Hi everyone, I’m slowly becoming familiar with EA in general and longtermism in particular, and I have a question. It occurs to me that if our ancestors had thought more about the long term impacts of their actions, today’s world might be a better place than it currently is. For example, resources that were depleted long ago, such as the forests that once grew on Rapa Nui (also known as Easter Island) and much of Iceland and now extinct species such as the passenger pigeon, would still exist. My question is this: Have advocates of longtermism used this sort of argument? Would it be a useful argument for them to adopt?
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Hi Lee,
Well, yes, if our ancestors had made better decisions that would have helped.
My impression as an almost ancestor myself, is that previous generations were pretty forward looking in that it was pretty common for people to sacrifice their own needs for the benefit of their children. That's still quite common obviously.
It seems they were forward looking when they launched the Industrial Revolution, they just didn't know all the implications of that at the time.
A great many of our ancestors didn't have the luxury of forward thinking such as we consider it here on the forum. My grandfather's father died of TB when my grandfather was 11. The family was thrown out on the street when they couldn't make the next rent payment, and my grandfather went on to work 6 and half days a week for the rest of his life. He raised 4 kids during the Depression, no small accomplishment. His oldest child will be 100 next week.
Anyway, our ancestors typically had quite a bit on their plates. In spite of that, they built the modern civilization we now enjoy.
Hi Phil,
Thanks for your insightful comment! You're quite right that being able to consider the long term future when making decisions about one's own life requires a certain level of affluence. So I'm sure you're right that most of our ancestors, including mine as well as yours, couldn't afford to do so. My question, however, is less about what actually happened in the past and more about how advocates of longtermism make their argument, whether anyone has put forward this sort of argument, and whether it would be useful to do so. If you have any thoughts about that, I'd love to hear them!