I agree, Longtermism fails on its own terms. If you take the present as instrumental to the future, then the same logic applies next week, next year, next century. It sounds like quite a poor way to go through life.
For me, the even bigger theoretical failure is that Longtermism shows an excessive amount of confidence in the power of planning. Even greater even than that exhibited by the Communists of the 20th century, who tried to plan their way to utopia (and failed). At least they were only thinking in decades!
The world is an exceedingly complex interdependent system, and such systems are notoriously hard to plan or predict. Culture, the economy, and most everything else that matters, goes in fits and start, backwards and forwards. Try to push things in one direction, and it's almost 50/50 whether you actually move them in that direction or the opposite, or most likely, sideways.
Also, trying to plan for aims in the far future shows a complete disregard for the developing preferences of future generations.
Trying to do good requires subtlety and a measure of humility, and I really don't see those in the Longtermist movement. I'd rather take my wisdom from Hypocrates: if you can't help, at least don't harm. Be mild and prosper!
I think the ultimate problem with any consequentialist view of ethics has partly to do ultimately with how bad we are at a) determining the difference between pleasure and pain and moreover confusion over what happiness is. In my recent article I try and deal with the problem of framing ethics as a problem of choice in the first place—as it is usually construed: https://open.substack.com/pub/nasmith/p/the-bondage-of-choice-e36?utm_source=app-post-stats-page&r=32csd0&utm_medium=ios
I agree, Longtermism fails on its own terms. If you take the present as instrumental to the future, then the same logic applies next week, next year, next century. It sounds like quite a poor way to go through life.
For me, the even bigger theoretical failure is that Longtermism shows an excessive amount of confidence in the power of planning. Even greater even than that exhibited by the Communists of the 20th century, who tried to plan their way to utopia (and failed). At least they were only thinking in decades!
The world is an exceedingly complex interdependent system, and such systems are notoriously hard to plan or predict. Culture, the economy, and most everything else that matters, goes in fits and start, backwards and forwards. Try to push things in one direction, and it's almost 50/50 whether you actually move them in that direction or the opposite, or most likely, sideways.
Also, trying to plan for aims in the far future shows a complete disregard for the developing preferences of future generations.
Trying to do good requires subtlety and a measure of humility, and I really don't see those in the Longtermist movement. I'd rather take my wisdom from Hypocrates: if you can't help, at least don't harm. Be mild and prosper!
I think the ultimate problem with any consequentialist view of ethics has partly to do ultimately with how bad we are at a) determining the difference between pleasure and pain and moreover confusion over what happiness is. In my recent article I try and deal with the problem of framing ethics as a problem of choice in the first place—as it is usually construed: https://open.substack.com/pub/nasmith/p/the-bondage-of-choice-e36?utm_source=app-post-stats-page&r=32csd0&utm_medium=ios