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#292 — How Much Does the Future Matter?

#292 — How Much Does the Future Matter?

FromMaking Sense with Sam Harris


#292 — How Much Does the Future Matter?

FromMaking Sense with Sam Harris

ratings:
Length:
120 minutes
Released:
Aug 14, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode

Description

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with William MacAskill about his new book, What We Owe the Future. They discuss the philosophy of effective altruism (EA), longtermism, existential risk, criticism of EA, problems with expected-value reasoning, doing good vs feeling good, why it's hard to care about future people, how the future gives meaning to the present, why this moment in history is unusual, the pace of economic and technological growth, bad political incentives, value lock-in, the well-being of conscious creatures as the foundation of ethics, the risk of unaligned AI, how bad we are at predicting technological change, and other topics. SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.  
Released:
Aug 14, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

Join neuroscientist, philosopher, and best-selling author Sam Harris as he explores important and controversial questions about the human mind, society, and current events. Sam Harris is the author of The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, Waking Up, and Islam and the Future of Tolerance (with Maajid Nawaz). The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction. His writing has been published in more than 20 languages. Mr. Harris and his work have been discussed in The New York Times, Time, Scientific American, Nature, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, Newsweek, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere. Mr. Harris received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.