Book: What We Owe the Future (MacAskill)

## Overarching structure of the book

* Intro??? + ch1: making the case for longtermism
* Ch2 2: framework for evaluating moral status/value of actions from a longtermist perspective (will be consequentialist). Two ways to impact LT future: change trajectory or change survival probabilities
* Pt II: ways of trajectory changes and their values. Ch 3: significance and contingency of value changes (example: abolition), Ch 4: persistence of value changes
* Pt III: ways of survival probability changes and their values
* Pt IV: why survival/existence matters and extinction is bad
* Pt V: using this framework, what to do in practice?

## Part I. The Long View

### Ch 1: The Case for Longtermism

* 9-10: **The silent billions**:
* 10-12: **Future people count**:
* 12-19: **The future is big**:
* 19-21: **The value of the future**: just says that its possible for the future to become better, but also possibly worse?
* 21-26: **Not just climate change**:
* 26-28: **Our moment in history**:

### Ch 2: You Can Shape the Course of History

* This ch: presents a framework for assessing the long-term value of an event.
* 29-31: **Prehistory's Impact on Today**: examples of our ancestors having long-term impacts: animal extinction and turning forests into agricultural land. To justify a long-term view of our decisions, we need to be able to adequately foresee the impact of our decisions on the future.
* 31-36: **A framework for thinking about the future**: three factors to evaluate an action which brings about a state of the world: (I think this is better, see fn)
	+ Significance: 'what is the average value added?'
	+ Persistence: 'how long will the state last once brought about?'
	+ Contingency: 'if not for the action, how long would it have taken for the state to realize anyway?'
	+ Next, mentions that we can affect LT future in 2 ways: (1) affect duration, so change survival probabilities; and (2) affect the time-sum of 'average value', so changing the trajectory of the civilization value over time.
* 36-40: **Thinking in bets**: in using this framework, we will face uncertainty. He says "EV theory is the most widely accepted account of how to do so". (he basically just mentions EV, avoiding to actively suggest it. Not sure how to think about risk aversion here.)
* 40-43: **Moments of plasticity**: says that for some things there is a period of plasticity, where ideas, events, or institutions can take one of many forms, followed by a period of rigidity/ossification. Gives examples but no ideas as to why/for which things this would be the case.

## Part II. Trajectory Changes

### Ch 3: Moral Change

* 47-53: **Slavery Abolition**: background of slavery abolition, activism of Lay, Quakers, Britain. Abolition was an example of a *values change*: a change in the moral attitudes of society. (internalized norms/morals/values)
* 53-55: **The significance of values**: changes in values have possibly been some of the most 'significant'/'valuable'/'highest impact' developments, e.g. abolition of slavery, status of women, LGBTQ+, etc. Part of what makes value changes so significant is that their effects are unusually predictable; you can change the *goals* people have. (yeh sure, but what the *right* goals? why do we know this better than other/future people?)
* 55-62: **The contingency of values**: to think about the contingency of values, use (as an analogy) the contingency of biological developments in evolution and apply this framework to culture (cultural evolution). As idiosyncratic and widely shared characteristics exist, biology consensus is that evolution can be both contingent or not. Consider the 'fitness landscape' [INSERT PICTUR,E P.57]. Three reasons for high contingency:
	1. if landscape is multi-peaked, clearly values are highly contingent
	2. if single-peaked, not very contingent except where 'selection pressures'/convergence is very slow
	3. value systems entrench themselves, suppressing ideological competition (this creates multiple equilibria; and cultural evolution explains *why* cultures tend to entrench, because those that do not are more likely to die)
* 62-70: **The contingency of abolition**: he looks at whether abolition was primarily the result of economic changes or changes in moral values. He concludes it comes from a change in moral attitudes. Given this conclusion, he asks whether abolition was contingent or not (is it the result of inevitable moral progress?), and argues we should be open to the idea it was contingent.
* 70-73: **What to do**: if we take contingency of moral norms seriously, a dizzying variety of alternative moral realities emerges. "Certainly, the *expected* contingency of moral norms is high enough that the value of ensuring that the world is on the right track, morally, is enormously high." If we take value change seriously, what values should we try to promote? He argues for abstract moral principles because specific rules aren't able to adjust to the changing reality of times.

