Flourishing futures

LessWrong (2009) Fun theory, LessWrong Wiki, June 25.

Fun Theory, LessWrong

Pearce, David (1995/2007)(1995) The Hedonistic Imperative, BLTC Research.Research (updated 2007).

Pearce, David (1995/2007) The Hedonistic Imperative, BLTC Research.

dystopia | existential security | Future of Humanity Institute | Future of Life Institute | hedonium | hellish existential catastrophe | Invincible Wellbeing | long reflection | long-term future | longtermism | motivational | transhumanism | welfare biology

• A better understanding of how positive the future might be or is likely to be is relevant to the question of how much to prioritise reducing existential risks.
• A better understanding of how good and likely various flourishing futures are, and what would make them more or less likely, could aid in generating, prioritising among, and implementing longtermist interventionsinterventions.
• Having clearer pictures of how the future might go extremely well could aid in building support for work to reduce existential risksrisks.
• A better understanding of what futures should be steered towards might aid in working out which scenarios might constitute unrecoverable dystopias or unrecoverable collapses (i.e., existential catastrophes other than extinction).

It seems possible that the long-term future could take some extremely good forms. Such futures could be described as flourishingFlourishing futures, utopias, ideal futures, or simply (highly) positive futures.are expressions used to describe the extremely good forms that the long-term future could assume.

BibliographyFurther reading

It seems possible that the long-term future could take some extremely good forms. Such futures could be described as flourishing futures, utopias, ideal futures, or perhaps simply (highly) positive futures.

dystopia | existential security | hedonium | hellish existential catastrophe | long reflection | long-term future | longtermism | motivationmotivational | transhumanism

Fun Theory, LessWrong

Cotton-barratt,Barratt, Owen & Toby Ord (2015) Existential risk and existential hope: Definitions, Technical Report #2015-1, Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford.