Longtermism

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longtermism

Title text: In your citations, please simply refer to this argument as Weinersmith's Nacho.

Votey

Explanation

From Wikipedia: Longtermism is an ethical stance which gives priority to improving the long-term future. It is an important concept in effective altruism and serves as a primary motivation for efforts to reduce existential risks to humanity.

In this comic, the man is saying "we" in reference to humanity as a whole, while the woman interprets the question in reference to her own personal life, in which she does not manage things well enough to plan long term. When the man elaborated what he means, the woman implies that she believes humanity has already used up the environment, a reference to the large scale degradation and use of nonrenewable resources that has already occurred, a state of thinking not unlike taking a defeatist attitude to one's own health.

Weinersmith's Nacho, as described in the title text, is intended to be a construction analogous to "Occam's razor".

The votey appears to be a mistake, as it's identical to the one in the comic for the next day, for which it makes more sense.

Transcript

[Panel 1: A man and a woman walking side by side.]

Man: Do you think we should be longtermist? Care about issues in the far distant future?

Woman: Nah.

[Panel 2: Just the woman]

Woman: Like, maybe it'd be good, but I'm not even capable of acting right for my own future.

[Panel 3: Both again]

Woman: I've had nachos for three meals today and it's only two o'clock. What can I plausibly offer people living around Proxima Centauri in the year 10,000?

[Panel 4: Zoomed out, showing the street they're walking along.]

Man: I mean like helping the environment.

Woman: Didn't we already use that up?

Votey Transcript

[In color, God above the clouds, looking down.]

God: Now to create some freaks who invent new languages.

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