What We Owe the Future

the author of the forthcoming book, What We Owe the Future, which is probably the best single book distillation of longtermism you'll find

that's what I dedicate most of What We Are The Future to discussing

One of them is What We Owe the Future by the Scottish philosopher Will MacAskill. It comes out, I think, in September 2022. And it's about the idea of longtermism. It's about what are the things we could do today that could matter to all the future generations? And shouldn't we care about that when those future generations don't have a voice in the things we're doing today that affect them?

Did you read William McCaskill's what we owe the future did you see that no but I heard people talking about it I haven't got around to reading is it is it good interesting guy good it's an important book I think to read especially if you think about these topics in a big way

This year, for example, he personally donated to the Lead Exposure Elimination Project, which aims to end childhood lead exposure, and the Atlas Fellowship, which supports talented high school students around the world to work on pressing problems.

Not all issues are equally tractable, but McCaskill still cares about a range. When we met in Oxford, he expressed concern for the ongoing political crisis in Sri Lanka, though admitted he probably wouldn't tweet about it.

The book is called What We O the Future, and it makes a case for what he calls long-termism.

Long termism is the view that positively impacting the long term future is a key model priority of our time.

So I often kind of just reflect on kind of my very best experiences the feelings of like spending time with my partner or the falling in love for being a beautiful nature and I just think wow we can create a world where just our grandkids grandkids this is how good life is for them all the time and I personally find that motivating kind of something to build towards and I guess yeah honestly I found that more motivating day-to-day than worrying about nuclear war

The other sort of arm of effective altruism these days and I interviewed Will McGaskill who just wrote a book called What We O The Future. That was really interesting. He was saying that a lot of philanthropy or a lot of our efforts are we have a sort of blinkered view of like helping only the people that are around us or that are existing today.

what we owe the future is really about this concept of long termism which I think is an important breakthrough as we think about doing good as we think about altruism as we think about stoicism.

It's not just how do we do good for the people around us but how do we do good for the people in the future people we will never meet.

Will is a fantastic writer, a fantastic thinker.

Check out what we owe the future.

Check out what we owe the future and enjoy this conversation with the one and only William Magascale.

I'm working on William Agascale's new book uh and the title is What We owe the Future so it's sort of like what do you owe the past and then what is the contribution you're going to make in the future that sort of passing of torches maybe that sort of despite the unrealness of your individual circumstances actually ends up rooting someone in a somewhat grounded place