MacAskill, W. (2022). What We Owe the Future. New York: Basic Books; London: Oneworld.
Not read. The summary is drawn from the abstract or from what the work is standardly cited for. A reading should check it first.
Why this is here
The public statement of longtermism, which the critics of the movement answer. For QUESTION-299.
Read in its place
The work cannot be read here, so the record holds it at second hand.
Read in place of the book: MacAskill, Thomas and Vallinder, The Significance, Persistence, Contingency Framework (version 1.1, August 2022), with the book’s full online endnotes. Together they give the book’s accounting device for its chapter 2 and Appendix 3, and the notes give its sources, MacAskill’s credences (2.22), and two remarks on motive: reciprocity as a reason to “pay it forward” (1.5), and a longtermism that does not override “all other self- and other-regarding reasons” (1.50). The notes also suggest the LIT summary needs one change: MacAskill recommends, under moral uncertainty, “something close to a critical level view” (9.78; 8.33), so the book defends adding lives that are good enough, above a critical level, rather than any good lives. Missing still: the chapters themselves, including the argument that future people count, the case for lock-in, the treatment of extinction, collapse and stagnation, and the population-ethics chapter.