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)

174 | Tai-Danae Bradley on Algebra, Topology, Language, and Entropy

174 | Tai-Danae Bradley on Algebra, Topology, Language, and Entropy

Mathematics is often thought of as the pinnacle of crisp precision: the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle isn't "roughly" the sum of the squares of the other two sides, it's exactly that. B...

22 Marras 20211h 21min

AMA | November 2021

AMA | November 2021

Welcome to the November 2021 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 qu...

17 Marras 20213h 54min

173 | Sylvia Earle on the Oceans, the Planet, and People

173 | Sylvia Earle on the Oceans, the Planet, and People

It's a well-worn cliché that oceans cover seventy percent of the surface of Earth, but we tend to give them secondary consideration when thinking about the environment. But climate change is wreaking ...

15 Marras 20211h 11min

172 | David Goyer on Televising the Fall of the Galactic Empire

172 | David Goyer on Televising the Fall of the Galactic Empire

Science and storytelling have a long and tumultuous relationship. Scientists sometimes want stories to be just an advertisement for how awesome science is; storytellers sometimes want to use science f...

8 Marras 20211h 16min

171 | Christopher Mims on Our Interconnected Industrial Ecology

171 | Christopher Mims on Our Interconnected Industrial Ecology

As the holidays approach, we are being reminded of the fragility of the global supply chain. But at the same time, the supply chain itself is a truly impressive and fascinating structure, made as it i...

1 Marras 20211h 27min

170 | Priya Natarajan on Galaxies, Black Holes, and Cosmic Anomalies

170 | Priya Natarajan on Galaxies, Black Holes, and Cosmic Anomalies

There is so much we don't know about our universe. But our curiosity about the unknown shouldn't blind us to the incredible progress we have made in cosmology over the last century. We know the univer...

25 Loka 20211h 27min

169 | C. Thi Nguyen on Games, Art, Values, and Agency

169 | C. Thi Nguyen on Games, Art, Values, and Agency

Games are everywhere, but why exactly do we play them? It seems counterintuitive, to artificially invent goals and obstacles just so we can struggle to achieve them. (And in some games, like Twister, ...

18 Loka 20211h 24min

AMA | October 2021

AMA | October 2021

Welcome to the October 2021 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 que...

14 Loka 20212h 59min

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