It is not a strict requirement, but it is an arguably reasonable assumption. Are there any interventions whose estimates of (posterior) counterfactual impact, in terms of expected total hedonistic utility (not e.g. preventing the extinction of a random species), do not decay to 0 in at most a few centuries? From my perspective, their absence establishes a strong prior against persistent/​increasing effects.
Sure, but once you’ve assumed that already, you don’t need to rely any more on an argument about shifts to P(X_1 > x) being cancelled out by shifts to P(X_n > x) for larger n (which if I understand correctly is the argument you’re making about existential risk).
If P(X_N > x) is very small to begin with for some large N, then it will stay small, even if we adjust P(X_1 > x) by a lot (we can’t make it bigger than 1!) So we can safely say under your assumption that adjusting the P(X_1 > x) factor by a large amount does influence P(X_N > x) as well, it’s just that it can’t make it not small.
The existential risk set-up is fundamentally different. We are assuming the future has astronomical value to begin with, before we intervene. That now means non-tiny changes to P(Making it through the next year) must have astronomical value too (unless there is some weird conspiracy among the probability of making it through later years which precisely cancels this out, but that seems very weird, and not something you can justify by pointing to global health as an analogy).
Thanks for the discussion, Toby. I do not plan to follow up further, but, for reference/​transparency, I maintain my guess that the future is astronomically valuable, but that no interventions are astronomically cost-effective.
I don’t see why the same argument holds for global health interventions....?
Why should X_N > x require X_1 > x....?
It is not a strict requirement, but it is an arguably reasonable assumption. Are there any interventions whose estimates of (posterior) counterfactual impact, in terms of expected total hedonistic utility (not e.g. preventing the extinction of a random species), do not decay to 0 in at most a few centuries? From my perspective, their absence establishes a strong prior against persistent/​increasing effects.
Sure, but once you’ve assumed that already, you don’t need to rely any more on an argument about shifts to P(X_1 > x) being cancelled out by shifts to P(X_n > x) for larger n (which if I understand correctly is the argument you’re making about existential risk).
If P(X_N > x) is very small to begin with for some large N, then it will stay small, even if we adjust P(X_1 > x) by a lot (we can’t make it bigger than 1!) So we can safely say under your assumption that adjusting the P(X_1 > x) factor by a large amount does influence P(X_N > x) as well, it’s just that it can’t make it not small.
The existential risk set-up is fundamentally different. We are assuming the future has astronomical value to begin with, before we intervene. That now means non-tiny changes to P(Making it through the next year) must have astronomical value too (unless there is some weird conspiracy among the probability of making it through later years which precisely cancels this out, but that seems very weird, and not something you can justify by pointing to global health as an analogy).
Thanks for the discussion, Toby. I do not plan to follow up further, but, for reference/​transparency, I maintain my guess that the future is astronomically valuable, but that no interventions are astronomically cost-effective.