Estimated reading time: 20-30 minutes

-We would like to thank the following for their excellent feedback and guidance throughout this article, in no particular order: Tyler M. John, Max Stauffer, Aksel Braanen Sterri, Eirik Mofoss, Samuel Hilton, Konrad Seifert, Tildy Stokes, Erik Aunvåg Matsen and Marcel Grewal Sommerfelt.

0.0 Introduction

This article is co-authored by five members of Effective Altruism Norway as a pilot project to test if we can contribute in a valuable way to the emerging field of longtermism and policy making.

In the article we summarize some of the work that is being done in the emerging field of longtermism, using a new structure to classify the different interventions (see Figure 1: Three objectives of longtermist policy making). Then, for each objective we describe related challenges and potential solutions, and give some examples of current ongoing work.

We hope that the new structure can help improve coordination in this emerging field, and enable improved prioritization of interventions. If this structure resonates well with established experts in the field, we are happy to write up a shorter version of this article that could serve as an introduction to longtermist policy making for non-experts. Already, at 17 pages this article is one fourth of the length of the GPI research agenda, which covers many of the same topics.

Finally, we have emphasized some aspects of longtermist policy making that we believe have been underemphasized in the effective altruism- and longtermism communities in the past. Examples include scenario planning, robust decision making and redteaming among others, which we have described together with forecasting in section 2.1 as essential epistemic capabilities for long-term governance. These tools are complementary to forecasting-based epistemic capabilities that the EA/longtermist communities already promote, and we hope that they will receive increased attention going forward.

We hope to produce 1-3 further articles on similar topics through 2021, and welcome any experts who have capacity to provide feedback on our work.

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In 2019 William MacAskill proposed a definition of the term longtermism as the view that those who live at future times matter just as much, morally, as those who live today. There are many reasons to believe that actions ...

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