I enjoyed this conversation and thank you for your thoughtful approach to both interesting and difficult topics. One topic I would like to bring attention to is Will's assertion regarding hunter-gatherers being responsible for the mass extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna. Although the "Blitzkreig" or "Overkill" hypothesis (Paul Martin, 1966) initially gained traction in academia, the raw numbers of megafauna vs hunter-gatherers as well as the cadence of their extinction vs the proposed migration path across the Beringia land bridge and into the Americas refute this assertion. Although they may have played some role, it is highly unlikely that humans were the driving force for the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna. Thanks and one love.
The thought experiments and ethical arguments might lead to some points worth considering to some degree but it's not something I would base my life on. I agree with Patricia Churchland that ethics and morality are not based on pure reason at their core. They are based on emotion and humans trying to figure out pragmatically how they might live together.
That’s why I liked Rawls conception of morality, or the way in which a society can agree to certain moral principles through what he calls “reflective equilibrium,” which relies, in part, to intuitive responses to moral issues. And fine-tuning them based upon agreed principles (of Justice) that were set on what he called the “original position.” It’s interesting. And one that I adopt. But William is brilliant and worth considering too. But, this is not a physical science. So no one is *actually* right haha
@@dfwherbie8814 I actually consider Rawls similar in that his philosophy is about claiming, through just reasoning, you can form some totally consistent objectively true moral system using a thought experiment that. I think it is too divorced from the source of morality: human attachment and emotions, not a thought experiment. Patricia Churchland draws heavily from Hume, but updates his ideas, blends them with other philosophers and she uses her expertise in neuroscience to give an account of where morality comes from.
@@1DangerMouse1 I wouldn’t say it’s emotionalism. It definitely leans heavily on intuition though. Churchland definitely has interesting ideas that must be taken into consideration, particularly how she draws her analysis from her work in neuroscience. But, you know, no one really has the answers to this.
Yeah most of these thought experiments are imagining we live in a video game and happiness is a single parameter that is directly tethered to the population parameter. Why would the number of inhabitants in a world be directly correlated with the happiness of each individual in the first place? I could imagine a town of 1,000 miserably depressed people and a thriving city of 2 million people that on average were pretty content with there lives. So why is this "adding people makes everybody less happy" calculation being snuck in?
~ 22:10 he talks about ethics of population always being complicated - this is essentially the same paradox of expected value in probability and many have stated it’s a question for philosophy
You guys are overlooking the degrees of complexity and the extent of the unforeseen consequences and multiple interacting ripple effects. It is an illusion to think that you can predict the ultimate or the very long-term consequences. There are too many variables, too many unseen variables, too many wildcard events and developments. If you think it out, it is beyond any human mind to calculate or foresee, or keep track of, or even to simply encompass or envision the whole network of causes and effects. Also, judging what is good ultimately is at least a little presumptuous. Consider blindfold chess. Most people (over 95%) can't even do it with one game. A few people (well under 1%) can play three blindfold games simultaneously. Many fewer (well under one in ten thousand) can play ten blindfold games simultaneously. At this point, even David Deutsch is well behind in his abilities. Even fewer (well under one in a hundred million) can play twenty blindfold games simultaneously. Still fewer (well under one in a billion) can play fifty blindfold games simultaneously. And no human being can play a hundred blindfold games simultaneously. Up it to a thousand games, and all human brings are left way behind in the dust. Relate this to the much greater (relative to thousands, millions or billions of chess games) complexity of the longterm future, with all its butterfly effects, ripple effects, multiple unforeseen developments, etc. How do you take into account the future world-shakers and what they will do? The next Messiahs, or great political, social, philosophical, scientific and technological revolutionaries and revolutions? The great, one-in-ten-thousand-years freak geniuses (there will be multiple such freaks) and the changes they will bring to the world? What about the advances in technologies over thousands of future years? Just look at the changes in the past 200 years. What about the next 200? The next 20,000? The next 500,000,000? It is well beyond your brain's abilities, or anyone else's.
Why is this video not in the "Full Episodes" playlist? I want to watch all the full episodes, but I had to rely on "the algorithm" to tell me about this one. Is there somewhere else I should be looking on top of the "Full Episodes" list?
At 21:30, that argument didn't math well. The curve has a hump in it. It's hardly a straight line from blissful to more blissful. It's from blissful to more blissful and back down to blissful and then to less blissful.
