Book Title: What We Owe the Future
Author: William MacAskill
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Publication Date: September 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-86154-613-8 (Paperback)
Pages: 352
Genre: Philosophy, Ethics, Longtermism

“It’s easy to mistake distance for unreality… But just as the world does not stop at our doorstep or our country’s borders, neither does it stop at our generation, or the next.”

Future people count. And we can change their lives. This is the key idea that What We Owe The Future by William MacAskill is centred around. It is a bold argument for longtermism:the idea that humans hold moral responsibility to ensure that future generations are safeguarded, by improving their outcomes.

Morally, future people are worth no less than existing people. Yet, they are rarely considered when making decisions.

What We Owe The Future freely explores the grim and uncomfortable possibility of humanity collapsing too soon — perhaps within the next few centuries; but it also acknowledges the prospect of us surviving for millennia. The book breaks down the possible causes of the end of the human species, such as Artificial General Intelligence, Engineered Pathogens, and Nuclear War, while assessing the actual likelihood of each of these happening, and if humanity could bounce back from such catastrophes — that is, of course, as long as it doesn’t cause the irreversible: extinction.

Although the premise may seem dark (thinking about the future is already stressful on an individual level, let alone considering the billions of people that are about to come), MacAskill is realistically optimistic in his theories. He claims that humanity’s decisions right now are crucial to how the future will be, before the real risk of values locking-in, preventing changes and moral progress.

The book was thought-provoking, with many expressive, stark lines, which one does not come across frequently in non-fiction. When I previously thought of the future of humanity, I envisioned the earth burning up into a big red fireball, plants and animals shrivelling into ashes, the Earth lacking any protection against the blazing Sun. Although a creative description (and certainly not very unlikely), the book opened me up to a range of other circumstances that pose a danger to civilisation, and need to be looked at. It was a digestible introduction to the complicated idea of longtermism, and has motivated me to research further longtermist pieces of writing.

What We Owe The Future tries to explain very theoretical circumstances, however, being limited by the length of a single book, the ideas are written to be fairly condensed; which may require a couple re-reads of a chapter to fully grasp what it is trying to say.

There is also a brief mention of what we as individuals could do to protect those who come long after us, including an emphasis on how important our career choices could be to promote long-term thinking in others. Although it’s not particularly detailed compared to the rest of the topics explored in the book, I don’t think it was meant to be. The book is not self-contained — it’s simply a push to get you onto the longtermist thinking train. The rest is left up to you.

In essence, What We Owe The Future is a persuasive call-to-action. I write this as a high school senior, but I would recommend it to anyone interested in moral philosophy, and even casual readers curious about if and/or why we should consider people who don’t exist yet. Sceptics, perhaps, I’d push even more-so towards reading the book, to figure out whether you agree with the longtermist principle, or if you think it can be improved.

Still, I’d consider it difficult for anyone to argue that we shouldn’t think about the coming generations. Future people matter.