longtermist

longtermist noun: a believer or follower of longtermism (“an ethical stance which gives priority to improving the long-term future”).

Noun

longtermist (plural longtermists)

A believer or follower of longtermism (“an ethical stance which gives priority to improving the long-term future”).
- Longtermists are in daily conversation with neartermists. It’s a red herring to argue that “abandoning what would most help people on Earth today isn’t exactly ethically sound.”2022 September 9, Theodore Leinwand, “Neartermism and longtermism aren’t at odds”, in The Washington Post
- Some longtermists, for instance, argue that we need to balance the need to address climate change now with the need to invest in colonizing space; they encourage us to think on a billion-year timescale.2022 November 17, Annie Lowrey, “Effective Altruism Committed the Sin It Was Supposed to Correct”, in The Atlantic

longtermist (not comparable)

Of, pertaining to or supporting longtermism (“an ethical stance which gives priority to improving the long-term future”).
- Effective altruists talk about both “neartermism” and “longtermism.” Bankman-Fried said he wanted his money to address longtermist threats like the dangers posed by artificial intelligence spiraling out of control.2022 December 9, Jennifer Szalai, “Effective Altruism Warned of Risks. Did It Also Incentivize Them?”, in The New York Times
- Earlier this year, the AI theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky, who is associated with longtermist thinking, wrote an op-ed for Time magazine in which he argued that the world should not just institute a moratorium on artificial intelligence development but also be prepared to use nuclear arms to shut down...2023 July 22, Andrew Anthony, “The pro-extinctionist philosopher who has sparked a battle over humanity’s future”, in The Observer, →ISSN

plural	longtermists
alternative form	long-termist

From long-term + -ist.

What does longtermist mean?: Longtermist means a believer or follower of longtermism (“an ethical stance which gives priority to improving the long-term future”).
What part of speech is longtermist?: Longtermist can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of longtermist?: The plural of longtermist is longtermists.

Adapted from Wiktionary: longtermist (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “longtermist.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/longtermist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.