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bababookmatt's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
fast-paced
3.25
Loved the topic and point, but sometimes felt, “the future is really big with a lot of people,” was overly played out and redundant.
mildo's review
3.0
Interesting ideas to think of, but there was some essence missing for me. 3.5*
Highlights:
- “A society grows great when old men plant trees under whose shade they will never sit.”
- (on irreversible events) Even if we don’t know whether some species or work of art or language is valuable, there is an asymmetry between preserving it and letting it be destroyed. If we preserve it and conclude later that it’s not worth holding on to, then we can always change our minds. If we let it be destroyed, we can’t ever get it back.
- Rome’s population dwindled to only thirty thousand people, stayed at a similar level for centuries, and only surpassed its peak population again 1,400 years later, in the 1930s.In fact, it wasn’t until the early nineteenth century that any European city surpassed the population of Rome at its ancient peak.
- The number of scientists in the world is doubling every couple of decades, such that at least three-quarters of all scientists who have ever lived are alive today.
- (on human wellbeing vs suffering) Remarkably, the leading approach to measuring the burden of disease, which is widely used by governments and philanthropists when setting health-care policy, assumes that death is the worst possible state one can be in, even though this is clearly false. It thereby systematically biases policies towards saving life over improving quality of life.
- (on overall wellbeing) To capture the importance of differences in capacity for wellbeing, we could, as a very rough heuristic, weight animals’ interests by the number of neurons they have. The motivating thought behind weighting by neurons is that, since we know that conscious experience of pain is the result of activity in certain neurons in the brain, then it should not matter more that the neurons are divided up among four hundred chickens rather than present in one human. If we do this, then a beetle with 50,000 neurons would have very little capacity for wellbeing; honeybees, with 960,000 neurons, would count a little more; chickens, with 200 million neurons, count a lot more; and humans, with over 80 billion neurons, count the most.69 This gives a very different picture than looking solely at numbers of animals: by neuron count, humans outweigh all farmed animals (including farmed fish) by a factor of thirty to one. This was very surprising to me; before looking into this, I hadn’t appreciated just how great the difference in brain size is between human beings and nonhuman animals.
- Emphasising personal consumption decisions over more systemic changes is often a convenient move for corporations.
Highlights:
- “A society grows great when old men plant trees under whose shade they will never sit.”
- (on irreversible events) Even if we don’t know whether some species or work of art or language is valuable, there is an asymmetry between preserving it and letting it be destroyed. If we preserve it and conclude later that it’s not worth holding on to, then we can always change our minds. If we let it be destroyed, we can’t ever get it back.
- Rome’s population dwindled to only thirty thousand people, stayed at a similar level for centuries, and only surpassed its peak population again 1,400 years later, in the 1930s.In fact, it wasn’t until the early nineteenth century that any European city surpassed the population of Rome at its ancient peak.
- The number of scientists in the world is doubling every couple of decades, such that at least three-quarters of all scientists who have ever lived are alive today.
- (on human wellbeing vs suffering) Remarkably, the leading approach to measuring the burden of disease, which is widely used by governments and philanthropists when setting health-care policy, assumes that death is the worst possible state one can be in, even though this is clearly false. It thereby systematically biases policies towards saving life over improving quality of life.
- (on overall wellbeing) To capture the importance of differences in capacity for wellbeing, we could, as a very rough heuristic, weight animals’ interests by the number of neurons they have. The motivating thought behind weighting by neurons is that, since we know that conscious experience of pain is the result of activity in certain neurons in the brain, then it should not matter more that the neurons are divided up among four hundred chickens rather than present in one human. If we do this, then a beetle with 50,000 neurons would have very little capacity for wellbeing; honeybees, with 960,000 neurons, would count a little more; chickens, with 200 million neurons, count a lot more; and humans, with over 80 billion neurons, count the most.69 This gives a very different picture than looking solely at numbers of animals: by neuron count, humans outweigh all farmed animals (including farmed fish) by a factor of thirty to one. This was very surprising to me; before looking into this, I hadn’t appreciated just how great the difference in brain size is between human beings and nonhuman animals.
- Emphasising personal consumption decisions over more systemic changes is often a convenient move for corporations.
nikla88's review
4.0
Never thought of "longtermism" before, I did think of what will happen in one or two generations from mine but never beyond that. Therefore I appreciate the fact this book changed my perspective and my way of thinking around certain topics. I really is a fascinating yet scary view over the fact we owe the future but as well our parents and grandparents have owned our future.
The writing of the book and the way it is split works well but each chapter feel a bit over engineered, the same concept gets stretched a bit too much with the consequence of making it hard to read.
The writing of the book and the way it is split works well but each chapter feel a bit over engineered, the same concept gets stretched a bit too much with the consequence of making it hard to read.
anandazhu's review
the book raises more questions than it answers but it does present some interesting ideas (albeit ones that are ripe for misinterpretation).
bmo1661's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
quartzmaya's review
2.0
“… You accidentally drop a glass bottle and it shatters. Suppose that if you leave the glass there, a child will at some point cut herself badly on it. You need to decide whether to clean it up. When making the decision, does it matter when exactly the child will injure herself? If it’s a week, a decade, or even a century from now, does your mind change? Of course not. A hurt child is a hurt child, no matter when she’s hurt… “
The subject itself and the initial introduction was interesting! I enjoyed thinking about why future people matter and if moral progress is inevitable.
But once the author started writing about current and potential future technology and actions, it lost my focus. What was being covered felt more dry and there was less new things to say and came off as more traditional and surprisingly close minded. (For example, the author firmly encouraged readers to stick with traditional degrees, and praised one-time donations over green lifestyle changes?)
The subject itself and the initial introduction was interesting! I enjoyed thinking about why future people matter and if moral progress is inevitable.
But once the author started writing about current and potential future technology and actions, it lost my focus. What was being covered felt more dry and there was less new things to say and came off as more traditional and surprisingly close minded. (For example, the author firmly encouraged readers to stick with traditional degrees, and praised one-time donations over green lifestyle changes?)