Dear longtermist,
Congratulations! While we Procrastinators struggle with getting through today, you managed to write a thousand page book on longtermism. That's an amazing work ethic to be future planning millenia in advance. In fact, we wanted to host a party for the book but we haven’t gotten round to doing it just yet. Unfortunately, we just have one small worry.
This might sound super simplified after you wrote a thousand page book on the topic, so please be kind when you read the next few paragraphs. When I think of longtermism, I think of time and extrapolating into the future. Basically, it's the very long horizon of time that is longtermism principle feature (the clue is in the name). Or in other words, the longtermist thinks of ideas (generally from Philosophy, Politics and Economics) and goes "What if the next generation and the next, and the next, and the next, ad infinitum"
My worry, clever longtermist with great time-management skills, is that this is a world of Procrastinators. There are two clarifications that us Procrastinators want to make. The first clarification is that Procrastinators are amazing at planning. We all have plans, back-up plans and back-up plans for the back-up plans. Procrastinators are procrastinators not because we don't know what to do, but because we don't do them. So, dear longtermist, a thousand page book isn't very helpful. Neither is a bucketfull of recommendations. It's easy to get distracted for the procrastinators of the world. We need ideas with teeth and discipline mechanisms.
The second clarification is no one opposes that the future is very important. We completely agree even if we may quibble over the details. "Think of the children" has been of the most effective slogans throughout history for a reason. Longtermism is insightful and thoughtful in its analysis, but the very broad takeaways are orthodox. It’s just reality to Procrastinators that some things may be very important but not urgent. Basically not a priority compared to putting out today's fires. Everyone agrees that we really should do longtermism tomorrow.
I wrote that my concern was the longtermist lives in a world of procrastinators. Sometimes, I wonder if longtermists might end up being procrastinators in all but name. So yes, longtermists, I am sorry. On the only thing that really matters to you, making effective changes to our collective future trajectory, you can count on our full support in spirit. You might have to wait for actual support though.
Yours truly,
Procrastinators of the World
Humans are well-intentioned Procrastinators
If there is one thing that could be taken away from this piece, it's that we live in a world of procrastinators. There are two sides for Longtermism: the problem and the solution. I consider that the current greatest obstacle for longtermism is actual and continuous implementation in the real world. A practical and general use for longtermism is designing commitment mechanisms for future generations such they can overcome present-bias that is currently understudied. Broadly speaking, there is popular hypothetical support for the welfare of future generations, it's simply that they are not a priority. Hence, procrastination. In the following sections, there's a more formal model of present-bias that might be useful.
Present Bias (Quasi-Hyperbolic Time discounting)
This section deals with a present bias model and the ramifications. Most readers will be vaguely familiar with utility discounting model. For every time unit further away, the value is discounted by delta. In this utility model, there is one additional step. The consumer has an additonal discount (beta) for every time period not today.
Uo=u(x0)+Bδ(x1)+Bδ2(x2)+Bδ3(x3)+...U0=u(x0)+Bt=T∑t=1δtu(xt)A question from a Graduate Microeconometrics assignment (you don't have to solve it)
It is Tuesday morning. Antoine needs to study during one full day for his micro exam on Thursday morning. His cost of studying for one day is 2. His benefit from passing the exam is 3. Antoine will pass the exam if and only if he studies during at least one full day. Assume that Antoine is a quasi-hyperbolic discounter with Beta=0.5 and delta=1, the time unit is one day. When will Antoine study in the absence of commitment? How much is Antoine willing to pay today for a commitment device that forces him to study today? How about a device that forces him to study on Wednesday?
If someone feels the urge to write out the answer, that's a professional procrastinator. My main motivation for including the entire question is this is what passes for humor in Economics. I assume my Professor was writing the questions for the exam, and he took inspiration quite literally. It also doubled as a silent rebuke to those who didn't study properly.
Moving past the working answer, Antoine is a procrastinator. He can rationally plan out the course of action for tomorrow and the future. However, when tomorrow becomes today, he is biased towards being happy today and ends up procrastinating. The final result is regret on the exam day. The second objective is that Antoine, as a self-aware procrastinator, can commit to a study plan when he is still rational. In a world of procrastinators, can longtermism do the same?
Discipline for Procrastinators
Models for evaluating future welfare in Economics are a subject of academic discussion. That's a polite way of saying there are multiple schools of thought who happily write multiple papers relying on different assumptions with no simple straight answer. However, I do think that this model is powerful for a simple reason.
People will procrastinate, and that's a problem for longtermism. Once tomorrow's imaginary pain becomes today's sacrifice, its human nature to procrastinate or try to have a good time even with a worse future. Climate change, AI risk, diets, etc all follow this pattern. Yes, procrastinators are great at making plans for tomorrow but are terrible at follow-through the next day. However, there is a particular time when people can make rational plans and create commitment mechanisms. Like Antoine in the question, give up on changing today but do it for tomorrow by creating the commitment device today.
The flip side of a procrastinator is they undervalue tomorrow's sacrifice. Normally, this is bad with good intentions lasting as long as New Year's resolutions, but it can also be useful. The right course of action is to gather the stakeholders, convince them of the general importance of a policy, create a regulatory scheme (with punishments and rewards) far in the future, and have them sign on to it. When the time approaches, they may have second thoughts, but it would be far more difficult to fall off. So far, commitment devices have been used abstractly, but could in practice mean almost any regulatory tool. This might be the subject for a future me.
Note - I would like to say that the last minute post for the essay competition was intentional as the title may suggest. It was not. Thanks to the other post on Longtermism wanting everyone to be irrational generous heros that inspired this light-hearted work.
