I am listening to the audio book version of William MacAskill's book What We Owe The Future. At first I was disappointed in the discussion that covered the idea that our current decisions should focus on the effect of seven generations from our current one. There are no disagreements with this approach but I have known about this approach for over twenty years and wanted additional insight. Fortunately the rest of the book did not disappoint.
The author focuses on long term ism. What threats pose existential threats to the survival of the people on our planet. When the comet Shoemaker-Levy - 9 crashed into Jupiter in 1994 that got the world's attention and we developed the Center for Near Earth Orbit Studies to track space objects that may collide with the earth and cause significant damage.
He discusses the danger of bioengineered agents that could kill a large part of our population. Outbreaks linked to breaches in biosecurity at a lab caused an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease in the UK twice with decaying plumbing as the source. The former Soviet Union had releases of anthrax, small pox and other bioweapons.
The small changes in birth rate produces large changes in the world population. With the exception of Africa most countries do not have replacement birthrates and will begin to have significant declines in population.
There are dangers in locking in ideology or approaches to problems. He noted that the uniform international resistance to early human testing of the covid vaccine on humans even with the fast development probably resulted in the unnecessary deaths of at least a million people. If one country would have taken the risk, we could have learned from their experience. This does point to the benefit of different states and countries trying different solutions to a problem. We should not be too hasty when we want to drive toward a uniform solution.
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