### Ch 4: Value Lock-In

* 75-78: **The 100 schools of thought**: 2-page description of how 2,500 years ago there was a struggle between four competing schools of philosophy. Confucianism 'won'; for over a thousand years it was a canon every person was required to master, and it still has a lasting influence on people's values today.
* 78-80: **The persistence of values**: discuss value lock-in: an event that causes a value system to persist for an extremely long time. Posits that development of writing has allowed the persistence of religious values and moral worldviews. Will states that we're in period of plasticity, with potentially very persistent lock-in of values, because of AI:
* 80-83: **Artificial general intelligence**: AGI could be of monumental long-term importance for two reason: (1) it might greatly speed up the rate of economic growth (by either providing a basically infinite supply of labor, or by automating the process of technological innovation), or (2) AGI has a potentially very long/infinite longevity (because its software can be copied onto new hardware, AGI is potentially 'immortal').
* 83-86: **AI and entrenchment**: AGI could facilitate value lock-in by mimicking behavior, inducing goals, or hardcoding goals. In addition, value lock-in could be a side effect of immortality which AGI might help facilitate, or be immortal itself.
* 86-89: **AI Takeover**: AGI might quickly superpass human intelligence and take over power. This does not necessarily mean we go extinct, nor is extinction due to AGI the same as for other reasons, since a world with AGI might still have moral value. Will states that the key issue is to prevent the risk of value lock-in, because the locked in values could be 'bad ones'. (seems inconsistent, what if they'd be 'good ones'? He was previously running with risk neutrality...)
* 89-92: **How long till AGI?**: "things might go faster than you think", and some estimates of when AGI arrives.
* 92-95: **Culture and Lock-In**: values would be more persistent if one value systems becomes globally dominant. Lack of conflict/competition removes a driver of value changes. Even if no single value system becomes dominant, we might converge to a single hybrid value system. Mentions four ways cultures become more powerful: (1) conquest, (2) immigration, (3) differential survival rates, (4) differential fertility rates.
* 95-97: **How locked-in are we already?**: to what extent has history already locked-in certain values? Will mentions (1) Homo sapiens as only Homo species not extinct, and (2) globalization and westernization.
* 97-102: **Building a morally exploratory world**: just as we now think lock-in of previous values would've been bad, lock-in of current values might be bad. Instead, we should want to make as much moral progress as possible before lock-in happens, by building a morally exploratory world. This would involve: (1) keeping our options open, e.g. avoiding early/smaller scale lock-in, (2) favor political experimentalism to increase cultural and intellectual diversity (marketplace of ideas), e.g. charter cities, and (3) structure things so that cultural evolution produces morally better views and societies, e.g. free speech, free migration. The third point has a lock-in paradox: it suggests to lock-in some values that aren't controversial to achieve better values.

## Part IV. Assessing the End of the World

### Ch 8: Is It Good to Make Happy People?

* 167-171: **Derek Parfit**:
* 171-173: **Intuition of Neutrality**:
* 173-176: **Clumsy Gods: The Fragility of Identity**:
* 176-177: **Why the Intuition of Neutrality is Wrong**:
* 177-179: **The Average View**:
* 179-184: **The Total View**:
* 185-186: **The Critical Level View**:
* 186-187: **What You Ought to Do When You Don't Know What to Do**:
* 187-188: **The Benefits of Having Kids**:
* 188-189: **Bigger is Better**:

## Part V. Taking Action

### Ch 10: What to Do

1. ↑ This is a bad name for the chapter, it presents the framework, and the chapter title should indicate so.
2. ↑ I think: basically (2) and (3) are better summarized as: "how long will the difference between states last?"

So, if we have an action that brings about a state, and we have a baseline state of the world, (2) and (3) want to capture the duration that (2) and (3) are different?

I would maybe rephrase these points as: added value \* added duration. Where added value = value(state A) - value(state B), and added duration as length(value(state A) != value(state B)). Or, better yet, not take the difference as constant you basically get:

∫

(

u
t

(

S
A

)
−

u
t

(

S
B

)

)

d
t

{\displaystyle \int \left( u\_t(S\_A) - u\_t(S\_B) \right) dt }

If we add discounting, and uncertainty/risk aversion get to basic econ stuff.
3. ↑ In the end, how is this different from consequentialism/utilitarianism with a low/no discount factor? (Will is more vague about what constitutes 'value', e.g. seems to be open to intrinsic value of the existence of some species, so consequentialism is maybe more accurate).
4. ↑ Following this line of reasoning: if we might be wrong we can do a lot of damage as well? E.g. if animals actually don't matter we waste lots of resources? Idk, I guess there's a good argument for being risk averse to affecting others?

My sense is that most of these changes are kind of categorical? Generally, it seems better to not make different 'classes' of people (slaves, women, LGTBQ+, etc.) Idk if the animal argument makes sense.
5. ↑ Culture: any socially transmitted information, such as beliefs, knowledge, skills, and practices. Focus here is just on *values*.
6. ↑ Rather than persistence stemming from some sort of period of plasticity (which so far remains unexplained why that would exist in any case other than a new technology, which I think feel less likely to put up for grabs a set of *values*?) why is persistence not a quality of some types of ideas, values, norms, etc.

For example, vague things instead of particular rules tend to last more like Will says. Also, can study this in the same sort of evolutionary framework. E.g. driving on one side of the road is kind of persistent until a good reason comes by to change it. Its not persistent because of some higher reason, just no reason to change it?
7. ↑ Why use this word... implies its alive. Why not say something like, "can persist forever in a way that currently humans can't".
8. ↑ He doesn't say why its important that AGI could persist very long/forever. A stone could as well...
9. ↑ On start of paragraph, says that "two features of AGI, potentially rapid technological progress and in-principle immortality-combine to make value lock-in a real possibility". Is the former by just new technologies such as uploading ones brain?
10. ↑ This part felt too speculative and loose to be of value.
11. ↑ Pretty unclear how locked-in the second is in the medium term? The first one isn't cultural... Obviously if we start mentioning evolutionary contingencies we can start making a long list!
12. ↑ Super frustrating chapter, its very morally realist. I've marked statements of this on the pages.