Humanity in a Thousand Years with Will MacAskill (S3 Ep.29)

My guest today is Will MacAskill. Will is an associate professor of philosophy at Oxford University. He is the co-founder and president of the Centre for Effective Altruism. Will is also the director of the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research. In this episode, we discuss his new book "What We Owe the Future". We talk about whether we have a moral obligation to the billions of humans that will be born in the next several 1000 years, and how to weigh those obligations against those of living humans. We discuss population ethics in general, and Derek Parfit's Repugnant Conclusion thought experiment. We discuss the role of economic growth in humanity's long-term future and how to weigh that against present-day wealth inequality. We talk about the ethics of abortion, and the notion of moral progress. We also discuss the possible AI futures that lie ahead of us and much more.  -Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code [20COLEMAN] at Manscaped.com. That’s 20% off with free shipping at manscaped.com and use code [20COLEMAN]. -Sign up through wren.co/coleman to make a difference in the climate crisis, and Wren will plant 10 extra trees in your name! -Sign up today at butcherbox.com/COLEMAN to get two, 10 oz New York strip steaks and 8 oz of lobster claw and knuckle meat FREE in your first order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices