A Different Way To Look At Morality (What We Owe The Future)
The Ideas That Force You to Think Beyond Your Own Lifetime
Every once in a while, a book doesn’t just teach you something, it rewires your way of thinking.
For me, What We Owe the Future by moral philosopher William MacAskill did exactly that.
MacAskill is one of the people behind the Effective Altruism movement — a philosophy built on a simple idea: use evidence and reason to do as much good as possible.
This book shifted something in me. It changed how I think about meaning, responsibility, and what it actually means to live a good life.
And it starts with one radical idea:
Most of the people we can positively impact aren’t alive yet.
Today, I want to break down the ideas from the book that hit me the hardest; ideas that completely change the way you think about your time, your career, and the choices you make.
Here’s the roadmap:
The future is unimaginably big
Future people matter.
We might be living at the most influential moment in human history.
What you do actually matters far more than you think.
Let’s dive in.
1. The Future Is Big — Really Big
And the people who will live in it matter just as much as you do.
Humans have been around for ~300,000 years. Agriculture appeared only 10,000 years ago. Civilization? Even more recent.
If humans last as long as a typical mammalian species (roughly 1,000,000 years) then we are still in the first 1% of our entire story.
And unlike other species, we’re not constrained by biological limits. We build tools. We reason. We collaborate. Our potential timeline isn’t measured in thousands of years, but millions.
Here’s the point MacAskill makes:
99% of all humans who will ever exist haven’t been born yet.
And their lives, their happiness, their safety, their opportunities, depend on the decisions we make today.
This isn’t just philosophy. It’s moral common sense.
Imagine you could prevent a genocide that would kill one million people. Now imagine that genocide happens 100 years from now. Or 1,000. Or 2,000.
Is it suddenly less important? Less tragic?
Of course not.
Time doesn’t diminish moral worth.
And if future people have the same moral weight as present people, then — statistically — almost all moral weight lies ahead of us.
That insight alone reshapes your worldview.
But things get even more interesting.
2. We Are Living at One of the Most Important Times in Human History
And not because everything is amazing, but because everything is fragile.
Look at the graph of global output across history. It’s basically flat… until you hit the Industrial Revolution. Then it explodes vertically.
The last 250 years have been an anomaly:
• exponential technological progress
• exponential population growth
• exponential increases in our ability to shape (and damage) the world
And with each breakthrough, our leverage increases.
Nuclear weapons made human extinction possible.
Engineered pathogens could, in theory, be far worse.
Artificial intelligence is developing so fast that even experts disagree on whether we’re headed toward utopia or catastrophe.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth MacAskill explains:
For the first time in history, a single individual — not a nation, not an army, a single person — may soon have the ability to cause global harm.
You don’t need an imagination to see the danger. Humans snap and have bad days. If even 0.0001% of people are unhinged… that’s still thousands of people with access to increasingly powerful tools.
We’re living in the era where our technological capacity has outpaced our maturity.
This is why “longtermist” argue that right now is unusually critical:
We’re powerful enough to destroy ourselves… but not yet wise enough to guarantee that we won’t.
But it’s not all doom.
Because unlike past generations, we can actually do something about it.
3. You Can Meaningfully Improve the Long-Term Future
And the things that matter most aren’t sci-fi fantasies — they’re real, practical problems.
MacAskill’s message is not “panic. It’s “prepare.”
Think of humanity as setting off on a risky expedition. The path ahead is uncertain, and the terrain is unknown. But you can choose what equipment you carry.
Here are the things individuals actually can do:
A. Choose a career that reduces existential risk
Some fields are insanely impactful because they influence whether civilization continues to thrive:
• AI safety — making sure advanced AI is aligned with human values
• Biosecurity — preventing engineered pandemics
• Nuclear risk reduction
• Climate stability
• Global governance & policy
MacAskill points out something staggering:
In 2020, around 40,000 people were working to make AI more powerful.
But only about 300 were working to make AI safer.
Some fields don’t just need more smart people. They need them urgently.
If you’re a software engineer, mathematician, biologist, researcher, doctor, or someone who wants their career to matter: this is the frontier.
(And if you want clarity on what paths truly make an impact, 80,000 Hours is an incredible and free resource.)
B. Donate effectively
This is a finding that took me personally quite by surprise.
The gap between average charities and the most effective ones isn’t 2x or 5x.
It’s often 100x or 1,000x.
Pandemic prevention vs. counter-terrorism is a perfect example:
• Pandemics kill massively more people.
• Pandemic prevention receives a fraction of the funding.
If you have disposable income, directing even a small portion of it toward high-impact causes compounds far beyond your lifetime.
C. Spread good ideas
Movements start with individuals.
Norms change because people talk.
You don’t have to become a philosopher.
You don’t have to become an activist.
You just have to understand the stakes and share them with clarity.
Even writing this newsletter could be part of that ripple effect.
Why This Book Changed Me
Before reading it, I thought about my impact mostly in present-tense terms:
• improving my own life
• helping people today
• building things that matter now
But MacAskill forced me to zoom out drastically.
If almost everyone who will ever live is in the future…
If we currently have huge leverage to influence that future…
And if individual choices actually scale through careers, donations, norms, and innovation…
Then the conclusion is simple:
We are early in the human story, and what we choose to do now echoes through centuries.
This is both a responsibility and a privilege.
You and I are alive at a moment when our actions matter far more than they would have in most previous eras. That’s rare. And it means we should take our choices seriously.
Not in a stressed-out sense, but in the sense that our lives can genuinely make a difference.
Final Thoughts
If any of this resonates, read the book. It’s one of the most important pieces of thinking I’ve encountered.
It could change the questions you ask about your life.
And often, that’s all you need to shift your trajectory.
Because once you start seeing yourself as part of a story that stretches thousands, maybe millions of years into the future…
You stop asking “What do I want right now?”
And start asking:
“What can I do that will matter for the people who come after me?”
That’s a powerful frame to live by.
See you next week.
— Tobi
Isn't every present moment the most influential moment in human history?
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