My review of @willmacaskill's What We Owe The Future has just been published in Utilitas! It's open access. In it, I explain why, although I wanted to share MacAskill's enthusiasm for longtermism, I was left unconvinced. 1/5 https://www.cambridge.org/core...
The book is well-known and my review is short (6 pages), so here I'll just state the four challenges I raise. 1) The three-premise 'case' given for longtermism doesn't form a valid argument. 2) MacAskill presents his premises as simple and uncontroversial; they are not.
3) The book doesn't show it's possible to shape the future; in particular, there isn't a historical example in it that convincingly meets MacAskill's own success criteria (significance, persistence, contingency), so we should be sceptical that we can do so.
4) MacAskill says longtermism would result in a 'moral revolution' but it's not argued how, if true, it would change the priorities. Longtermism gives us more reason to care some things - eg AI, nuclear war - but we already have some reason to care about those now.
To close: MacAskill characterises longtermism as a bold, exciting expedition into the unknown. I agree with him on that - I'm just not sure we should go.