Why would the number of inhabitants in a world be directly correlated with the happiness of each individual in the first place? I could imagine a town of 1,000 miserably depressed people and a thriving city of 2 million people that on average were pretty content with there lives. So why is this "adding people makes everybody less happy" calculation being snuck in?
Is there not a distinction to be made between a human that could exist and one that WILL exist? My concern for future humans revolves around the fact that they WILL exist and be capable of suffering. Those that could exist but won’t are not a concern to me. They will never be capable of suffering.
To me the question should be, “what is the optimal number of humans to be alive at the same time? That calculation will change if you factor in the optimal wellbeing of other species. This is a question with an answer. But…any measures put in place should be voluntary. Those kinds of norms can be established and reinforced socially.
Future lives exist in our imagination. We have no idea what they will or won't be. People on the other side of the world verifiable exist. Obviously we should make long term plans on the order of a couple decades to ensure peace and prosperity but spending a lot of time thinking about supposed "humans" alive in a thousand years seems like a waste of time.
Who cares what the optimal number of humans to be alive at the same time is. The optimal number is how much earth can handle and earth can handle a lot more. Plus we can make cities on the oceans, orbiting space stations, bases on moon, mars etc. There is no optimal number of humans alive at once in the universe, thats stupid.
If the conclusion is repellent, and we agree that we know how to reason rationally, then it can only be a failure to include all the variables. Or the conclusion is correct.
Putting the narrative of mayhem and doom aside for a second, is is worth acknowledging that population replacement ratios continue to fall steadily as poverty rates fall and lifespan rises? Do recent generations truly deserve a failing grade, relative to those prior? Is it wrong to suggest that as humans we are generally more conscious of each other and our collective footprint?
Myopic and Selfish because not only is there no genuine care for the future, there is no genuine care for the past - and they are directly related. Connection is of great importance to normal, natural people, along with Beauty and Intelligence - the people in charge, and the masses they lead, care little for any of these things.
.. what we owe the future is, right now, today, we need to stop criminalizing and victimizing good people who use sacred plants. Victimizing peaceful, good people will backfire.
*Worrying about the welfare of our kids and grandkids is fair enough, but worrying about the people who'll exist a thousand years from now is a silly time horizon. Firstly, our ability to predict the nature of the world's problems that far into the future is zero. We can't even predict what the world is gonna be like in the next ten years, let alone a thousand, so focusing on problems that far into the future is a wasted and futile endeavour. Secondly, we have serious present day problems to solve right now. In my opinion, the problem that requires our immediate attention is the one articulated by people like Tristan Harris in The Social Dilemma. We need to change the way we use the internet, smartphones and social media in order to restore a shared sense of reality and prevent a serious global mental health crisis. We can't effectively solve any other serious world problems if we all become warped, atomised, depressed and neurotic lunatics with radical political obsessions. When we figure out how to solve our immediate problems, maybe then we can consider the problems of the next millennium. As far as I'm concerned, if you're worried about that far into the future - you have luxury problems.*
I wonder whether the moral dilemma of how many people live at different levels of happiness is a hoax. I mean whose moral are we talking about? There is a genuine moral question of us poisoning the soil which will be wrong but we cannot weigh in how many individuals will choose to have children and live in that particular spot in the future. We cannot take responsibility for whatever future generations decide eventually.
Interesting thought experiment. But there’s a lot to what could make a good life and generally add to one’s well-being than the sheer quantity regarding the overall population. Unless you’re implying that an increase in population size, also increases the chances of increasing the amount of corrupted individuals, criminals, etc. Otherwise, it’s not conclusion. It’s a valid logical argument and very interesting, and definitely something to factor in. But it’s not as sound as it seems, and definitely not conclusive.
Not sure how the secular world harmonizes the notion that we should sacrifice in love for some future unborn generations for things like global warming, but then in the same breath say the already existing humans (alive with human DNA) unborn in the womb don't count as a life worth making some sacrifice for... Secular moral philosophy that doesn't admit what the existentialists have already spoken about meaninglessness, just proves it's all a form of positive psychology, Hughes worldview included.
Not sure how religious people can say that we should protect unborn human lives at all costs, but then go eat hamburgers or bacon, which are produced through mass-captivity and mass-slaughter of animals at least as sentient as a fetus.
