When I was a kid, I discovered longtermism on my own, and have been one ever since. For most of that time, it has been a lonely journey.
In 2021, I wrote a book draft on longtermism and broad societal strategies to prevent existential risk and achieve the best possible future. I was planning to call it either “Ways to Save the World” or “Paths to Utopia.”
The primary motivations behind writing this book were to:
- Launch a longtermist movement
- Design high level societal mechanisms which simultaneously:
- Dramatically improve the near-term and long-term future trajectory
- Create moral progress/progress on values
- Prevent existential risk.
Then, in January 2022, while preparing for a Master’s degree on Social Entrepreneurship, I discovered there already was a longtermist movement!
I became deeply involved with the Effective Altruism group at my university and dropped out of school to pursue direct longtermist community building and research while living at a longtermist group house, “Time Cube,” which co-founded in Berkeley, California.
I was quite thrilled when Will MacAskill wrote the book, “What We Owe the Future,” proposing trajectory change as on par with extinction risk due to the threat of value lock-in (1) (2). Trajectory change was half of my book, and I had been sad to see most longtermists had gone sour on flourishing futures type work (1) (2), with most longtermists favoring existential risk interventions such as technical AI safety work.
In 2024, I requested a debate week on this topic, and in 2025, I got my wish. Unfortunately, I got carried away writing an essay for the competition and spent about half a year writing a 35,000-word (still unfinished) essay. An intermediate version is available here. The conclusions are broadly similar to those in Will MacAskill’s “Better Futures” essay series, and after his publication I sharply de-prioritized this work, though it is about 90% complete and I will likely publish soon.
The biggest criticism of my work was that while it showed trajectory change toward achieving flourishing futures is important, we need tractable interventions if we are to do anything about it. I am now working on a fellowship to get more talent focused on these problems, and a Charity Entrepreneurship-stype incubator to generate and launch high-impact flourishing futures interventions.
Jordan Arel
Jordan Arel 