If you haven’t come across it before, effective altruism is an interesting movement that coined the term “longtermism”.
It says of the human race – “We’ve been around for approximately 300,000 years. There are now about 8 billion of us, roughly 15 percent of all humans who have ever lived.“
“You may think that’s a lot, but it’s just peanuts to the future. If we survive for another million years—the longevity of a typical mammalian species—at even a tenth of our current population, there will be 8 trillion more of us. We’ll be outnumbered by future people on the scale of a thousand to one.“
One of the movements champions – William MacAskill – has recently written a book that has received much attention (to be expected for such a well funded movement).
“What We Owe The Future” is worth knowing about – and this is a very good review of it.
