Will MacAskill - Longtermism, Effective Altruism, History, & Technology

Will MacAskill is one of the founders of the Effective Altruist movement and the author of the upcoming book, What We Owe The Future.

We talk about improving the future, risk of extinction & collapse, technological & moral change, problems of academia, who changes history, and much more.

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro
01:18 Effective Altruism and Western values
08:42 The contingency of technology
12:57 Who changes history?
18:55 Longtermist institutional reform
26:51 Are companies longtermist?
29:52 Living in an era of plasticity
35:47 How good can the future be?
40:13 Contra Tyler Cowen on what’s most important
46:31 AI and the centralization of power
52:29 The problems with academia

[DwarkeshPatel]

Please share and subscribe if you found this conversation interesting. Thanks for watching 🙏

[oyeaurashu]

Hey king you gained one subscriber. Nice interview brother ❤️. I am a fan of William, but found there are many more nice videos to watch out .

[GrahamBessellieu]

41:58 Don't all the measures of progress, be it technological, economic, positive-psychology etc encompass our understanding of progress generally, a body of knowledge (ala Deutsch) that has unbounded potential to improve? Our metrics and strategy will update over time, (so no need to choose or claim one to be definitive). It seems progress will always be a balance of effective, applied, known action we can take now, alongside more unknown, exploratory, discovery and research.

[yourbrain]

I'm just stunned by how youthful he looks for 35.

[rizlarich]

Dwarkesh, do you agree with David Deutch that morality is another species of knowledge, and grows in the same way as all other forms of knowledge (technical, scientific, political etc)?

[broHanSolo]

I came here after the Pomp podcast, watched few episodes, your content is great! Subscribed.

[ReddooryogaSH]

Will says that the fact that other movements, similar to EA have arisen throughout history but never took hold is evidence that EA's success now is contingent.
It seems the opposite to me. It seems that this is evidence that the world has reached a certain state that is conducive to the success of ideas like EA. For instance, perhaps we simply had to reach a certain level of affluence before EA could really take off, and having reached said level it was almost certain to take off. If the ideas had never existed in the past, that would suggest that it at least might be contingent upon some particular person (like Will himself) having them, or precursor ideas (like Peter Singer's work) needing to be developed by some particular individual, and but for that person, it may not have happened. But given that the ideas themselves don't seem to be contingent upon any lucky chance, that lends credence to the view that the important factor was something like the modern level economic development.

[rizlarich]

Nice interview. RE your discusion on 'western values' - there isn't really such a thing as Western Values, evidenced by the fact that what we value changes continuiously. The only constant value (since the enlightenment) is one of open enquiry and criticism - this seems worth fixing.