Longtermism and aggregation

Abstract

Advocates of longtermism point out that interventions which focus on improving the prospects of people in the very far future will, in expectation, bring about an astronomical amount of good (or agent‐neutral value). As such, longtermists claim we have compelling moral reason to engage in long‐term interventions. In this paper, I show that longtermism is in conflict with plausible deontic scepticism about aggregation. I do so by demonstrating that, from both the ex‐ante and ex‐post perspectives, longtermist interventions generate extremely weak claims of assistance from future people.