As a secular person, I actually agree with you. You make a great point, how can a secular person in one moment say current sacrifices should be made for future human lives but then be ok with aborting a fetus on the grounds that it isn't a human yet. Doesn't make sense. Personally, I am pro abortion AND I don't think spending tons of time thinking about hypothetical future lives is a great way to spend ones time. Future lives exist in our current imagination. It is not the same as people alive now in another country because we can verify there existence. In regards to global warming, I worry about that for my own future. I don't want to wake up in a world where draughts are becoming more and more common until water costs as much as oil does today.
So - changing perspectives for a moment - what could the Roman or Greek civilisations have done, with their very limited technology - that would have made our environment better today? ANYTHING they might have contemplated then, could so much more easily be implemented & achieved now. Therefore, extrapolating forwards in time, any moves we make now are likely to be seen to be laughable and inconsequential in even 500 years time. So we sacrifice almost entirely our precious/unrepeatable turn on the planet (and that of our children and grandchildren), for a utopian belief that we KNOW the way to make ecology better in for 50 generations hence? …… and even if technology THEN will be able to achieve the same results with only 10% of the pain and 2% of the relative cost ?? Doesn’t seem like an inspired trade-off to me? Should our 17th century counterparts have cancelled the farming & industrial revolutions -even if they had realised that in that action may have eradicated cures to killer diseases, stopped the progress of dentistry, and impeded (or terminated) the emancipation of oppressed classes, women and children ?? To argue for that is to argue for cave-dwelling, hunter-gathering, feudalism & a painful 30-yr life expectancy.
Fantastic discussion. I only wish you had probed more into Professor MacAskill’s philosophical reasonings behind his pro-choice stance. The pro-life moral argument is rather easy to follow and (at least to me) is rather convincing, and I would really have loved to hear a solid philosophically grounded pro-choice argument.
@@skylarhughey5866 Thank you for your thoughts, and I can see what you’re saying with it. Basically it’s a matter of philosophically defining at what point of development, worth is given to the life that is there. So even before getting to a pro-life vs pro-choice discussion, we would have to affirm the value of human life, or at least personhood; and before that, define either one or both of those. Thank you again. You’ve given me more research to do, and much to think about.
The so called philosopher being interviewed is an idiot based upon his logical comparison of these two things. Stopping the action before it results in life will potentially stop a theoretical person from being made. Stopping the action after results in killing a non theoretical but living person. If someone can look at those two things and equate them, I worry about that person's grip on reality and their sanity. Life is the break-over point. Before conception, it's not a human and has only potential for life. After conception, it is a human being that is growing inside that mother that will continue to grow and develop until late adolescence.
British accent is so hard to understand and it's even harder to listen when part video at twice the speed which u normally do. Likely i will exit this video early on
This young man (an elite university scholar) has such a limited understanding of the true complexity of history and historical development and change that his extrapolations into the future appear ridiculously, actually embarrassingly, in fact worryingly, simplistic.
A little harsh, and actually - on the basis of this conversation - not true. This guy has a very realistic and non-partisan grasp of political (or even geo-political) history, unlike MANY, MANY academics - about whom I would undilutedly agree with your assessment. I could not disagree more profoundly with his road-map for the future - and the fashionable acceptance of the best way for US to act in the present - but I cannot criticise his assessment of the past.
The people of the future are voiceless. The people of the future don't exist. Who are they? They have yet to be determined and that is HUGE yet somehow it is discounted and you act like they are actual people, and there are no intervening or potentially intervening events between us and them so to speak.
It makes perfect sense. Just like cutting off your leg now so a future person can have it in case they blow their leg off. Or maybe a better analogy would be cutting off your penis now so your "future" generations could use it. See? Perfect sense. The best thing we can do for future generations is to thrive in our current generation.
I'm sorry but I can't take seriously anyone who think merely in utero and ex utero is sufficient for a moral distinction of that human life in itself - unmoored, inconsistently, incoherently applied moral categories are always more annoying than people with moral positions I disagree with but which hold internal coherence.
The implication that we could have tremendously large populations in the future usually is predicated on the assumption that we won't all be living on Earth, but will spread to other planets. There's only so many people that can be supported on Earth.
@@mikegray8776 yeah India and Nigeria will and are getting feminism as I type. Do you know away to isolate them from ideas? You've clearly done zero research.
