Talk:Longtermism

longtermism versus long-termism

This article currently presents these terms as identical. It also lists short-termism as its antonym. But I don't think this is correct.

"Longtermism" is an effective altruism concept that focuses on moral value. It is different from "long-termism", which is a business concept that focuses on the profits of an individual business. It is the latter that is the antonym of "short-termism"; the former is not related to the business concept of "short-termism" at all. (They aren't antonyms.)

I'm not sure how to deal with this on a Wikipedia entry. This page could, for example, list both uses of longtermism/long-termism in separate sections. Or we could have separate wikipedia entries for "longtermism" and "long-termism". Or we could just focus on "longtermism", which seems to warrant a wikipedia entry, but not "long-termism", which otherwise might not have its own entry.

(Another relevant grammatical point is that "long-term future" is the preferred spelling, even though the EA concept dealing with the long-term future is "longtermism". More info on the proper hyphenation of these terms can be found the EA Forum.)

For now, I won't make any changes, but I welcome others to be WP:BOLD and implement one of these solutions, or to otherwise engage in the comments here as to why we might not make these changes. In the absence of others' comments or changes, I'll make the changes myself later. — Eric Herboso 20:54, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this concern, Eric. I agree with you that "longtermism" (the concept within effective altruism) and "long-termism" (within business/investing) are distinct concepts that should be covered in separate pages. I renamed this article from "Long-termism" to "Longtermism" since it deals with the philosophical concept, not the business one. To clarify this further, we could call this article "Longtermism (philosophy)" and then if the business concept is believed to be notable enough also have a "Long-termism (business)" article. — Ego.Eudaimonia (talk) 19:08, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

They are not dissimilar in my opinion, although "long-term" thinking for most businesses is only in years usually instead of eons. The difference between "moral value" and "profits" is not as categorical as it may seem either, they are both merely different flavors of utility. - Indefensible (talk) 02:17, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

This opinion, like editor opinions about content generally, is not relevant to WP. Regardless of whether they are "dissimilar", they are distinct topics. Jibal (talk) 21:25, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Multiple images: vertical or horizontal?

I changed the default from horizontal to vertical to benefit mobile readers. Unfortunately, this change barely improves on the resolution of the original images. I’m wondering if there is a way to improve the readability of the font and type used to make these images. I’m going to self-revert as the benefits of vertical alignment are minimal. Viriditas (talk) 23:16, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

@Ego.Eudaimonia: as the original content creator of the images, can you improve the readability of the font in the images? It’s too small and fuzzy for useful display purposes. As a reader, I would like to be able to glance at the image and get a rough takeaway of the content. Right now, on mobile, the only way to do this is to click on the image and then click on the commons image, and then zoom, a three step process that detracts from quick comprehension. Is there any way you can fix this? I’ve seen this problem before, and it’s usually fixed by adding a much larger font and cutting down on the word count. Viriditas (talk) 23:29, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up, Viriditas. Unfortunately, I don't know of a solution to fix this. The pictures are already uploaded to Wiki Commons at a resolution of 5,201 × 7,747. For what it's worth, while I agree this isn't optimal, I also don't regard it as a major issue. It seems pretty intuitive for both mobile and desktop users to click on the image and then simply zoom, which allows them to read the text just fine. Since I didn't create the pictures myself (they're from Our World in Data), I cannot make changes to the font size on the pictures. Ego.Eudaimonia (talk) 20:35, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

No worries. It’s probably the case that I’m old and blind like a cat on his ninth life. Too many years of staring at screens. Still, it would be great if there was a way for the information to be readable in text. Viriditas (talk) 23:52, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Longtermism and Elon Musk

Vaidhyanathan (2022) discusses longtermism and Elon Musk, perhaps there is some merit in including this material in the main article? RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 17:22, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

References