Scott Alexander summarizes and responds to comments on his review of 'What We Owe The Future', addressing debates around population ethics, longtermism, and moral philosophy. Longer summary

This post highlights key comments on Scott Alexander's review of William MacAskill's book 'What We Owe The Future'. It covers various reactions and debates around topics like the repugnant conclusion in population ethics, longtermism, moral philosophy, AI risk, and the nature of happiness and suffering. Scott responds to several comments, clarifying his views on philosophy, moral reasoning, and the challenges of population ethics. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander reviews Will MacAskill's 'What We Owe The Future', a book arguing for longtermism and considering our moral obligations to future generations. Longer summary

Scott Alexander reviews Will MacAskill's book 'What We Owe The Future', which argues for longtermism - the idea that we should prioritize helping future generations. The review covers the book's key arguments about moral obligations to future people, ways to affect the long-term future, and population ethics dilemmas. Scott expresses some skepticism about aspects of longtermism and population ethics, but acknowledges the book's thought-provoking ideas and practical suggestions for having positive long-term impact. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander argues that concerns about climate change should not deter people from having children, presenting counterarguments to common climate-related reasons for avoiding parenthood. Longer summary

Scott Alexander argues against the idea that people should avoid having children due to climate change concerns. He presents three main counterarguments: 1) While climate change will be bad, it's unlikely to be catastrophic for most people in developed countries. 2) Choosing not to have children might actually harm climate action by reducing the number of future climate-conscious voters. 3) The carbon footprint of having a child is often overstated, and can potentially be offset through donations or other means. He concludes that climate concerns shouldn't prevent people who want children from having them. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander surveys people's preferences between suffering and oblivion, finding split opinions and weak correlations between different scenarios and real-world beliefs. Longer summary

Scott Alexander conducts a survey to explore people's preferences between suffering and oblivion in various scenarios. He presents five hypotheses and tests them using the survey results. The survey includes questions about preferring death over a difficult life, choosing between long unhappy life and short happy life, and population ethics. The results show that people are indeed split on these issues, with strong feelings on both sides. There are weak correlations between answers to different questions, suggesting a general factor of oblivion-preference versus suffering-preference. However, this factor does not strongly predict views on population ethics. The study finds weak correlations between oblivion preference and support for euthanasia, interest in cryonics, and personal happiness. Shorter summary