How longtermism weighs future lives against current needs

HostWhen we think about doing good, we usually look at what's right in front of us, like a neighbor or a local food bank. But some thinkers say we should be looking thousands of years ahead. They argue that if we want to do the most good, we have to care about the billions of people who haven't been born yet. Does focusing on the year ten thousand make us lose sight of the people hurting right now?

GuestIt's a huge shift in how we think about what's right. The core idea is that people who will live in the future matter just as much as we do. Their lives will be just as real, and their pain will hurt just as much as ours does now. Since the future could last for a very long time, there will likely be way more people living then than there are now. If you want to help the most people possible, the math points you toward the far future. We're talking about trillions of lives over millions of years. When you look at it that way, our time on earth is just a tiny drop in a very large ocean.

HostBut math feels like a cold way to decide who to help. A person in the year three thousand is just a guess. Is it fair to take help from real people for a math problem?

GuestIt's a question of how much weight we give to a life. Think about a glass bottle. If you leave a broken bottle on a beach today and it cuts someone tomorrow, that's bad. If it stays in the sand and cuts someone in a hundred years, it's still bad. Time doesn't change the fact that someone got hurt. People who think this way look at things like climate change or new tech that could end our whole story. If our kind dies out, we lose trillions of lives that could've happened. To them, that's the worst tragedy possible. They believe our biggest job is to make sure the light of life doesn't go out. If we fail at that, nothing else we do today will matter much in the long run.

HostBut some of this sounds like science fiction, like robots or living in space. Meanwhile, kids die today from dirty water. How do you tell a mother her sick child is less important than a person who might exist in a million years?

GuestThat's the main worry. This could become an excuse to ignore the hard problems we face today. But the people who study this would say the things that hurt us now often hurt the future too. They do push for spending more money on things that have a tiny chance of happening but would wipe us out if they did. They see themselves as the only ones looking out for the silent billions. All those people in the future who have no vote and no voice in how we run the world today. They argue that someone has to care about the people who aren't here yet, because our choices today will set the stage for everything they can ever be or do.

HostBut we're just guessing what they need. Is it not a bit much to think we know what's best for people a thousand years from now?

GuestWe're definitely guessing. It's like packing a suitcase for a trip to a place we have never seen. But some things are certain. They'll need a planet that can grow food and a world where they're safe from being blown up. Even if we can't guess their style or their jobs, we can try to keep the door open for them. The hard part comes when we choose where the money goes. Do we buy a bed net to stop a kid from getting sick today, or do we fund a lab to stop a future plague? It's a heavy choice, and it requires us to think about our legacy in a way that most of us never do. We have to decide if we're the center of the universe or just a bridge to something else.

HostIt feels like we're putting ourselves at the center of everything, like we're the most important group to ever live.

GuestIn a way, we might be, because we have the power to change the world forever but we haven't yet learned how to be safe with that power. It's about growing up as a group and realizing we're just one chapter in a very long book. We have a duty to keep the book going. But we also have to make sure the chapter we're in right now isn't a horror story for the people living it. We have to find a way to care for the person in front of us without closing the door on all the people who will come after the last page of our own lives is turned.

HostSo we have to be good ancestors and good neighbors at the same time.

GuestThe danger is using the far future as a shield to hide from the pain we see in the world right now. If we focus so much on the stars that we stop seeing the people at our feet, we might lose the very thing that makes the human story worth saving.

HostOur duty to the future is a big idea, but it has to start with how we treat the neighbor standing right in front of us.