Christian Tarsney
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'Future bias' and a possible solution to moral fanaticism | Christian Tarsney (2021)
Christian Tarsney, a philosopher at Oxford's Global Priorities Institute, addresses core epistemic and decision-theoretic challenges in long-termism by introducing a framework where stochastic dominance with background uncertainty justifies prioritizing existential risk reduction while rejecting irrational "fanatical" choices. His research demonstrates that despite the exponential decay of influence over centuries, long-termist interventions remain robust under plausible assumptions, and he resolves the tension between moral externalism and internalism through moderate externalist decision rules that incorporate agent-specific beliefs. The event concludes with practical career insights for the expanding field of global priorities research, emphasizing the hiring of philosophy and economics PhDs to tackle existential threats and institutional improvement.