Longtermism critique goes viral: from mosquito nets to 500-million-year math gone absurd
banteg · x · 2026-09-18
- banteg shared and quoted visakanv's critique of longtermism within effective altruism.
- The quoted greentext traces a familiar arc: start with spreadsheet-optimized giving (malaria nets), then follow the logic—future people count too → grandchildren → 500 years → 5000 → 500 million years—until a calculator shows any present-day donation's expected lives saved are swamped by far-future population, rendering the reasoning absurd.
- visakanv's "antidote": imagine any longtermist from history acting on the information they had, and prediction errors quickly prove inevitable and ruinous.
- A companion post argues for a humbler time horizon: 0.1% of thinking beyond 5 lifetimes, 40% on one lifetime, 60% on the next 50 years.
More from AGI Musings
- Alpha School investigation: 17 campuses on probation, Bill Ackman as shadow lead, Holmes involved — benjaminjriley · 2026-11-02
- Google's chief economist: AI will transform more jobs than it kills — gains come from redesigning workflows — danielrock · 2026-11-02
- Daniel Lemire: AI is exploding demand for boring compute, server CPUs to double — lemire · 2026-11-02
- Alignment researcher: the word "aligned" implies consistencies that don't exist — davidmanheim · 2026-11-02
- By 2035, Indian Parents Will Ask How Many Agents You Manage, Not Your Salary — theteknosaur · 2026-11-02
- Under 5% of US consumers pay for AI, yet compute demand is already forcing usage cuts — NinaDSchick · 2026-11-02