The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”
Something I&#x27;ve never quite understood is the (tacit) judgment that the end of the human race would be a bad thing, and that creating more people is inherently a good thing. And in fact, that it would maybe be acceptable to allow a large fraction of people to suffer if it ensured the propagation of humanity.<p>It makes sense <i>why</i> this is such a common judgment – individuals with the drive to reproduce and ensure the perpetuation of their progeny are more likely to have surviving progeny, so the population is dominated by this kind of individual.<p>But people talk about a species as if it was a living individual. It&#x27;s not! a species can&#x27;t feel hurt; its <i>members</i> can feel hurt. A species cannot prefer to continue to live (over the millenia); its <i>members</i> can prefer to live (for the duration of their own time on earth).<p>In some cases talking about a species is just metonymy, or shorthand, but in other cases I don&#x27;t think that usage fits. For example, if &quot;we must ensure the human race persists&quot; is just shorthand, it&#x27;s shorthand for &quot;people should have children&quot;, and it&#x27;s strange to insist that other persons have the personal desire to have children.<p>When someone is suffering, e.g. from depression, we can encourage them to continue to live for hope of a time where they aren&#x27;t suffering (by helping them imagine a plausible, happier future), which to them might be worth enduring their present circumstances. In other words, we want to help them make a better-informed decision about their own life or death by reminding them that their current outlook is strongly colored by their current mental state.<p>But when it comes to a species, the future will not be experienced by any of its currently living members – it will be experienced by individuals who don&#x27;t yet exist! And if they are never born, they&#x27;ve not been robbed of life or had a preference violated (because there&#x27;s no one <i>to</i> rob or disregard).<p>The philosophy is much more complicated than I&#x27;m presenting, but I wanted to say <i>something</i> on the matter, if only because it&#x27;s the sort of questioning I wish I saw more often.