*Some very dubious ideas here. How can he seriously think that there's no fundamental difference between europeans hypothetically stealing from latin america today and hypothetically doing something that costs future generations money? In the former scenario, one can measure the gains and losses of living perpetrators and victims, whereas in the latter scenario - the losses are completely theoretical and uncertain, and can't be weighed against the gains at all.*
Enjoyed your first contribution above - and I totally agree with all the points you made. Regrettable that you then felt the need to fall back onto "identity politics" bollocks with this one. Exploitation is a deeply regrettable, but absolutely ineradicable trait of humanity. But it is demonstrably NOT restricted to any one region, race or nationality. To argue and assert otherwise is to ignore reality and to applaud divisiveness.
@@mikegray8776 You have clearly got the wrong end of the stick. Where did i say or imply that exploitation is restricted to one race, region or nationality? I'm just referring to the example given in the video you plank.
I wouldn't call Will's ideas "dubious" but I agree with your point. Future lives exist in our imagination. We have no idea what they will or won't be. People on the other side of the world verifiably exist. Obviously we should make long term plans on the order of a couple decades to ensure peace and prosperity but spending a lot of time thinking about supposed "humans" alive in a thousand years seems like a waste of time.
Smart young people can provide interesting perspectives, but their lack of experience is notable. Lots of hot air in this episode. Parts sounded like a SNL skit. Get grounded, Coleman. You are drifting…
I enjoyed this conversation and thank you for your thoughtful approach to both interesting and difficult topics. One topic I would like to bring attention to is Will's assertion regarding hunter-gatherers being responsible for the mass extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna. Although the "Blitzkreig" or "Overkill" hypothesis (Paul Martin, 1966) initially gained traction in academia, the raw numbers of megafauna vs hunter-gatherers as well as the cadence of their extinction vs the proposed migration path across the Beringia land bridge and into the Americas refute this assertion. Although they may have played some role, it is highly unlikely that humans were the driving force for the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna. Thanks and one love.
I really appreciate an intelligent, insightful interviewer who asks useful questions. It makes a podcast soooooo much more informative.
I've watched a few other interviews with Will MacAskill, but yours is my favourite because you dug much deeper.
The thought experiments and ethical arguments might lead to some points worth considering to some degree but it's not something I would base my life on. I agree with Patricia Churchland that ethics and morality are not based on pure reason at their core. They are based on emotion and humans trying to figure out pragmatically how they might live together.
That’s why I liked Rawls conception of morality, or the way in which a society can agree to certain moral principles through what he calls “reflective equilibrium,” which relies, in part, to intuitive responses to moral issues. And fine-tuning them based upon agreed principles (of Justice) that were set on what he called the “original position.” It’s interesting. And one that I adopt. But William is brilliant and worth considering too. But, this is not a physical science. So no one is *actually* right haha
@@dfwherbie8814 I actually consider Rawls similar in that his philosophy is about claiming, through just reasoning, you can form some totally consistent objectively true moral system using a thought experiment that. I think it is too divorced from the source of morality: human attachment and emotions, not a thought experiment. Patricia Churchland draws heavily from Hume, but updates his ideas, blends them with other philosophers and she uses her expertise in neuroscience to give an account of where morality comes from.
@@1DangerMouse1 I wouldn’t say it’s emotionalism. It definitely leans heavily on intuition though. Churchland definitely has interesting ideas that must be taken into consideration, particularly how she draws her analysis from her work in neuroscience. But, you know, no one really has the answers to this.
Yeah most of these thought experiments are imagining we live in a video game and happiness is a single parameter that is directly tethered to the population parameter. Why would the number of inhabitants in a world be directly correlated with the happiness of each individual in the first place? I could imagine a town of 1,000 miserably depressed people and a thriving city of 2 million people that on average were pretty content with there lives. So why is this "adding people makes everybody less happy" calculation being snuck in?
Awesome conversation.
Just a heads up, your sound balance is a bit off.
~ 22:10 he talks about ethics of population always being complicated - this is essentially the same paradox of expected value in probability and many have stated it’s a question for philosophy
You guys are overlooking the degrees of complexity and the extent of the unforeseen consequences and multiple interacting ripple effects.
It is an illusion to think that you can predict the ultimate or the very long-term consequences. There are too many variables, too many unseen variables, too many wildcard events and developments.
If you think it out, it is beyond any human mind to calculate or foresee, or keep track of, or even to simply encompass or envision the whole network of causes and effects.
Also, judging what is good ultimately is at least a little presumptuous.
