“Why haven’t we seen a promising longtermist intervention yet?” by Yarrow Bouchard 🔸

The word "longtermism" was first used publicly, here on the Effective Altruism Forum, in 2017. In the intervening eight years, a few books on longtermism have been written, many papers have been published, and countless forum posts, blog posts, tweets, and podcasts have discussed the topic. Why haven’t we seen a promising longtermist intervention yet? For clarity, longtermist interventions should meet the following criteria: Promising: the intervention seems like a good idea and has strong evidence and reasoning to support it Novel: it's a new idea proposed since the term "longtermism" was coined in 2017 and it was first proposed by someone associated with longtermism in explicit connection to the term "longtermism" Actionable: it's something people could realistically do now or soon Genuinely longtermist: it's something that we wouldn’t want to do anyway based on neartermist concerns In my view, the strongest arguments pertaining to the moral value of far future lives are arguments about existential risk. However, the philosopher Nick Bostrom's first paper on existential risk, highlighting the moral value of the far future, was published in 2002, which is 15 years before the term "longtermism" was coined. The philosopher Derek Parfit discussed the moral value of far [...] --- First published: December 18th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LSfZKPFHzwJgdhF5f/why-haven-t-we-seen-a-promising-longtermist-intervention-yet --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

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