What do we owe future people?
Shortlisted in the John Locke Essay Competition
The first and most fundamental difference between future people and present people is “existence.” Present people exist; future people do not yet exist. And thus, the primary question of the difference between the moral obligations towards future people and present people is an existential one: Do we have a moral obligation to ensure that future people exist?
Article 3 of the Universal Human Rights Declaration states everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the security of person. However, this seemingly inarguable statement is cloaked in grey when the additional context of future people is introduced.
If “everyone” includes future people as well, then the definition of “life” is the crux of the issue. Is the right to life the narrower definition of sustaining life? Or is it the broader definition of obtaining life, or receiving life? Is the right to life a right to obtain life, like the right to education is the right to obtain an education?
Essentially, the question is: Does the right to life mean the right to start existing or to persist in existing? Let us first assume the right to life is the right to start to exist, come into existence.
Based on this premise, it would be a violation of this right if any creature that could come into existence did not come into existence. Every unborn creature would be another violation, another strike against this right.
However, this is clearly absurd: there are an infinite number of unborn creatures that could potentially come into existence. However, in no potential, ideal scenario do all the creatures that could come into existence come into existence. A right cannot exist if there is not even the possibility of realising that right in the most ideal of cases, just as the right to immortality is naturally absurd.
Thus, we may conclude that there is no right to exist. But, because future people do not have a right to exist, do we have no obligation to ensure that they do exist? Would a policy that painlessly ensured, for example, through the introduction of a genetic change, the human population would dwindle to zero, be an ethical one?
Utilitarian philosophy states that we should bring the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. However, the absence of future people at all precludes the very possibility of happiness.
Therefore, even though future people do not have a right to exist, we still have a moral obligation to ensure that they do as part of our overall moral obligation to ensure the greatest amount of good and happiness in the universe.
However, how should we implement our moral obligation towards the existence of humans in policy? Let us consider here only human existence, rather than human quality of life.
The most commonly cited threats against human existence, or human extinction events, seem strange and bizarre: asteroids, wars, even aliens. These events are clearly, by nature, unpredictable. Can we really shield against them, and is it worth trying? Is it a beneficial use of resources to try to defend against these erratic events?
Seventeenth-century mathematician Blaise Pascal justified his belief in God as follows: The potential benefits if God truly existed (being rewarded for believing) or costs (being punished for NOT believing) were infinite: as in being rewarded eternally in heaven or condemned to an eternity of suffering in hell.
Pascal concluded that even if the probability that God existed or heaven existed were minuscule, the infinite rewards or infinite punishment meant that one should believe in God, anyway.
Similarly, Pascalian probabilities are high-stakes, low-probability events, just like the ones described above. Even though their probabilities are very small, their potential consequences are vast: the extinction of human civilization.
And as Pascal did, we may conclude it is rational for our public policy to protect against these threats, even if they are low probability, because of the sheer magnitude of their effects.
Now, we come to the question of what kind of life we are morally obligated to give these future citizens? We believe it fair, in principle at least, to provide current people with the opportunities and resources to interact with the best technology ever created, if they pay the requisite amount, or even if they don’t, as exemplified by open-source software.
But are we obliged to leave future generations the resources to enjoy the same technology we do? Today’s technology requires a vast amount of natural resources. For example, computing consumes vast quantities of water for cooling purposes.
Must we preserve these resources enough to ensure that future generations can enjoy the same possible technology, even if this technology is non-essential? The strongest argument is that not providing future people with the same resources we require for our technology does not preclude the possibility of them having as advanced technology as ours.
According to Moore’s Law, every few years, the amount of computation that may be done for the same cost doubles. Similar advances have been made across other fields, like biotechnology, as well. Human technology advances rapidly and is predicted to continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
So, can we create policies based on our predictions of future progress? For example, if we predict that at the current rate of reduction of fossil fuel dependency, people will not need fossil fuels by 2100, could we choose to exhaust all fossil fuels by then, even though currently they play a major role in our economy and technology?
But is it ethical to gamble on humanity’s technological prowess and adaptability that way? Is it fair to place the burden of adaptation on future people? Yes, as all policy decisions are inherently speculative, this kind of technological gamble, if thoroughly and cautiously contemplated, can hardly be called different from any other kind of policy decision.
In conclusion, we are obligated to ensure the existence of future people, and our policy must protect against extinction events to reflect this obligation. However, we are not morally obligated to provide future people with the same resources we require to maintain our technology and lifestyles, and in policy, it is nevertheless ethical to conserve resources based on our predictions of future progress.
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