Imagine you are a junior advisor to the boss of some major EA longtermism-sympathetic org (OpenPhil, CEA, 80K, etc). You are tasked with reading the Essays on Longtermism compilation, and collating any novel insights that could significantly change what we should be doing. That is, we want essays that make ‘big, if true’ claims, and present interesting arguments for them. To be clear, this is a high bar! Novelty is hard, and action-relevance is even harder for orgs that have already thought a lot about these issues.

I claim that there is a surprising dearth of such insights in the Essays (Section 1 and Appendix). I then consider why this might be the case (Section 2), and what this could mean for global priorities research generally (Section 3).

Disclaimers first:

• I found several of the essays interesting, and by more [...]

---

Outline:

(00:58) 1. Where are all the new, important insights?

(04:43) 2. Hypotheses

(06:18) 3. Recommendations

(08:58) Appendix: critical reviews of the essays

---

First published:

Source:

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.