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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#313 — Apocalypse
Making Sense of Belief and Unbelief | Episode 6 of The Essential Sam Harris
#312 — The Trouble with AI
#311 — Did SARS-CoV-2 Escape from a Lab?
Making Sense of Free Will | Episode 5 of The Essential Sam Harris
#310 — Social Media & Public Trust
Making Sense of Encounters With Violence | Episode 4 of The Essential Sam Harris
#309 — Vulnerability, Politics, and Moral Worth
#308 — The Long Game
Making Sense of Foundations of Morality | Episode 3 of The Essential Sam Harris
#307 — Twitter, Elon, & Free Speech
Making Sense of Consciousness | Episode 2 of The Essential Sam Harris
#306 — Psychedelics & Mortality
#305 — Moral Knowledge
#304 — Why I Left Twitter
Making Sense of Artificial Intelligence | Episode 1 of The Essential Sam Harris
#303 — The Fall of Sam Bankman-Fried
#302 — Science & Civilization
#301 — The Politics of Unreality: Ukraine and Nuclear Risk
#300 — A Tale of Cancellation
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