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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#207 — Can We Pull Back From The Brink?
#206 — A Conversation with David Frum
#205 — The Failure of Meritocracy
#204 — A Conversation with Jonathan Haidt
#203 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan
#202 — A Conversation with Andrew Yang
#201 — A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari
#200 — Creatures of Habit
#199 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan
#198 — A Conversation with Paul Bloom
#197 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan
#196 — The Science of Happiness
#195 — Social Cohesion is Everything
#194 — The New Future of Work
#193 — Meditation in an Emergency
#192 — A Conversation with Paul Bloom
#191 — Early Thoughts on a Pandemic
#190 — How Should We Respond to Coronavirus?
#189 — Wealth & Happiness
#188 — A Conversation with Paul Bloom
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