What We Owe The Future: The Sunday Times Bestseller

Absolute bargain that this great book is 99p on kindle today. Get it. This is a book that really could shape our future. You won't perhaps agree with everything in it, but the questions and topics it raises are important and thought provoking. And the larger idea that our future could be great happy and positive in tangible ways is important. Optimism drives us forward.This fascinating yet non-fiction and non-gloomy well written book is a deeply interesting book whatever country you're in. The book is about us all on Earth and it's about what our future could be like. Our future could be great beyond belief and yet predictably charted as likely to be that great by wise use of technology and resources. Clearly that's contingent on politics and business deciding we deserve a great future, but it could happen. Goodness knows we've had a lot of wake-up calls to abandon bad politicians and bad political systems so politics and business might be much better in some countries in the nearish future. We also feel after the pandemic we deserve a great future. It could happen. And by describing a possible great future, this book might help that future happen.

What We Owe the Future is well researched which is exemplified by the extensive notes section at the end of the book. MacAskill offers a balanced view on the future which straddles the line between acknowledging our problems while not veering too much into techno-optimism.The key philosophical premise of the book, is that future people count, and there could be a lot of them. The proposition that we should care for future generations isn't a revolutionary idea - in fact, a key argument for climate change action is to preserve the environment for future generations. MacAskill argues that actually taking this premise seriously leads us to significantly change how we think and make decisions.The future could be extremely bad, or it could be extremely good. If there are 100 billion humans alive in the future (or even more), then the stakes for them living good lives is high, and we are uniquely positioned to help those future people if we choose to. Overall, MacAskill outlines a strong case for longtermism and why we should care for the future.I found some of the assumptions in the book to be unconvincing, and it felt like not enough attention was paid to the potential pitfalls of longtermism. While I agree that we should care a lot about future generations, I don’t think MacAskill goes into enough depth into how this idea can be taken down the wrong path. For example, by focussing too much attention on the problems of the future, we can neglect the problems of the present, which remain critically important. longtermism can imply that because the capacity to do good in the future is so high, the needs of the present are not as important.I would also second a point made by another reviewer that there are some questionable statements made. One being that “Information can persist indefinitely because the cost to replicate it is so tiny”. The conclusion of that point being that digital information such as the software that runs Pong the video game, could last as long as civilisation. From my experience working in software, I would agree the act of copying digital information is easy. Actually preserving digital information through time on the other hand, is a non-trivial problem that is not alluded to (Perhaps the extensive research didn’t prevent all cases of the Dunning-Kruger effect).MacAskill outlines a framework for assessing the longterm value of something or state of affairs - the SPC (Significance, Persistence, Contingency) framework. I won’t go into details of the whole framework, but will explain contingency to make a point. The contingency of a state of affairs is the extent to which the state of affairs depends on a small number of specific actions. That is to say that something that is not very contingent is something that is likely to have happened anyway, whereas something that is very contingent is not very likely to have happened. You could say that the invention of writing was not very contingent as it is believed multiple groups of people invented writing independently. You could say that the writing of Macbeth is very contingent, as if Shakespeare didn’t write it, it is unlikely someone else would have conjured up the same story.MacAskill argues that abolition of slavery may have been very contingent, and that we may still be living with slavery today, in spite of the enlightenment and the broader transition to liberal societies. To say that slavery might still be legal today, and also that several re-runs of history would have left it alive and kicking I think misses the entire point of the enlightenment. The values instilled in society over the past 400 years strongly point to slavery being a morally and logically inconsistent institution, an argument MacAskill considers, but doesn’t seem to wholeheartedly agree with. Of course it is possible that the enlightenment never happened, and in that case the contingency of abolition may have been high.The book ends with a chapter containing practical steps about how we should take action. While trying to target actions in an effective way is likely better than not trying at all, it exposes a key misconception of the book, and highlights a critique against the wider Effective Altruism movement, of which MacAskill is a key thought leader. We cannot predict the future, and we cannot accurately predict what knowledge will be needed to solve future issues. It is not uncommon that knowledge created unintentionally or in unexpected fields ends up solving our problems (a salient example of unintentional progress is the discovery of penicillin). The idea that you can focus your energy on longterm future problems and arrive at the correct solution is questionable and perhaps risky.Overall, What We Owe the Future is an easy to understand case for longtermism. If you are interested in the future and how we can impact it, I would recommend this book, even if only to understand ideas related to the Effective Altruism movement. That said, there are several shortcomings which I found made it hard to give this book a higher rating. It was readable with some interesting points, but fell short of being a definitive call to action about caring for the future.

