Neil Crawford

1. Introduction Should we expect the future to be good? This is an important question for many reasons. One such reason is that the answer to this question has implications for what our intermediate goals should be. If we should expect the future to be good, then it would be relatively more important for us to focus on ensuring that we survive long into the future, e.g. by working on mitigating extinction risks. If we should not expect the future to be good, then it would be relatively more important for us to focus on mitigating risks of astronomical suffering. In this paper, I critique Paul Christiano's (2013) argument that the future will be good. In Section 2, I reconstruct Christiano's argument in premise form and articulate some simplifying assumptions which I later relax. In Section 3, I offer a model for exploring the composition of different groups in a population over time. In Section 4, I show that, when certain assumptions are made, the model can generate the kind of favourable result that Christiano seems to have in mind. In Section 5, I show that, when fanatics are included in the model, a favourable result is no longer guaranteed. In Section 6, I consider that different groups can have different levels of influence whilst having the same number of adherents (i.e. members or followers), and argue that we should be far from confident that those with our values, as opposed to fanatics, will disproportionately influence the future. In Section 7, I argue that, even in the absence of fanatics, we should be sceptical that those with our values will disproportionately influence the future. In Section 8, I argue that, even if those with our values disproportionately influence the future, it is unclear that they will successfully make the future go well. In Section 9, I conclude by situating this paper as part of a broader argument that we are in a position of deep uncertainty regarding whether the future will be good, by which I mean that we lack a principled