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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#246 — Police Training & Police Misconduct
#245 — Can We Talk About Scary Ideas?
#244 — Food, Climate, and Pandemic Risk
#243 — A Few Points of Confusion
#242 — Psychedelics and the Self
#241 — Final Thoughts on Free Will
#240 — The Boundaries of Self
#239 — Yet Another Call from Ricky Gervais
#238 — How to Build a Universe
#237 — Another Call from Ricky Gervais
#236 — Rebooting New York City
#235 — A Call from Ricky Gervais
#234 — The Divided Mind
#233 — The Groves of Misinformation
#232 — Inequality and Revolution
#231 — Crossing the Abyss
#230 — An Insurrection of Lies
#229 — A Few Thoughts for a New Year
#228 — Doing Good
#227 — Knowing the Mind
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