From an altruistic point of view, your money can probably do a lot more good in worlds with longer timelines. During an explosive growth period humanity will be so rich that they will likely be fine without our help, whereas if there’s a long AI winter there will be a lot of people who still need bednets, protection from biological xrisks, and other philanthropic support. Furthermore in the long-timeline worlds there’s a much better chance that your money can actually make a difference in solving AI alignment before AGI is eventually developed. So if anything I think the appropriate altruistic investment approach is the opposite of what this post suggests; even if you think that timelines will be short you should bet that they will be long.
From a personal point of view, it’s likewise true that marginal dollars are much more useful to you during an AI winter than during an explosive growth period (when everyone will be pretty rich anyway), so you should make trades that move money from short-timeline futures to long-timeline ones. But I do agree with the post that short timelines should increase your propensity to consume today. (The “borrow today” proposal is impractical since nobody will actually lend you significant amounts of money unsecured, but you might want to spend down savings faster than you otherwise would.) (Edit: Though the amount it makes sense to consumption-shift is smaller than you might expect.)
From an altruistic point of view, your money can probably do a lot more good in worlds with longer timelines. During an explosive growth period humanity will be so rich that they will likely be fine without our help, whereas if there’s a long AI winter there will be a lot of people who still need bednets, protection from biological xrisks, and other philanthropic support. Furthermore in the long-timeline worlds there’s a much better chance that your money can actually make a difference in solving AI alignment before AGI is eventually developed. So if anything I think the appropriate altruistic investment approach is the opposite of what this post suggests; even if you think that timelines will be short you should bet that they will be long.
From a personal point of view, it’s likewise true that marginal dollars are much more useful to you during an AI winter than during an explosive growth period (when everyone will be pretty rich anyway), so you should make trades that move money from short-timeline futures to long-timeline ones. But I do agree with the post that short timelines should increase your propensity to consume today. (The “borrow today” proposal is impractical since nobody will actually lend you significant amounts of money unsecured, but you might want to spend down savings faster than you otherwise would.) (Edit: Though the amount it makes sense to consumption-shift is smaller than you might expect.)