Tarde venientibus ossa — “for the latecomers, bones.”
We are early to the civilizational dinner, there are still many who have yet to arrive. To the latecomers, we owe more than our scraps.
Caring for posterity is a robust ethical good—we should desire it no matter our moral code. Complete extinction, or a vast future full of suffering, are real possibilities. But they are not foregone conclusions, we can also imagine a long and flourishing future where the riches of our civilization are preserved and enhanced. We’re privileged: we have the time, energy, and resources to ensure that we don’t lose it all. We’re early.
It can be difficult to think of the latecomer because he doesn’t exist yet: he is merely a placeholder for a future human being. And many of the issues that threaten this latecomer are themselves theoretical, such as unaligned artificial intelligence. There are those who would fault long-term thinking for being preoccupied with such abstractions.
But the torture or destruction of the human race is far worse than being critiqued as overly speculative.…
Ideally, one should walk away from The Latecomer feeling intellectually challenged and vaguely chafed—there is much to agree and disagree with. While we wait for the latecomers, we have a lot of work to do.
Welcome.
From The Latecomer Magazine