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What We Owe the Past: William MacAskill, Effective Altruism and the Wrong Life — Logos Journal (October 2023)
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A critical humanities perspective on longtermism and EA from Logos Journal; useful for understanding left-wing and political-theory critiques of AI safety-adjacent ideology, especially post-FTX collapse debates.
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Importance: 38/100opinion piececommentary
Summary
A critical left-wing analysis of William MacAskill's longtermism and Effective Altruism, using the FTX/Sam Bankman-Fried collapse as a lens to examine the philosophical and political contradictions of EA's techno-philanthropist ideology. The authors argue that longtermism's neglect of history and present injustice in favor of speculative futures reflects a fundamentally flawed and politically convenient moral framework.
Key Points
- •MacAskill's close association with Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX illustrates the political implications of EA's 'earn to give' and longtermist philosophy.
- •The article critiques longtermism for systematically devaluing present suffering and historical injustice in favor of abstract future utility calculations.
- •Authors argue EA functions ideologically to legitimize billionaire technocrats accumulating wealth under the guise of moral duty.
- •The piece draws on Marxist and critical theory traditions to challenge EA's ahistorical, utilitarian worldview.
- •Longtermism is framed as a 'wrong life' philosophy—one that cannot produce right action because it is structurally disconnected from material reality.
Cited by 2 pages
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Longtermism's Philosophical Credibility After FTX | -- | 50.0 |
| Will MacAskill | Person | 60.0 |
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# What We Owe the Past: William MacAskill, Effective Altruism and the Wrong Life
[James Kent](https://logosjournal.com/author/james-kent/ "Posts by James Kent") and [Michael Lazarus](https://logosjournal.com/author/michael-lazarus/ "Posts by Michael Lazarus")
‘The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living’
– Karl Marx
It was, after all, too good to be true. Following the aftermath of the allegations of corruption and bankruptcy of the cryptocurrency exchange company FTX Trading Ltd., William MacAskill’s Twitter fell silent. The Oxford philosopher was closely associated with FTX founder and CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried. Bankman-Fried had promoted crypto as a means to do good, his trading was said to have a social purpose. The more money made, the bigger the donation to charity. In March 2022, MacAskill sent Elon Musk a text after seeing the billionaire post about buying Twitter to save free speech. MacAskill suggested his ‘collaborator’ Sam Bankman-Fried might be a worthy business partner since he also wanted to buy the company and make it ‘better for the world’. Musk’s reply was simply, ‘Does he have huge amounts of money?’ MacAskill wrote back, ‘Depends on how you define “huge” He’s worth $24B, and his early employees (with shared values) bump that to $30B. I asked about how much he could in principle contribute and he said: ~$1-3b would be easy ~$3-8b is maybe possible but would require financing’.
[](https://logosjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/WhatWeOweThePast_400Wx520h.jpg)
In these text messages, released as part of court proceedings investigating Musk’s Twitter take over, MacAskill promotes Bankman-Fried as a vision for the future. Musk asks ‘Do you vouch for him’, MacAskill replies ‘Very much so! Very dedicated to making the long-term future of humanity go well’. MacAskill introduces the two, writing ‘You both have interests in games, making the very long-run future go well, and buying Twitter’. MacAskill linked Musk to his ‘Future Fund’ which he co-ran and FTX financed, claiming it would move ‘$100M to $1B this year to improve the future of humanity’. [\[1\]](https://logosjournal.com/article/what-we-owe-the-past-william-macaskill-effective-altruism-and-the-wrong-life/#_ftn1) By November FTX had collapsed and under Musk, Twitter was being run into the ground. In a thread of tweets, MacAskill publicly distanced himself from Bankman-Fried and logged off, not to return to the platform till June 2023.
It could appear that this is a question of embarrassing friends. Why point to MacAskill’s private texts, when his public com
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