I can imagine pretty large numbers here. For example, if we value reducing 0.01% existential catastrophe at 100M-1B, I think it’s plausible that we should be backpaying people who created projects of that calibre 1%-10% of the value of the xrisk reduced.
(They can then choose to regrant the money, split it among their own staff who contributed to the xrisk reduction, or spend it on fun stuff).
Seems (almost) strictly easier than figuring out how much xrisk a project reduced in advance of its creation.
and we should really be moving in that direction, at least for xrisk reduction mega-projects.
I’ve been informed since the creation of my motivated reasoning in EA post that a number of places do explicit cost-effectiveness analysis of these things. I assume they’ll be improved in the future.
We’ll eventually have fairly quantitative models of all x-risk reduction efforts (ideally before we all die). My proposal is more forwards-looking than backwards looking.
Tbh I’m not aware of visibly successful xrisk reduction efforts, at least of this magnitude. So this is more of a future problem/incentivization scheme anyway.
I can imagine pretty large numbers here. For example, if we value reducing 0.01% existential catastrophe at 100M-1B, I think it’s plausible that we should be backpaying people who created projects of that calibre 1%-10% of the value of the xrisk reduced.
(They can then choose to regrant the money, split it among their own staff who contributed to the xrisk reduction, or spend it on fun stuff).
This seems like a good example of what I’m concerned about. How could you show that a project reduced x-risk by any specific amount?
Some quick points:
Seems (almost) strictly easier than figuring out how much xrisk a project reduced in advance of its creation.
and we should really be moving in that direction, at least for xrisk reduction mega-projects.
I’ve been informed since the creation of my motivated reasoning in EA post that a number of places do explicit cost-effectiveness analysis of these things. I assume they’ll be improved in the future.
We’ll eventually have fairly quantitative models of all x-risk reduction efforts (ideally before we all die). My proposal is more forwards-looking than backwards looking.
Tbh I’m not aware of visibly successful xrisk reduction efforts, at least of this magnitude. So this is more of a future problem/incentivization scheme anyway.
I agree with that! I didn’t mean that the latter would be better, but that neither seems feasible.