What We Owe The Future: Difference between revisions

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 :—Roger Waters, ''Your Possible Pasts''}}
-===Be careful what you wish for===
+===Of lived and not-yet-lived experience===
-Per the [[entropy|second law of thermodynamics]] but pace Pink Floyd, there is but ''one'' possible past, ''one'' possible now, and an infinite array of  possible futures stretching out into an unknown black void. Some short, some long, some dystopian, some enlightened. Some cut off by apocalypse, some fading gently into warm entropic soup.
+Per the [[entropy|second law of thermodynamics]] but ''pace'' Pink Floyd, there is but ''one'' possible past, ''one'' possible now, and an infinite array of  possible futures stretching out into an unknown black void. Some short, some long, some dystopian, some enlightened. Some cut off by apocalypse, some fading gently into warm [[Entropy|entropic]] soup.
-William MacAskill’s premise is this: barring near-term cataclysm, there are so many more people in our species’ future than in its present, that our  duty of care to them swamps our interests in each other in the present.
+William MacAskill’s rather Roman Catholic premise is this: barring near-term cataclysm, there are so many more people in our future than in our present, that our  duty of care to the sacred unborn swamps our interests in the here and now.
 We are minding the shop not just for our children and grandchildren but for generations millennia hence. ''Thousands'' of millennia hence.
-But the causal chain behind us is unbroken back to where records begin. The probability, now, of each historical event is 1. It is easy to be wise in hindsight.
+MacAskill does what financiers might call “linear interpolation” to deduce from what we know has happened, a theory about how we should  discharge that duty to the unimagined horde.
-It is a different story out in front. Alternate possibilities branch every which way into the infinite. Over a generation or two we have a fair, if imperfect, chance of anticipating and making rough provision for our progeny. [[Darwin’s Dangerous Idea|Darwin’s dangerous algorithm]] naturally wires us to do this.
+Before wondering how beings not yet thought of can have priority over ones who are already here, the gating question that MacAskill glosses over is this: how do we even know who these putative beings will be, let alone which of their interests are worth protecting?
-But over millions of years — being the average lifespan of a mammalian species, MacAskill informs us — the gargantuan mass of non-linear interactions between trillions of co-evolving organisms in our hypercomplex ecosystem, ''anything'' could happen.
+=== An infinity of possibilities ===
+We can manufacture plausible stories about whence we came easily enough: that’s what scientists and historians do, though they have a hard time agreeing with each other. The future is a different story. No-one has the first clue. Alternative possibilities branch every which way.
-Causality may or may not be true, but forward progress in an open ecosystem of independent agents is [[non-linear]]. There is no “if-this-then-that” over five years, let alone fifty, let alone ''five million''.
+Now, over a generation or two we some prospect of anticipating who  our progeny might be and what they might want. [[Darwin’s Dangerous Idea|Darwin’s dangerous algorithm]] wires us, naturally, to do this.
-This concern for generations unborn does feel a bit Catholic. Should we be playing Gods when we are sitting in their lap?
+But over millions of years — “the average lifespan of a mammalian species,” MacAskill informs us — the gargantuan number of chaotic interactions between the trillions of co-evolving organisms, mechanisms, systems and algorithms that comprise our hypercomplex ecosystem, mean literally ''anything'' could happen. There are ''squillions'' of possible futures. Each has its own unique set of putative inheritors. Don’t we owe them ''all'' a duty?
-===In infinity of possibilities===
+What a conflict.
-MacAskill proceeds as if he knows who our future generations are. But that is to confuse hindsight (easy) with foresight (hard). We ''don’t'' know. Decisions we make now to prefer one outcome is surely to disfavour an infinity of others.
+For if the grand total of unborn interests down the pathway time’s arrow eventually takes out drown the assembled present, then those interests, in turn, are drowned out all the more definitively by the collected interests of those down the literally infinite number of possible pathways time’s arrow ''doesn’t'' end up taking. Who are we to judge?
+Causality may or may not be true, but still forward progress  is [[non-linear]]. There is no “if-this-then-that” over five years, let alone fifty, let alone ''a million''. Each of these gazillion branching pathways is a possible future. Only one can come true. We don’t, and ''can’t'', know which one it will be.
+And here is the rub: [[Butterfly effect|butterfly wings]] in Amazon rainforests causing typhoons in Manila: ''anything'' and ''everything'' we do infinitesimally and ineffably alters the calculus, re-routing evolutionary design forks and making this outcome or that more likely.  Decisions we make now that transpire to prefer one outcome surely disfavour an infinity of others. So isn
+If you take causal regularities for granted then all you need to be wise in hindsight is enough data. In this story, the [[Causation|causal chain]] behind us is unbroken back to where records begin —  the probability of an event happening when it has already happened is ''one hundred percent''; never mind that we’ve had to be quite imaginative in reconstructing it.
+We ''don’t'' know.
 Don’t ''all'' these possible futures deserve equal consideration? If yes, then ''anything'' we do will benefit some future, so there is nothing to see here. If ''no'', how do we arbitrate between our possible futures, if not by reference to our own values? In that case is this really “altruism” or just motivated selfish behaviour?