Consider blindfold chess. Most people (over 95%) can't even do it with one game. A few people (well under 1%) can play three blindfold games simultaneously. Many fewer (well under one in ten thousand) can play ten blindfold games simultaneously. At this point, even David Deutsch is well behind in his abilities. Even fewer (well under one in a hundred million) can play twenty blindfold games simultaneously. Still fewer (well under one in a billion) can play fifty blindfold games simultaneously. And no human being can play a hundred blindfold games simultaneously. Up it to a thousand games, and all human brings are left way behind in the dust.
Relate this to the much greater (relative to thousands, millions or billions of chess games) complexity of the longterm future, with all its butterfly effects, ripple effects, multiple unforeseen developments, etc.
How do you take into account the future world-shakers and what they will do? The next Messiahs, or great political, social, philosophical, scientific and technological revolutionaries and revolutions? The great, one-in-ten-thousand-years freak geniuses (there will be multiple such freaks) and the changes they will bring to the world? What about the advances in technologies over thousands of future years? Just look at the changes in the past 200 years. What about the next 200? The next 20,000? The next 500,000,000?
It is well beyond your brain's abilities, or anyone else's.
Why is this video not in the "Full Episodes" playlist? I want to watch all the full episodes, but I had to rely on "the algorithm" to tell me about this one. Is there somewhere else I should be looking on top of the "Full Episodes" list?
Interesting concept to think about.
Mr Hughes, I am poor as shit, but I will like your videos.
At 21:30, that argument didn't math well. The curve has a hump in it. It's hardly a straight line from blissful to more blissful. It's from blissful to more blissful and back down to blissful and then to less blissful.
Why would the number of inhabitants in a world be directly correlated with the happiness of each individual in the first place? I could imagine a town of 1,000 miserably depressed people and a thriving city of 2 million people that on average were pretty content with there lives. So why is this "adding people makes everybody less happy" calculation being snuck in?
Is there not a distinction to be made between a human that could exist and one that WILL exist? My concern for future humans revolves around the fact that they WILL exist and be capable of suffering. Those that could exist but won’t are not a concern to me. They will never be capable of suffering.
To me the question should be, “what is the optimal number of humans to be alive at the same time? That calculation will change if you factor in the optimal wellbeing of other species. This is a question with an answer.
But…any measures put in place should be voluntary. Those kinds of norms can be established and reinforced socially.
There is a distinction. The could exist is a percentage probability of will exist. And humans are bad at doing this sort of maths intuitively
Future lives exist in our imagination. We have no idea what they will or won't be. People on the other side of the world verifiable exist. Obviously we should make long term plans on the order of a couple decades to ensure peace and prosperity but spending a lot of time thinking about supposed "humans" alive in a thousand years seems like a waste of time.
Who cares what the optimal number of humans to be alive at the same time is. The optimal number is how much earth can handle and earth can handle a lot more. Plus we can make cities on the oceans, orbiting space stations, bases on moon, mars etc. There is no optimal number of humans alive at once in the universe, thats stupid.
If the conclusion is repellent, and we agree that we know how to reason rationally, then it can only be a failure to include all the variables. Or the conclusion is correct.
Putting the narrative of mayhem and doom aside for a second, is is worth acknowledging that population replacement ratios continue to fall steadily as poverty rates fall and lifespan rises? Do recent generations truly deserve a failing grade, relative to those prior? Is it wrong to suggest that as humans we are generally more conscious of each other and our collective footprint?
Myopic and Selfish because not only is there no genuine care for the future, there is no genuine care for the past - and they are directly related.
Connection is of great importance to normal, natural people, along with Beauty and Intelligence - the people in charge, and the masses they lead, care little for any of these things.
.. what we owe the future is, right now, today, we need to stop criminalizing and victimizing good people who use sacred plants. Victimizing peaceful, good people will backfire.
*Worrying about the welfare of our kids and grandkids is fair enough, but worrying about the people who'll exist a thousand years from now is a silly time horizon. Firstly, our ability to predict the nature of the world's problems that far into the future is zero. We can't even predict what the world is gonna be like in the next ten years, let alone a thousand, so focusing on problems that far into the future is a wasted and futile endeavour. Secondly, we have serious present day problems to solve right now. In my opinion, the problem that requires our immediate attention is the one articulated by people like Tristan Harris in The Social Dilemma. We need to change the way we use the internet, smartphones and social media in order to restore a shared sense of reality and prevent a serious global mental health crisis. We can't effectively solve any other serious world problems if we all become warped, atomised, depressed and neurotic lunatics with radical political obsessions. When we figure out how to solve our immediate problems, maybe then we can consider the problems of the next millennium. As far as I'm concerned, if you're worried about that far into the future - you have luxury problems.*
I wonder whether the moral dilemma of how many people live at different levels of happiness is a hoax. I mean whose moral are we talking about? There is a genuine moral
question of us poisoning the soil which will be wrong but we cannot weigh in how many individuals will choose to have children and live in that particular spot in the future. We cannot take responsibility for whatever future generations decide eventually.
