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pongvin t1_iu1q8wm wrote

Reply to comment by Surur in The Heavy Price of Longtermism | Longtermists focus on ensuring humanity’s existence into the far future. But not without sacrifices in the present. by thenewrepublic

Interesting thought about contraception, but I feel there's an argument to be made that banning it still wouldn't fit the longtermist view because of the high probability of causing suffering for so many unwanted future kids and 'creating' more emotially damaged adults.

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Surur t1_iu1r80r wrote

I don't think Longtermism is the same as utilitarianism, as believers in Longtermism believe they can guarantee that the future is better, if they can only control the present, so more people is automatically better.

Their overconfidence is the issue.

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Southern-Trip-1102 t1_iu2alk5 wrote

Its not about any guarantees its about maximizing the probability of the best possible future to the best of our ability.

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Surur t1_iu3cz0e wrote

Like I said, it's not justified to make the lives of living people worse to improve the lives of unborn people. We don't owe anything to the future, particularly if, as increasingly is the case, people chose not to have children or have children at below the replacement rate.

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Southern-Trip-1102 t1_iu3hxtq wrote

Yes we do have a responsibility to the future, survival/existence is the prerequisite for anything you could possibly want for humanity besides the death of humanity, thus it should be the priority. Our function as a species is to survive.

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Surur t1_iu3isoa wrote

Why should I or anyone else care about the survival of "humanity"? It's just a concept.

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Southern-Trip-1102 t1_iu3ja7e wrote

Why should you care for the suffering or pleasure of a living human, its just a group of cells or neurons, just a concept.

Look in the end there is no objective reason to care about suffering collective survival or whatever. All morality is made up. The reason I advocate for long term collective survival being maximized is because its the closest thing there is to an objective function for a species.

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