I originally went to a bookshop to buy this as I'd seen it advertised on billboards and it looked very interesting. When they didn't have it I came to Amazon and was offered a £5 promotion on this item which was already 25% off of the RRP, essentially saving me 50% of what I would've ended up paying. The book had me hooked pre-chapter 1. The ideas in the introduction made me know I would be in for a wild one. I don't generally find myself gravitating towards non-fiction but this is a must even if you're the slightest bit tempted. A real eye opener and a fascinating look into the world we live in and the passion of someone in a very different field to myself.

An incredibly motivating book. Filled with well-researched information about our current state and some potential outcomes for the future, as well as the ethical arguments for why we should care. Highly readable and very actionable. Probably the most impactful book I’ve read in the last year.

The amount of time that went into researching this book astounds me. William and his research team spent over a decade’s worth of full-time work, almost two years of which was spent fact-checking. This is sort of like a blockbuster book. I've also found the ideas presented incredibly engaging and interesting, and even where I ultimately disagree with parts of the author's arguments, I think that there should be no doubt that this book represents an extremely compelling and invigorating point of view which should be receiving much more debate and discussion than it has so far.

It’s the first time I’ve been challenged to think about the future not in decades but actually thousands of millennia. It provides great frameworks on how to think about problems and impact in a very different multi generation scale while also making it tangible enough to not sound ludicrous.

One of the most inspiring, meaningful and enlightening book I have ever read.

Longtermism is an important idea, and MacAskill has to be lauded for promoting a perspective that could become crucial for the long-term survival of our civilization. This is a well written book with lots of interesting ideas, but ultimatively the overall argument lacks realism, making the conclusions less convincing than they could be.The whole vision is based on a very reductionist / utilitarian worldview that puts too much (unwarrented) trust in the quantifiability of future outcomes. Life is inherently unpredictable, and even the best future AI will not be able to overcome the general knowledge problem that Hayek identified already in the 1940s.Instead of futile attempts to calculate an inherantly uncertain future or the average wellbeing of humanity (!), true responsibility needs to be based on real behavioral change without the ‘instant’gratification of quantified rules and outcomes. Like another reviewer already stated, we owe the future more than an Arithmetic of Morality.Nevertheless, the book is full of interesting ideas and food for thought.Part 1 makes a strong and concinving case for longtermism. I fully agree that humanity behaves as an imprudent teenager while we are living in a pivotal moment in historyPart 2 talks about moral change and the significance, contingency and persistence of values. The case for a 'morally exploratory world' is well made, but looking at the current highly polarized political discourse I’d argue that we would benefit from a more tolerant attitude (instead of cancel culture) already today.Part 3 discusses the 3 most important risks to society: besides full extinction (via an asteroid, a pandemic, nuclear war), or collapse (similar to the Roman empire) the author considers mere stagnation as an existential risk, too, given that current technologies are already sufficiently powerful to destroy the whole planet, but not yet powerful enough to help us safely avoiding such disaster. I'd argue though that behavioral change (which can be achieved - maybe even easier - in a stagnating society) is at least as important as technological progress.Part 4 is the least convincing part of the book. The ‘population ethics’ championed here appears to be almost cartoon-like naïve. Also the next chapter - trying to quantify human happiness and progress, which is notoriously difficult - is not very persuasive. (While I appreciate the inclusion of non-human animals in the overall 'calculation', the bizarre conclusion that it might be better for wild animals to not exist at all clearly shows the limits of such quantitative approach.)The last part is about taking action. Most recommendations here seem to be common sense though that do not really require the 'moral arithmetics' suggested in the earlier parts. Nevertheless, it is here - when discussing concrete (short- and medium-term) choices - where the quantitative approach can help making better decisions – e.g. when it comes to career choices. I wish MacAskill had used his arithmetics more for exposing some of the myths concerning greenwashing and - wishing in our consumption behavior.Overall conclusion: it is good to have a long term perspective – not only for the planet, but also for a sense of purpose. That itself is an important message that is worth spreading. I'm less convinced by the optimization approaches, and I think it is in general healthy to stay away from bold visions that risk to turn into rigid and potentially dangerous ideologies.

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Loved the book! It takes you to history, then talks about how important it is for us to make valuable decisions for a better future.