I find this argument compelling - most methodologies for inter-temporal decision making acknowledge the large uncertainties associated with the future, and, either explicitly or implicitly, avoid making claims about the distant future, either in terms of what plans we should make for the future, or in how future states should affect our current plans.

There is no reason to believe that the proponents of longtermism have addressed this issue - indeed if they had it would be a very significant breakthrough, and we could apply their method to more immediate problems as well. What seems much more likely is that they have not addressed the issue at all, and that their purported accounting is really just a regurgitation of their prior beliefs, and thus, as the article suggests, consequently serves only to justify the existing behaviours of those who subscribe to it.

The latter part however ("and that's bad") is not well supported at all. That's what the article argues by emotional appeals. For a counterexample, most of the harms of climate change are still in the future, so addressing it is focusing on longer-term risks. And wouldn't it have been easier if we had started addressing it 20 years ago?

To use the same example, extreme harm from climate change (e.g. thousands dead from heatwaves) is very likely, but ultimately still hypothetical -- it has not happened yet. The only difference with existential risks is the degree of hypotheticalness. And when the harm is high enough, why not take the somewhat supported hypotheticals seriously?

-- I'd agree with the addition "risks so long term that any calculation of their value is wholly implausible, risks such as the risk of humanity 'not colonizing the galaxy'"

-- And yeah, the article pretty explicitly puts the situation as, this is the long view taken to the level of absurdity.

It doesn't appear to attempt to make actual arguments.

I think the article's mostly just an emotional appeal. I'd speculate that the argument-like content is meant as flavoring, to make the raw emotionalism less unpalatable.

> that "Longtermism" is weighing purely hypothetical future things more than present things

(please forgive the splicing). That is an accurate representation of longtermism as far as I can tell, because the future is inherently hypothetical (we don't know it yet).

But this is not arguing that longtermism is true, or false, or beneficial, or harmful. It's just stating its content, and expecting that the reader becomes disgusted by it.

The reason I spliced your comment is that the part

> (and basic incalculable)

is not necessarily true. The article does not really argue for or against the proposition of whether we can estimate the amount of future lives with any accuracy.

The article does not really argue for or against the proposition of whether we can estimate the amount of future lives with any accuracy.

Yes, the article makes that more or less tacit assumption that making decisions based on far hypotheticals is a mistakes. I think that's reasonable assumption that most people would agree with.

I would also note that Bostrom and company never claim that they calculate the odds of their existential dangers. In Bostrome's book Superintelligence, he is clear that he cannot calculate any odds. The only thing they do is (implicitly) assume that it's possible to reason about the purely hypothetical in the fashion that one can reason about the clearly possible. But is something one argue against fairly plausibly; I don't know the odds of me getting sick or my car breaking down but because it's possible, I have to prepare for it. I can't use the same reasoning with chances of aliens landing or the sun exploding or any event where I don't have enough information to demonstrate it's plausibility as possibility, so to speak.

And sure, I haven't proved aliens landing isn't a possibility.

While there may be legitimate philosophical issues that could be addressed in a scholarly manner, I feel like the article is written like celebrity-gossip from a tabloid. Seems more about flinging mud than anything intellectual.

> a “small misstep for mankind,” however terrible a “massacre for man” it might otherwise be.

and

> You ought to care equally about people no matter when they exist, whether today, next year, or in a couple billion years henceforth

This means that there is put value on unborn, potentially possible lifes. And then you can start weighing these lifes against currently living humans. And then it becomes perfectly reasonable to perform genocide on impaired, or poor people as this would free up resources to focus on colonizing the solar system.

I think this is a particular counter argument where this kind of weighting human lifes becomes a bad idea. Especially when comparing current actual living, breathing humans against potential future beeings. This absolutely neglects the needs of current humans, with all their human rights to be able to get the share in the world they require to live in dignity.

If not for the value of future human life, perhaps we should crank up CO2 production and go out with one hell of a party. We might be able to minimize the impact to most people living today if we double our fossil fuel use. Replace the green new deal with a huge party fund.