Most people in EA are afraid of extinction risk. If the expected value of human is net positive, then we really should prevent human's extinction. There are a lot of uncertainties, such as:AI, the importance of s-risk, the evolution of human... I think human's future is like chaos . Can we estimate human's future is net-positive or net-negative objectively? or we can only rely on our moral intuition?
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I think this is a good and important question. I also agree that humanity's predicament in 500 years is wildly unpredictable.
But there are some considerations that can guide our guess:
- Almost everyone wants to improve their own lives; few people want to make their own lives worse for the sake of it
- Some people want to improve the lives of others for the sake of it; few people want to harm others for the sake of it
- Technological progress tends to enable people to get more of what they want; in this case the things that improve their lives
- If humans are still around in 500 years, we should expect them to be more technologically advanced — since it seems easier to learn new capabilities than to entirely forget old ones
If you begin totally unsure whether the future is good or bad in expectation, then considerations like these might break the symmetry (while remaining entirely open to the possibility that the future is bad).
This post might also be useful; it recomplicates things by giving some considerations on the other side.
In addition to Fin's considerations and the excellent post by Jacy Anthis, I find Michael Dickens' analysis to be useful and instructive. What We Owe The Future also contains a discussion of these issues.
Thanks for your sharing very much, when I read this, I feel it's a little unnatural, weird. If we discuss long-term future, humans might face aliens, another civilization,superintelligence... Humans' personality may change by evolution. I feel like the prediction is too subjective.
Thanks for your answers very much. In summarize, though the destiny of human is hard to predict, but since human is mostly altruistic, and humans are good at improving our lifes, so it's net positive.It really makes sense to me. But I'm still very unsure about this, because: 1.We may need to consider suffering-focused ethics or cases like hedonic treadmill. 2.Are humans really altruistic? Will we be more selfish if we're facing disasters? 3.Are we too optimistic and naive on our future? I think they are moral uncertainties.
This blog post also comments on this question. I think it's got a lot of blind spots, but also a lot of good points! https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/the-expected-value-of-extinction-risk-reduction-is-positive#fn-fn-40
In addition to Fin's considerations and the excellent post by Jacy Anthis, I find Michael Dickens' analysis to be useful and instructive. What We Owe The Future also contains a discussion of these issues.