Good point, but can’t this trade occur just through financial markets without involving 1 on 1 trades among EAs? For example, if you have short timelines, you could take out a loan, donate it all to AI Safety.
I haven’t thought about this a lot, but my impression is this doesn’t work for smeared probability distributions and a medium level of risk aversion?
Let’s say Alice thinks there is still a 20% chance AGI doesn’t happen super fast / doesn’t have transformative impact and she needs to pay back a loan in 10 years. Then if she doesn’t want to take the risk of not being able to pay in these timelines, she cannot really donate all of the loan now.
On the other hand, a 20% chance that Alice has to donate a lot of money to global health doesn’t look like such a big risk, at least if she doesn’t have to donate everything right away.
But maybe the difference here is my implicit assumption that owing donations to Bob isn’t a big of a risk as owing money to a bank, because the former might cut Alice more slack and give her more time to pay.
Maybe this trade would be quite risky for Bob unless it is enforced so strictly that the risk profile for Alice is very similar to just borrowing money from a bank.
Good point, but can’t this trade occur just through financial markets without involving 1 on 1 trades among EAs? For example, if you have short timelines, you could take out a loan, donate it all to AI Safety.
I haven’t thought about this a lot, but my impression is this doesn’t work for smeared probability distributions and a medium level of risk aversion?
Let’s say Alice thinks there is still a 20% chance AGI doesn’t happen super fast / doesn’t have transformative impact and she needs to pay back a loan in 10 years. Then if she doesn’t want to take the risk of not being able to pay in these timelines, she cannot really donate all of the loan now.
On the other hand, a 20% chance that Alice has to donate a lot of money to global health doesn’t look like such a big risk, at least if she doesn’t have to donate everything right away.
But maybe the difference here is my implicit assumption that owing donations to Bob isn’t a big of a risk as owing money to a bank, because the former might cut Alice more slack and give her more time to pay.
Maybe this trade would be quite risky for Bob unless it is enforced so strictly that the risk profile for Alice is very similar to just borrowing money from a bank.