Elliott’s research is about our moral duties to future generations, whether we should hope that the future contains a lot of people, and how that should affect our priorities today. The Long View is a collection of essays introducing the philosophy of ‘longtermism’: the idea that it’s particularly important that the long-term future goes well. In their chapter, Hilary Greaves, William MacAskill, and Elliott make the case for ‘strong longtermism’: the view that impact on the long-term future is the most important feature of our actions today. Our priority should be ensuring that humanity survives and thrives in the centuries to come. The practical upshot is that we should spend significantly more time and money on preventing future pandemics, mitigating climate change, guiding AI development, investing funds for later use, and many other things besides.
The chapter is freely available to read here, and the whole book, here.
