Peter Singer: belief

Transcript context

…Let’s say you were called in to give advice, and probably you have been. What do you tell them they should do different? I’ve had concerns about the extent to which Effective Altruism has moved in the direction of very long-term thinking about the future, so thinking not just about the present or even the next century or two, but thinking about the next million years. William MacAskill, I think, has talked about the next billion years. I understand why he’s doing that. He’s talking about the possible loss that could exist if we become extinct and if, in fact, there is no other intelligent life in this corner of the universe, so we are not replaced by others. I can understand why he wants to emphasize the importance of preventing extinction, but I think there are a number of concerns. One is uncertainty about whether we can actually make a positive difference in this direction and also whether, if you encourage people to ignore present suffering, you’re actually going have a long-term drawback in that people may become more callous, and that may actually contribute to making the world a worse place. My advice is not to forget about the present and to continue to have a really major focus on things like reducing extreme poverty, reducing animal suffering, protecting the environment from climate change right now. I’d like to see Effective Altruism with more of a focus, not an exclusive focus, but more of a focus on those issues. Is there too much emphasis on existential risk from AGI in your opinion?…

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