future responsibility without longtermism

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Future responsibility without longtermism is RB3’s regime-centered commitment to sustain viable, plural and revisable becoming for later lives without making speculative population totals the decisive ethical calculus. It accepts future welfare and real consequences while distinguishing causal persistence, predictive warrant and normative judgment. The proposal preserves the author’s critique of strong aggregation without treating every form of foresight or expected-value reasoning as refuted.

Explanation

Askell and Neth distinguish diminishing predictability from diminishing causal effect. Their analysis can make nearer consequences choice-relevant without assigning future people less moral worth, and it supports learning and option value. The source expressly says this expected-value argument does not establish its own further refusal of universal substitutability.

The book adds a normative commitment to participation, correction and non-domination. Neither enormous hypothetical populations nor privileged forecasting authority removes the need to justify present arrangements. This is the author’s ethical position, not a mathematical proof that all finite future populations are incomparable or all longtermist positions share one political program.

Present justice and future responsibility therefore remain connected through the institutions being stabilized. The proposed entry avoids adopting polemical quoted numbers or historical labels as independently certified facts; the native note itself corrects the quoted Bostrom estimate. The assessment concerns the argument’s limits and commitments rather than a current survey of organizations or advocates.

Scope and attribution

Keep epistemic diffusion distinct from causal disappearance, and the book’s normative refusal distinct from a general refutation of foresight or expected value.

AB — The Actual Book

Source-verified occurrence; see the printed-page references below.

Occurrence locators: 197; Notes: 249; Appendix: 279.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

The developed account belongs to RB3 in the cited local scope, with antecedents and qualifications retained.

Occurrence locators: 190, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267; Notes: 263.