How does longtermism relate to effective altruism?

You might have recently heard of “longtermism” – the idea that, when taking actions in the world, we should consider the interests of people who will live in the future. A stronger version of this view might imply that somebody trying to benefit others should almost entirely focus on benefiting people who are not yet alive. Longtermism has gained traction in the fall of 2022, due in part to the release of Will MacAskill’s book What We Owe the Future. According to MacAskill, longtermism is based largely on three simple statements: “Future people count. There could be a lot of them. And we can make their lives better.”

Meanwhile, effective altruism (EA) is a set of ideas and a community based around trying to do as much good as possible. People who are part of the EA community share wide-ranging beliefs and disagree on many issues, but there are a few core claims that most in the EA community agree on. For example, impartiality, the idea that everybody counts equally, is a core tenet of EA. Impartiality implies that we should not prioritize helping people purely because they share our skin color, nationality, or other arbitrary characteristics. Another core tenet of EA is the idea that helping more is better than helping less – given the choice between feeding 5 people and feeding 6 people, we should feed the 6, all else equal.

Longtermism has major implications for those wanting to do lots of good with their careers or donations. Traditionally, those seeking to do good might work in the non-profit space or do research that they expect to help people in the near future. However, if positively impacting future people is a moral priority, as longtermism indicates, then those seeking to do as much good as possible should focus their efforts on making the future of humanity go well. Thus, for many members of the EA community, longtermism is a useful idea to help prioritize where to spend one’s career or donations. Not all members of the EA community are longtermists – many organizations, such as the Against Malaria Foundation and the Wild Animal Initiative, are focused on having impact in the relative near-term. Similarly, one need not be a part of the EA community or agree with core EA ideas in order to agree with longtermist ideas; you do not need to be focused on doing as much good as possible in order to decide to work on improving the lives of people not yet living.

If you want to learn more about effective altruism or longtermism, feel free to reach out to Princeton Effective Altruism.