Listen to the episode:

You can find the shownotes through this link.

---

Are you interested in what we owe the future? Our summary today works with the book titled What we owe the future from 2022 by William MacAskill, based on my reading experience and other summaries, linked in the shownotes. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see what future prospects are there for the really long run and how we can influence them. This book describes the unprecedented opportunities for humanity to influence the future and its numerous generations for the better or worse. I hope this gives you some food for thought this time of the year or anytime and how to move forward.

[intro music]

Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss.

[music]

Will MacAskill wrote an unapologetically optimistic but also realistic guide to ethical living in our times. Humanity’s history is surprisingly short compared to the possible future it could have. Longtermism is a major part of the book’s ideology with population ethics which may sound depressing but the result is rather upbeat and hopeful. Although the author is a philosophy professor thus probably giving the idea of a very theoretical and hard to read document, the book is practical and makes you think about your choices without pressing on self-denial, minimalism and such.

MacAskill makes a strong case for caring for the future people. Longtermism is the idea that positively influencing the longterm future is a key moral priority of our time, not just making things less bad, but actually making them better. Longtermism has three overarching arguments: 1. Future people matter, 2. The future could be enormously terrific or terrible, and 3. We can positively influence the long-term. Future people matter intuitively, and if not, MacAskill had examined the major counterarguments still arriving to the same conclusion. There could be far more people in the future, future generations could easily outweigh the present and past ones, thus their wellbeing and happiness can be a major factor in our decisions today. Finally, the book presents exemplary areas where individuals can have influence on the future.

Longtermism is about taking seriously just how big the future can be and how high the stakes are in shaping it. This means we need to think about the existential risks for humanity. We must ensure that civilization would rebound if it collapsed, counter the end of moral progress and prepare for a planet where the smartest beings are digital. The book recounts the big challenges – the potential existential crises of our time: climate change, AI, ideological rigidity with value lock-in. nuclear wars, engineered pandemics, and alike. However, the investigations go far beyond the usual 30-50 years span and include the millions of years with thousands of generations in the future. Climate change is devastating for our time if we do not act on it, but it will be more devastating, even can create extinction in the future. This is because if something really-really bad happens and the future generations need to start over the industrialisation period, the easily accessible fossil fuels will be all gone hindering or completely obstructing future progress. Thus, it is even more important to turn to renewable energy sources today to preserve the fossil fuels for the future generations. Hopefully, they will never use it, but if they need it, then we did our efforts to help them. Such ideas paint a new picture of the already known challenges.

However, not only the challenges receive new lights, the solutions do too. Solutions are not merely a question of making the best of a bad job – doing what we can to ensure the coming lives are not entirely awful. We have the chance to bring about untold quantities of greater future happiness too. It is better for an extra human to come into being than otherwise assuming they reach a threshold level of happiness. Population ethics is the philosophical field which works with and investigates such questions of future generations. Thus, it is our moral responsibility to provide such lives and happiness, because preventing the existence of a happy and flourishing life is a moral loss. This is the ultimate reason for longtermism: we should save the climate, control AI, stop pandemics, not only to prevent suffering for current and descendant generations, but because the end of humanity would mean trillions of potentially happy lives unlived.

The question is whether we can really do all that much to help future billions. MacAskill is certain that we are uniquely placed to do so because we live in an era with unprecedented rapid change that can’t last much longer. So we have the power and the opportunity to influence the future, and coming generations may not have such situation. Individuals can target specific actions through their career or financial resources, voting and activism and everyone has the chance to do so. Although a person can choose to have major lifestyle changes, MacAskill argues that the other options are much more effective. With such choices, the book promises a life both less burdened by ethical guilt and much more effective in helping humanity.

The book is a guide for making the future go better. Humanity’s written history spans only five thousand years, but its future can last for millions more. Staggering numbers of people will lead lives of flourishing or misery or never live at all, depending on what we do today. You can have a life you truly enjoy and in which you take that enjoyment seriously enough to want the same or better for billions more humans to come.

[music]

---

What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

---

[music]

Finally, as the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Longtermism is the idea that positively influencing the longterm future is a key moral priority of our time, not just making things less bad, but actually making them better.
2. There are actions we can take to influence the future based on the presented exemplary problem areas and prevent existential risks.
3. If we make wise choice today, our grandchildren’s grandchildren will thrive, knowing we did everything we could to give them a world full of justice, hope and beauty.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. What do you think about longtermism? Can you accept it? How can you incorporate it in your everyday life?
2. Which problem areas do interest you?
3. How would you like to leave the Earth and humanity for your grandchildren’s grandchildren?
4. What do you do to leave it like that?

[outro music]

---