The long-term future matters most
Humanity’s future could last millions of years and hold vastly more people than are alive today. If their lives count as much as ours, work that shapes the long run, such as reducing the risk of catastrophe, may be the most important thing we can do.
Present needs come first
People suffering now have needs we can see and help we know works, and a few thousand dollars can save a life. Duties to people who exist are clearer than duties to people who may never exist, and the further ahead we look, the less we know.
Nobody can see that far
Most effects of any action lie in a future we can’t foresee. If we are clueless about them, confident bets on the long term aren’t justified. The same doubt applies to the long-run effects of helping people now, so it doesn’t simply favor the present.
Count the future, discount for uncertainty
Valuing well-being less just because it comes later is hard to defend, but risk, uncertainty and growth are real reasons to discount. Giving can take the future seriously while weighting it for how little we know.
The debate
The case for the long term rests on scale. William MacAskill’s What We Owe the Future argues that humanity’s story could continue for millions of years, so choices made now could shape the lives of enormous numbers of people whose interests deserve weight. Toby Ord’s The Precipice argues that advanced weapons, engineered pandemics, unaligned artificial intelligence and other dangers threaten that future, and that reducing those risks is among the most urgent moral issues of our time.
The case for the present rests on certainty and on duty. Help for people alive now can be measured: GiveWell’s April 2024 explanation reported typical modeled costs of $3,000 to $5,500 per life saved for grants to its top charities. This is a dated estimate, not a guarantee for a current gift. Some philosophers argue that people who don’t yet exist can’t hold rights against us, and others that our obligations to them carry less weight.
Uncertainty cuts both ways. Hilary Greaves argued in 2016 that because most of an action’s effects are unforeseeable, we may be clueless about much of what matters for choosing well, and that this problem is especially pressing for effective altruism.
Discounting is the technical heart of the dispute. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that Sidgwick, Ramsey, Rawls and Parfit all rejected pure time discounting, which values well-being less simply because it comes later. Economists still argue about discount rates. William Nordhaus wrote in 2007 that the Stern Review’s case for deep, immediate cuts in greenhouse gas emissions depended heavily on its near-zero discount rate, and that with rates closer to market interest rates the case was no longer clear-cut.
Where Charitology stands
Whether future people count as much as present ones, and how to act on tiny chances of vast outcomes, are value questions. Charitology doesn’t settle them. It notes a difference in evidence that matters for both sides. Work for people alive now can usually be measured within years. Work aimed at the far future has to be judged mostly by reasoning, because its results may never be observed by the people who fund it. That is the Short Horizon seen from the other end. See discounting the future, discounting, moral uncertainty and the moral parliament in practice.
The cruxes
What would have to be true for each side to change its mind:
- Whether future people’s well-being counts as much as present people’s.
- Whether we can predict and influence the long-run future well enough to act on it.
- How to weigh a tiny probability of an enormous benefit against a near-certain modest one.
- Whether duties to people alive now, and to those close to us, take priority.