Interesting thought experiment. But there’s a lot to what could make a good life and generally add to one’s well-being than the sheer quantity regarding the overall population. Unless you’re implying that an increase in population size, also increases the chances of increasing the amount of corrupted individuals, criminals, etc. Otherwise, it’s not conclusion. It’s a valid logical argument and very interesting, and definitely something to factor in. But it’s not as sound as it seems, and definitely not conclusive.
Not sure how the secular world harmonizes the notion that we should sacrifice in love for some future unborn generations for things like global warming, but then in the same breath say the already existing humans (alive with human DNA) unborn in the womb don't count as a life worth making some sacrifice for... Secular moral philosophy that doesn't admit what the existentialists have already spoken about meaninglessness, just proves it's all a form of positive psychology, Hughes worldview included.
Not sure how religious people can say that we should protect unborn human lives at all costs, but then go eat hamburgers or bacon, which are produced through mass-captivity and mass-slaughter of animals at least as sentient as a fetus.
As a secular person, I actually agree with you. You make a great point, how can a secular person in one moment say current sacrifices should be made for future human lives but then be ok with aborting a fetus on the grounds that it isn't a human yet. Doesn't make sense.
Personally, I am pro abortion AND I don't think spending tons of time thinking about hypothetical future lives is a great way to spend ones time. Future lives exist in our current imagination. It is not the same as people alive now in another country because we can verify there existence.
In regards to global warming, I worry about that for my own future. I don't want to wake up in a world where draughts are becoming more and more common until water costs as much as oil does today.
So - changing perspectives for a moment - what could the Roman or Greek civilisations have done, with their very limited technology - that would have made our environment better today?
ANYTHING they might have contemplated then, could so much more easily be implemented & achieved now.
Therefore, extrapolating forwards in time, any moves we make now are likely to be seen to be laughable and inconsequential in even 500 years time.
So we sacrifice almost entirely our precious/unrepeatable turn on the planet (and that of our children and grandchildren), for a utopian belief that we KNOW the way to make ecology better in for 50 generations hence? …… and even if technology THEN will be able to achieve the same results with only 10% of the pain and 2% of the relative cost ??
Doesn’t seem like an inspired trade-off to me?
Should our 17th century counterparts have cancelled the farming & industrial revolutions -even if they had realised that in that action may have eradicated cures to killer diseases, stopped the progress of dentistry, and impeded (or terminated) the emancipation of oppressed classes, women and children ??
To argue for that is to argue for cave-dwelling, hunter-gathering,
feudalism & a painful 30-yr life expectancy.
Well, if the Romans hadn't crucified Jesus, the world would look very different today. That single event probably had a huge impact on the future.
Fantastic discussion. I only wish you had probed more into Professor MacAskill’s philosophical reasonings behind his pro-choice stance. The pro-life moral argument is rather easy to follow and (at least to me) is rather convincing, and I would really have loved to hear a solid philosophically grounded pro-choice argument.
@@skylarhughey5866 Thank you for your thoughts, and I can see what you’re saying with it. Basically it’s a matter of philosophically defining at what point of development, worth is given to the life that is there. So even before getting to a pro-life vs pro-choice discussion, we would have to affirm the value of human life, or at least personhood; and before that, define either one or both of those. Thank you again. You’ve given me more research to do, and much to think about.
@@skylarhughey5866 Pretty balanced assessment, imho.
Amidst a maelstrom of ideological imbalance.
The so called philosopher being interviewed is an idiot based upon his logical comparison of these two things.
Stopping the action before it results in life will potentially stop a theoretical person from being made.
Stopping the action after results in killing a non theoretical but living person.
If someone can look at those two things and equate them, I worry about that person's grip on reality and their sanity. Life is the break-over point. Before conception, it's not a human and has only potential for life. After conception, it is a human being that is growing inside that mother that will continue to grow and develop until late adolescence.
