Thanks, that was useful. I didn’t realise that his argument involved 1+2 and not just 1 by itself. That said, if the hinge of history was some point in the past, then that doesn’t affect our decisions as we can’t invest in the past. And perhaps it’s a less extraordinary coincidence that the forward-looking hinge of history (where we restrict the time period from now until the end of humanity) could be now, especially if in the average case we don’t expect history to go on much longer.
You might also like to listen to the podcast episode and have a look at the comments in the original post which cover quite a few objections to Will’s argument.
For what it’s worth I don’t think Will ever suggests the hinge was in the past (I might be wrong though). His idea that hinginess generally increases over time probably implies that he doesn’t think the hinge was in the past. He does mention that thinking about the past is useful though to get a sense of the overall distribution of hinginess over time which then allows us to compare the present to the future.
Thanks, that was useful. I didn’t realise that his argument involved 1+2 and not just 1 by itself. That said, if the hinge of history was some point in the past, then that doesn’t affect our decisions as we can’t invest in the past. And perhaps it’s a less extraordinary coincidence that the forward-looking hinge of history (where we restrict the time period from now until the end of humanity) could be now, especially if in the average case we don’t expect history to go on much longer.
You might also like to listen to the podcast episode and have a look at the comments in the original post which cover quite a few objections to Will’s argument.
For what it’s worth I don’t think Will ever suggests the hinge was in the past (I might be wrong though). His idea that hinginess generally increases over time probably implies that he doesn’t think the hinge was in the past. He does mention that thinking about the past is useful though to get a sense of the overall distribution of hinginess over time which then allows us to compare the present to the future.