#292 - How Much Does the Future Matter?

<p class="p1"><span style="font-weight: 400;">To gain access to ALL full-length episodes, you'll need to subscribe. If you&rsquo;re already subscribed and on the private RSS feed, the podcast logo should appear RED. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at </span><a href="http://samharris.org/subscribe"><span style="font-weight: 400;">samharris.org/subscribe</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. </span></p> <p class="p1">Sam Harris speaks with William MacAskill about his new book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/What-Owe-Future-William-MacAskill/dp/1541618629" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span class="s1"><em>What We Owe the Future.</em></span></a> They discuss the philosophy of effective altruism (EA), longtermism, existential risk, criticism of EA, problems with expected-value reasoning, doing good vs feeling good, why it's hard to care about future people, how the future gives meaning to the present, why this moment in history is unusual, the pace of economic and technological growth, bad political incentives, value lock-in, the well-being of conscious creatures as the foundation of ethics, the risk of unaligned AI, how bad we are at predicting technological change, and other topics.</p> <p class="p1"><strong>William MacAskill </strong>is an Associate Professor in Philosophy and Research Fellow at the Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford. He is one of the primary voices in a philanthropic movement known as &ldquo;effective altruism&rdquo; and the co-founder of three non-profits based on effective altruist principles: <a href="https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span class="s1">Giving What We Can</span></a>, <a href="https://80000hours.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span class="s1">80,000 Hours</span></a>, and the <a href="https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span class="s1">Centre for Effective Altruism</span></a>. He is also the Dire