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.
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#367 — Campus Protests, Antisemitism, and Western Values
#366 — Urban Warfare 2.0
#365 — Reality Check
#364 — Facts & Values
#363 — Knowledge Work
#362 — Six Months of War
#361 — Sam Bankman-Fried & Effective Altruism
#360 — We Really Don’t Have Free Will?
#359 — Getting Used to It
#358 — The War in Ukraine
#357 — America & World Order
#356 — Islam & Freedom
#355 — A Falling World
#354 — Is Moral Progress a Fantasy?
#353 — Race & Reason
#352 — Hubris & Chaos
#351 — 5 Myths about Israel and the War in Gaza
#350 — Sharing Reality
#349 — Generosity, Cynicism, and the Future of Doing Good
#348 — The Politics of Antisemitism
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