William MacAskill: belief

Transcript context

…They’re just a simple argument for growth being a priority? Yes. Different argument. Then I would focus less on growth per se. But there is something that I do buy, and at some margin, I think it is what we should be doing, and I’ve done a bit of it so far, which is, just like, okay, it’s hard to predict the future. We’re going to get lots of unexpected events. There are some things that just correlate, well, we’re onto a good thing, like improved technologically delivering growth, good institutions, democracy, liberalism, more cooperation, higher trust in societies — these are just genetically good — and innovation. From the sheer track record of how helpful these have been over the last 200 years, let’s just keep pushing on that. That’s the kind of view that I think I’m most sympathetic to in terms of the moral-progress studies worldview because I do think that’s good for the long-term future. It’s like, can you beat the market? I think probably we can, actually, but at some margin, that’s what I think long-termism turns into. It looks more common sense-y, like building a flourishing society. Now, I’m going to use the word hinge-y to describe the quality of living in a time that is highly influential, where that influence may very well persist for a long period of time. Do people in their own eras know when they are living in especially hinge-y eras? Or are they clueless?…

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