William MacAskill: belief

Transcript context

…If there are smart sentient space aliens out there, say, in pretty large numbers, should we then worry much less about existential risk on earth? Someone will continue the tradition. Maybe they don’t love Beethoven, but eh, 400 years from now maybe people won’t anyway. It’s a great question. Among people I know, views are divided on, “Should you think that a human-originating future is going to be better than an alien-originating civilization?” My honest view is more like it’s a toss-up. I don’t see a particular reason for thinking that a civilization that comes from human beings is going to be much greater in value than from aliens. Whether this undermines existential risk, though, is dependent very crucially on whether we actually expect aliens to come and build a flourishing civilization. I think the best guess from the Fermi paradox — that is the paradox that we don’t, in fact, see advanced intelligent life — is that, probably, we’re just alone, at least in a very, very large section of space. So, as an empirical fact, I think it’s really quite likely that if humanity dies off, no one else will take our place to build some flourishing civilization. Just contingent on the space aliens being out there, if someone asked me to bet, “Well, which side in the war would Will MacAskill fight on?” I would bet 1,000 to 1 you’d fight for the humans. But in your moral theory, the humans being better than the aliens — it’s a toss-up. This notion that you can’t actually escape some preexisting degree of partiality in the normative framework seems to resurface. I think you want to have it both ways, unless you feel my bet on you to fight for the humans is wrong. Is there really a 50 percent chance you’ll fight for the aliens?…

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