Political scientist and philosopher, Eric Schliesser offers further critique of MacAskill’s longtermism:

“I offer two (kinds of) criticisms of What We Owe the Future. First, I discuss its cavalier attitude toward injustice. This criticism will be extrinsic to MacAskill’s own project. Second, I argue it treats a whole number of existential risks as uncorrelated which are, almost certainly correlated. (This I consider an intrinsic problem.) And this exhibits two kinds of lacunae at the heart of his approach: (a) his lack of theoretical interest in political institutions and the nature of international political coordination; (b) the absence of a disciplining social theory (or models) that can help evaluate the empirical data and integrate them.”

Part two is forthcoming.

#EffectiveAltruism, #Ethics, #Longtermism, #Philosophy, #PoliticalScience