“Moral error as an existential risk” by William_MacAskill

This is an essay I’ve drafted but haven’t completed — I’m posting it in the spirit of Draft Amnesty and because there's a Debate Week on the topic; expect mistakes, cut-off sentences, missing context, etc., and feel free to ask follow-up questions here or in this thread! This is a draft as part of a bigger essay series I'm working on, on “Better Futures”. I define moral error as an outcome where most future beings endorse the civilisation that they inhabit, but where there is an enormous loss of value because those future beings’ preferences are for the wrong things. In this post I list some examples of axes for moral error: decisions where mistakes by future decision-makers could result in the loss of most possible value. I do not try to be exhaustive; my goal is to illustrate the variety and number of different decisions that could lead [...] ---Outline:(01:33) Where should we look for potential sources of moral error?(02:59) What philosophical assumptions does the idea of moral error rely on?(04:02) Outline of the list of axes for moral error(04:50) Listing some examples of axes for moral error(04:55) Preference-satisfactionism, hedonism, and other theories of wellbeing(06:02) Population ethics: duration and number of lives(09:15) The trade-off between happiness and suffering(09:51) The moral status (and rights) of digital beings(12:51) Should we value diversity of life?(13:57) The trade-off between growth and conservation(14:36) Causal and non-causal decision theories(15:16) Meta-ethics: should society encourage change of one's preferences?(16:21) Change versus stasis(16:51) Empirical errors(17:48) Concluding notesThe original text contained 12 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. The original text contained 1 image which was described by AI. --- First published: March 17th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HqmQMmKgX7nfSLaNX/moral-error-as-an-existential-risk --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.