I agree with most of your comment, though I do think that most people haven’t been exposed to good arguments for longtermism/utilitarianism in general—if they were I think most of them would at least find weak longtermism plausible.
Most people who disagree with longtermism probably do so because partisans on their side of the political spectrum disagree with longtermism for x reason, and they haven’t been exposed to a fair analysis of how longtermists resolve most of the complaints brought up. (i.e. I think people would give up some of their irrational intuitions of they fairly analyzed longtermism)
Again don’t fully disagree: yes exposing people, if you manage to get them to listen at all, a bit longer to longtermism, could easily make some of them agree with you.
But
Most people who disagree with longtermism probably do so because partisans on their side of the political spectrum disagree with longtermism for x reason [..]
seems nearly a bit conspiratorial, while reality seems to me so much more banal instead: Most of us are simply not wired to care a lot about these questions. Before anyone would have to exercise some propaganda on you, natural instinct is to care about much more tangible things than an (felt) abstract future expansion of humans and so on. It’s just not what commoners think about. Not because sb tells them it’s not important. Simply because natural drive to even think and care about such things is lacking. When you write most “haven’t been exposed to a fair analysis of how longtermists resolve most of the complaints brought up” you’re for sure right, but that ‘haven’t been exposed’ in itself is signal, it’s a symptom of their own preferences, maybe more than of external system factors: People don’t care about longtermism questions and neither about arguments. Had people sought wisdom about longtermism, the market would trivially flood them with articles and media highlighting arguments like the ones we may make here for it.
So the problem is one level deeper in our psyche and in our moral behavior: as humans, we won’t typically engage with this thing for a start, and thus, also not be educated about it.
FWIW, I think this complacency need also not be surprising at all from an evolutionary perspective. We have mostly ad-hoc moral interests and tastes, those that have enabled us to highlight why we are the ones in the right and of importance and a broad set of things of that sort. Longtermism is really far out from that set of evolutionary pressures we were exposed to.
I agree with most of your comment, though I do think that most people haven’t been exposed to good arguments for longtermism/utilitarianism in general—if they were I think most of them would at least find weak longtermism plausible.
Most people who disagree with longtermism probably do so because partisans on their side of the political spectrum disagree with longtermism for x reason, and they haven’t been exposed to a fair analysis of how longtermists resolve most of the complaints brought up. (i.e. I think people would give up some of their irrational intuitions of they fairly analyzed longtermism)
Again don’t fully disagree: yes exposing people, if you manage to get them to listen at all, a bit longer to longtermism, could easily make some of them agree with you.
But
seems nearly a bit conspiratorial, while reality seems to me so much more banal instead: Most of us are simply not wired to care a lot about these questions. Before anyone would have to exercise some propaganda on you, natural instinct is to care about much more tangible things than an (felt) abstract future expansion of humans and so on. It’s just not what commoners think about. Not because sb tells them it’s not important. Simply because natural drive to even think and care about such things is lacking. When you write most “haven’t been exposed to a fair analysis of how longtermists resolve most of the complaints brought up” you’re for sure right, but that ‘haven’t been exposed’ in itself is signal, it’s a symptom of their own preferences, maybe more than of external system factors: People don’t care about longtermism questions and neither about arguments. Had people sought wisdom about longtermism, the market would trivially flood them with articles and media highlighting arguments like the ones we may make here for it.
So the problem is one level deeper in our psyche and in our moral behavior: as humans, we won’t typically engage with this thing for a start, and thus, also not be educated about it.
FWIW, I think this complacency need also not be surprising at all from an evolutionary perspective. We have mostly ad-hoc moral interests and tastes, those that have enabled us to highlight why we are the ones in the right and of importance and a broad set of things of that sort. Longtermism is really far out from that set of evolutionary pressures we were exposed to.