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What We Owe The Future: Difference between revisions
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William MacAskill’s premise is this: barring near-term cataclysm, there are so many more people in our future than in the present, that our duty of care to this horde of sacred unborn swamps any concern for the here and now. This feels a bit Roman Catholic except Catholics require at least conception before rights arise.when it isn’t feeling like a manifesto for Neo-Calvinism. | William MacAskill’s premise is this: barring near-term cataclysm, there are so many more people in our future than in the present, that our duty of care to this horde of sacred unborn swamps any concern for the here and now. This feels a bit Roman Catholic except Catholics require at least conception before rights arise.when it isn’t feeling like a manifesto for Neo-Calvinism. | ||
Anyhow: we are minding the shop not just for our children and grandchildren but for generations unconceived — in every sense of the word | Anyhow: we are minding the shop not just for our children and grandchildren but for generations unconceived — in every sense of the word — millennia hence. ''Thousands'' of millennia hence. | ||
MacAskill uses what financiers might call “linear interpolation” to deduce, from what has already happened in the world, a theory about what will happen, and | What is our duty, though? What are their expectations? MacAskill uses what financiers might call “linear interpolation” to deduce, from what has already happened in the world, a theory about what will happen, and what we should therefore do to accommodate this as-yet-unimagined throng. But the gating question he glosses over is this: how do we even know who these putative beings will be, let alone what their interests are, let alone which of them is worth protecting? | ||
=== An infinity of possibilities === | === 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. | 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. Where we are going, on the other hand, is a different matter. We don’t have the first clue. Evolution makes no predictions. Alternative possibilities branch every which way. The forward possibilities of a game as simple as [[chess]] become incalculable, even with ENIAC, within five moves. Organic life is quite a lot more complicated than that | ||
So, over a generation or two we some dim 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. | |||
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? | 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? Doesn’t action to promote the interests of one branch consign infinitely more to oblivion? | ||
Who are we to play with such cosmic dice? With what criteria? By reference to whose morality? An uncomfortable regression through storeys of turtles and elephants beckons. | |||
For if the grand total of unborn interests down the pathway time’s arrow eventually takes out | For if the grand total of unborn interests down the pathway time’s arrow eventually takes drowns out the assembled present, then those interests, in turn, are drowned out 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. | 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. | ||