A forgotten topic
How might our decisions today affect the beings who will live hundreds or thousands of years from now? This topic gets very little discussion. One reason is a bias in how our brains work.
Temporal bias
We tend to give more importance to what's close in time and less to what's far away. Pain 100 years from now seems less important than pain tomorrow.
But that's a mistake. Today was once "the future," and the future will also become "today." How hard we should try to prevent something should depend on how bad it is, not on how far away it is.
Impartiality
Impartiality says that harms and benefits of the same size should count the same, no matter the race, gender, species, or other arbitrary factors.
Impartiality across time
Think about distance in space: the pain of a child on the other side of the world isn't less important just because they're far from us.
Temporal impartiality applies the same idea to time: the pain of someone who will live 500 years from now isn't less important just because it's far off in time.
In short
- We tend to ignore what's far away in time.
- That's a bias: how big a harm is doesn't depend on when it happens.
- Temporal impartiality tells us to consider the future with the same care.