The pleasures and pains of interpreting life satisfaction scales

Global priorities research investigates the question, ‘What should we do with our limited resources, if our goal is to do the most good?’ This question has close connections with central issues in philosophy and economics, among other fields.

This event will focus on the following two areas of global priorities research:

1. The longtermism paradigm. Longtermism claims that, because of the potential vastness of the future of sentient life, agents aiming to do the most good should focus on improving the very long-run future, rather than on more immediate considerations. We are interested in articulating, considering arguments for and against, and exploring the implications of this longtermist thesis.
2. General issues in cause prioritisation. We will also host talks on various cause prioritisation issues not specific to longtermism – for instance, issues in  decision theory, epistemology, game theory and optimal timing/optimal stopping theory.