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OK, WTF Is Longtermism? — VICE (November 2022)
webA popular press critique of longtermism written in the immediate aftermath of the FTX collapse; useful for understanding public and media perception of EA/longtermist ideas but not a primary academic or technical source on AI safety.
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Importance: 30/100news articlecommentary
Summary
A Vice explainer published in November 2022 examining longtermism as an ideological framework popular among tech elites, using the FTX collapse as a lens to critique its philosophical assumptions and practical implications. The article breaks down longtermist ideas about prioritizing future generations and existential risk reduction while questioning whether such reasoning can justify harmful short-term actions.
Key Points
- •Longtermism holds that positively influencing the long-run future is among the most important moral priorities, often linked to effective altruism circles.
- •The FTX collapse and Sam Bankman-Fried's alleged 'earn to give' philosophy raised public scrutiny of longtermist ethics and whether ends justify means.
- •Critics argue longtermism can rationalize ignoring present harms in favor of speculative future benefits, raising concerns about its moral framework.
- •The article contextualizes longtermism's spread through Silicon Valley and its influence on tech philanthropy and AI safety funding priorities.
- •The piece represents mainstream media skepticism toward EA/longtermist communities that surged following high-profile scandals in late 2022.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Longtermism's Philosophical Credibility After FTX | -- | 50.0 |
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OK, WTF Is 'Longtermism', the Tech Elite Ideology That Led to the FTX Collapse?
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How can we do the most good? How do we measure the impact of actions taken to help people in the past, present, and future? These are unlikely questions to lie at the heart of a major, [Enron-style financial collapse](https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7eja/man-who-cleaned-up-enron-and-is-ftxs-new-ceo-explains-to-court-why-ftx-is-a-bigger-mess-in-great-detail), but they are core to the fall of 30-year-old former multibillionaire [Sam Bankman-Fried](https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7epm/sam-bankman-fried-was-supposed-to-be-different-he-wasnt) and his bankrupt FTX crypto empire.
Bankman-Fried was an adherent of the philosophy of effective altruism, and its more recent offshoot longtermism. Effective altruism basically espouses the idea that the best way to do the most good for the future is to become as rich and powerful as possible right now. Longtermism [takes it a step further](https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2022/11/elon-musk-william-macaskill-useful-philosopher) by saying the greatest good you can do is allocating resources to maximize the potential happiness of trillions of humans in the far future that will only be born if we minimize the risk of humanity’s extinction. Both ideologies have found currency among the Silicon Valley elite in
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