207 | William MacAskill on Maximizing Good in the Present and Future

207 | William MacAskill on Maximizing Good in the Present and Future

It's always a little humbling to think about what affects your words and actions might have on other people, not only right now but potentially well into the future. Now take that humble feeling and promote it to all of humanity, and arbitrarily far in time. How do our actions as a society affect all the potential generations to come? William MacAskill is best known as a founder of the Effective Altruism movement, and is now the author of What We Owe the Future. In this new book he makes the case for longtermism: the idea that we should put substantial effort into positively influencing the long-term future. We talk about the pros and cons of that view, including the underlying philosophical presuppositions.

Mindscape listeners can get 50% off What We Owe the Future, thanks to a partnership between the Forethought Foundation and Bookshop.org. Just click here and use code MINDSCAPE50 at checkout.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

William (Will) MacAskill received his D.Phil. in philosophy from the University of Oxford. He is currently an associate professor of philosophy at Oxford, as well as a research fellow at the Global Priorities Institute, director of the Forefront Foundation for Global Priorities Research, President of the Centre for Effective Altruism, and co-founder of 80,000 hours and Giving What We Can.


Jaksot(416)

193 | Daniels on Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

193 | Daniels on Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

Every time we make an important decision, it's hard not to wonder how things would have turned out had we chosen differently. The set of all those hypothetical lives is a kind of "multiverse" — not on...

18 Huhti 20221h 8min

AMA | April 2022

AMA | April 2022

Welcome to the April 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). I take the large number of quest...

14 Huhti 20223h 27min

192 | Nicole Yunger Halpern on Quantum Steampunk Thermodynamics

192 | Nicole Yunger Halpern on Quantum Steampunk Thermodynamics

Randomness and probability are central to modern physics. In statistical mechanics this is because we don't know everything about the distribution of atoms and molecules in a fluid, so we consider a p...

11 Huhti 20221h 17min

191 | Jane McGonigal on How to Imagine the Future

191 | Jane McGonigal on How to Imagine the Future

The future grows out of the present, but it manages to consistently surprise us. How can we get better at anticipating and preparing for what the future can be like? Jane McGonigal started out as a ga...

4 Huhti 20221h 21min

190 | Lea Goentoro on Regrowing Limbs

190 | Lea Goentoro on Regrowing Limbs

Biological organisms are pretty good at healing themselves, but their abilities fall short in crucial ways. Planaria can be cut into pieces, and each piece will regrow into an entire organism; but for...

28 Maalis 20221h 3min

189 | Brian Klaas on Power and the Temptation of Corruption

189 | Brian Klaas on Power and the Temptation of Corruption

All societies grant more power to some citizens, and there is always a temptation to use that power for the benefit of themselves rather than for the greater good. Power corrupts, we are told — but to...

21 Maalis 20221h 22min

AMA | March 2022

AMA | March 2022

Welcome to the March 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). I take the large number of quest...

17 Maalis 20223h 18min

188 | Arik Kershenbaum on What Aliens Will Be Like

188 | Arik Kershenbaum on What Aliens Will Be Like

If extraterrestrial life is out there — not just microbial slime, but big, complex, macroscopic organisms — what will they be like? Movies have trained us to think that they won't be that different at...

14 Maalis 20221h 21min

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