By ‘persistent difference’, Tarsney doesn’t mean a difference that persists forever. He just means a difference that persists for a long time in expectation: long enough to make the expected value of the longtermist intervention greater than the expected value of the neartermist benchmark intervention.
Perhaps you want to know why we should think that we can make this kind of persistent difference. I can talk a little about that in another comment if so.
Thanks! This is valuable feedback.
By ‘persistent difference’, Tarsney doesn’t mean a difference that persists forever. He just means a difference that persists for a long time in expectation: long enough to make the expected value of the longtermist intervention greater than the expected value of the neartermist benchmark intervention.
Perhaps you want to know why we should think that we can make this kind of persistent difference. I can talk a little about that in another comment if so.