Hopefully it doesn't end up like farnham's freehold.
British accent is so hard to understand and it's even harder to listen when part video at twice the speed which u normally do. Likely i will exit this video early on
This young man (an elite university scholar) has such a limited understanding of the true complexity of history and historical development and change that his extrapolations into the future appear ridiculously, actually embarrassingly, in fact worryingly, simplistic.
A little harsh, and actually - on the basis of this conversation - not true.
This guy has a very realistic and non-partisan grasp of political (or even geo-political) history, unlike MANY, MANY academics - about whom I would undilutedly agree with your assessment.
I could not disagree more profoundly with his road-map for the future - and the fashionable acceptance of the best way for US to act in the present - but I cannot criticise his assessment of the past.
I mean the UK politics advertisement for Oxford is already deflating my respect for the Oxbridge lot
The people of the future are voiceless. The people of the future don't exist. Who are they? They have yet to be determined and that is HUGE yet somehow it is discounted and you act like they are actual people, and there are no intervening or potentially intervening events between us and them so to speak.
Just saw Steven Pinker make the point on Twitter that helping non-existent future people does not seem effective or altruistic.
It makes perfect sense. Just like cutting off your leg now so a future person can have it in case they blow their leg off. Or maybe a better analogy would be cutting off your penis now so your "future" generations could use it. See? Perfect sense.
The best thing we can do for future generations is to thrive in our current generation.
I love Nolan but Tenet is probably the worst movie I’ve ever had the unfortunate pleasure of watching
Agreed. Tenet was almost pure propaganda, loosely wrapped in cinematography.
@@mikegray8776 didn’t see propaganda, I just saw some of the worst screenplay and plot ever devised
I'm sorry but I can't take seriously anyone who think merely in utero and ex utero is sufficient for a moral distinction of that human life in itself - unmoored, inconsistently, incoherently applied moral categories are always more annoying than people with moral positions I disagree with but which hold internal coherence.
💪🏾 not 1st , but actually a week late
Brought you you by Pfizer!
This guy thinks humanity will stay this populated? Clearly he hasn't studied population collapse.
Maybe check Nigeria and India before getting too convinced of that proposition.
The implication that we could have tremendously large populations in the future usually is predicated on the assumption that we won't all be living on Earth, but will spread to other planets. There's only so many people that can be supported on Earth.
@@mikegray8776 yeah India and Nigeria will and are getting feminism as I type. Do you know away to isolate them from ideas? You've clearly done zero research.
@@yusufgerald3969 wtf does feminism have to do with it
1000 years? Seems optimistic... I'd give us about 50
Coleman needs to develop a critical reassessment of the climate change show
Don't worry about the future. We need to treat humans right in the present. For example, stop the war on drugs, which is actually a war on humans.
*Some very dubious ideas here. How can he seriously think that there's no fundamental difference between europeans hypothetically stealing from latin america today and hypothetically doing something that costs future generations money? In the former scenario, one can measure the gains and losses of living perpetrators and victims, whereas in the latter scenario - the losses are completely theoretical and uncertain, and can't be weighed against the gains at all.*
Enjoyed your first contribution above - and I totally agree with all the points you made.
Regrettable that you then felt the need to fall back onto "identity politics" bollocks with this one. Exploitation is a deeply regrettable, but absolutely ineradicable trait of humanity. But it is demonstrably NOT restricted to any one region, race or nationality.
To argue and assert otherwise is to ignore reality and to applaud divisiveness.
@@mikegray8776 You have clearly got the wrong end of the stick. Where did i say or imply that exploitation is restricted to one race, region or nationality? I'm just referring to the example given in the video you plank.
I wouldn't call Will's ideas "dubious" but I agree with your point. Future lives exist in our imagination. We have no idea what they will or won't be. People on the other side of the world verifiably exist. Obviously we should make long term plans on the order of a couple decades to ensure peace and prosperity but spending a lot of time thinking about supposed "humans" alive in a thousand years seems like a waste of time.
One of the fundamentals of Christianity is to focus not on your mortal lifespan, but the Eternal beyond that.
what does that even mean
@@danielm5161 much to learn you still have.
Smart young people can provide interesting perspectives, but their lack of experience is notable. Lots of hot air in this episode. Parts sounded like a SNL skit. Get grounded, Coleman. You are drifting…