without counting the money spent on marketing, failed to break even despite all the money spent on marketing,”_ because I wouldn’t know which one you meant. You could instead describe **Devotion** or **Moonfall** or whatever in such a way that (a) I’d know what you’re talking about, because I saw ads for them, and so (b) you could thus get me to comment on just how much money they lost, because the ads didn’t suffice, consciously or unconsciously or subconsciously or whatever; and we could of course go with yet other examples of flops if you’d like. My point is, the companies that clearly decided to put up the money for those — and, again, for yet _other_ would-be moneymakers — apparently had reason to believe they’d get their money back and then some, except, oopsie, they didn’t; sometimes they didn’t even get _halfway_ there, even if you don’t count the money spent on marketing, and more so if you do. If we were to talk about advertising for candidates for political office, that’d be different; obviously one campaign has to fail when the other one wins, so there’ll always be a story to tell about the marketing that didn’t take. But — did there _have_ to be movies that flopped, or did the marketing just not take _anyway?_ ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/59 "2023-01-14T22:02:47Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > “I think I learned that ads work more strongly on the unconscious than even we in the profession had thought. I was shocked repeatedly to hear advertising referred to as “that crap.” I was at first puzzled and then gratified to see it sink in and take effect anyway.” -_The Space Merchants_ > [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Except for all the times it, y’know, _doesn’t_ take effect. “Half my advertising spend is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” That’s attributed to department store magnate John Wanamaker, who probably never said it. But if he did, he said it in the 19th century. Pohl and Kornbluth jumped into the discussion very late. Mass advertising doesn’t have to be 100% effective. We’re at a point where 1% effectiveness is profitable. I left advertising off my list deliberately. Advertising is not supposed to be invisible. It depends on visibility; insidiousness is a secondary effect. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/60 "2023-01-14T22:18:44Z")
Longtermism seems to be an excuse for billionaires to avoid tax and say they are benefitting the world by contributing to even more important projects. As a longtermist, Musk has appropriated many of the names and labels from Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels, a science fiction series describing a utopian ultra-high-tech civilisation. Trouble is, Musk is an anarchocapitalist, and Banks and the Culture were anarchosocialist in philosophy. Banks recognised the importance of taxes, equality and democracy, and would despise Musk’s elitist version of longtermism. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2023, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/61 "2023-01-14T22:49:49Z")
Oh, and Cecil’s ultimate defense of longtermism rings a lot like a defense I’ve heard of Hitler: Say what you like about him, but he did personally kill the most evil man of the 20th century. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2023, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/62 "2023-01-15T00:31:38Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > Longtermism seems to be an excuse for billionaires to avoid tax and say they are benefitting the world by contributing to even more important projects. Yes. It’s not so popular to say “I don’t want to pay for public transit.” Much more popular to say “in the future we’re going to build something ten times better than public transit!” “In the long term” is a more popular and jazzed-up way to say “never.” ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2023, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173/63 "2023-01-15T02:07:14Z")
Isn’t Xeno’s arrow ever going to hit the target? How’s many terms has it been? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-dope-1-13-2023-is-longtermism-the-worlds-most-dangerous-belief-system/978173.md?page=4)