But I’d also argue that, if urgent longtermism is defined roughly as the view that there will be critical junctures in the next few decades, as you put it, then an urgent longtermist could still think it’s worth investing now, so that more money will be spent near those junctures in a few decades.
Yes, I totally agree with this. Indeed a large part of what I was trying to say was that I’m more sympathetic to this strategy right now for “urgent longtermists” than “patient longtermists” (although it happens that I mostly still think it’s beaten by non-financial investment opportunities which will pay off soon enough).
[LMK if you found something I wrote confusing; I could consider editing to improve clarity.]
Indeed a large part of what I was trying to say was that I’m more sympathetic to this strategy right now for “urgent longtermists” than “patient longtermists”
For what it’s worth, as someone who read this post fairly quickly, I thought this point only came across as a minor aside in the grand scheme of your post (I think you only mention it in the last paragraph before your “some caveats”?).
I think you make the point here as well but I’m not sure if it came across as clearly as it could:
My current guess is to recommend spending rather than saving money at current margins to both patient and urgent longtermists; neither recommendation feels robust, but I’m actually a little more pro-spending for patient longtermists.
By the way I have strongly upvoted this post! I was aware of your overall point already but it was definitely useful to read your explanation and some of the more specific points. I agree that people have been too quick to jump to giving later if they identify as patient longtermists.
I guess “large part of what I was trying to say” was an overstatement; it’s an illustrative facet of the large thing (which is that there isn’t the obvious coupling).
Anyhow thanks for the pointer, I made some small language tweaks to the second part quoted (which hopefully help).
Sorry, no, that’s clear! I should have noted that you say that too.
The point I wanted to make is that your reason for saving as an urgent longtermist isn’t necessarily something like “we’re already making use of all these urgent opportunities now, so might as well build up a buffer in case the money is gone later”. You could just think that now isn’t a particularly promising time to spend, period, but that there will be promising opportunities later this century, and still be classified as an urgent longtermist.
That is, an urgent longtermist could have stereotypically “patient longtermist” beliefs about the quality of direct-impact spending opportunities available in December 2020.
In the abstract I agree that you could think that. But I’d make some of the same claims for the urgent longtermist as the patient longtermist: that some of the best investment opportunities are probably non-financial, and we should be trying to make use of those before going on to financial investments. (There’s a question about whether at current margins we’re already using them up.)
I think there are some principled reasons to be unsurprised if the best available non-financial investment opportunities are better than the best available financial investment opportunities. Financial investment is a competitive market; there are lots of people who have money and want more money, and so for a given risk tolerance (and without lots of work) you can’t expect to massively outperform what others are making.
There are also markets (broadly understood) competing for buy-in to worldviews. At first glance these might look less attractive to enter into, since they seem to be (roughly) zero-sum. But unlike the financial case, capital is not fungible across worldviews, so we shouldn’t assume that market forces mean that the returns from the best opportunities can’t get too good (or they’d be taken by others). And I’m not concerned about the zero-sum point, because I don’t think that the longtermist worldview is just an arbitrary set of beliefs; I think that it has ~truth on its side, and providing people with arguments plus encouraging them to reflect will on average be quite good for its market share (and to the extent that it isn’t, maybe that’s a sign that it’s getting something wrong). This is a pretty major advantage and makes it plausible that there are some really excellent opportunities available. Then I think growth over the last few years is evidence that at least some of the activities people engage in have really good returns; the crucial question is how much there are really good ones being left on the table.
Yes, I totally agree with this. Indeed a large part of what I was trying to say was that I’m more sympathetic to this strategy right now for “urgent longtermists” than “patient longtermists” (although it happens that I mostly still think it’s beaten by non-financial investment opportunities which will pay off soon enough).
[LMK if you found something I wrote confusing; I could consider editing to improve clarity.]
For what it’s worth, as someone who read this post fairly quickly, I thought this point only came across as a minor aside in the grand scheme of your post (I think you only mention it in the last paragraph before your “some caveats”?).
I think you make the point here as well but I’m not sure if it came across as clearly as it could:
By the way I have strongly upvoted this post! I was aware of your overall point already but it was definitely useful to read your explanation and some of the more specific points. I agree that people have been too quick to jump to giving later if they identify as patient longtermists.
I guess “large part of what I was trying to say” was an overstatement; it’s an illustrative facet of the large thing (which is that there isn’t the obvious coupling).
Anyhow thanks for the pointer, I made some small language tweaks to the second part quoted (which hopefully help).
Sorry, no, that’s clear! I should have noted that you say that too.
The point I wanted to make is that your reason for saving as an urgent longtermist isn’t necessarily something like “we’re already making use of all these urgent opportunities now, so might as well build up a buffer in case the money is gone later”. You could just think that now isn’t a particularly promising time to spend, period, but that there will be promising opportunities later this century, and still be classified as an urgent longtermist.
That is, an urgent longtermist could have stereotypically “patient longtermist” beliefs about the quality of direct-impact spending opportunities available in December 2020.
In the abstract I agree that you could think that. But I’d make some of the same claims for the urgent longtermist as the patient longtermist: that some of the best investment opportunities are probably non-financial, and we should be trying to make use of those before going on to financial investments. (There’s a question about whether at current margins we’re already using them up.)
I think there are some principled reasons to be unsurprised if the best available non-financial investment opportunities are better than the best available financial investment opportunities. Financial investment is a competitive market; there are lots of people who have money and want more money, and so for a given risk tolerance (and without lots of work) you can’t expect to massively outperform what others are making.
There are also markets (broadly understood) competing for buy-in to worldviews. At first glance these might look less attractive to enter into, since they seem to be (roughly) zero-sum. But unlike the financial case, capital is not fungible across worldviews, so we shouldn’t assume that market forces mean that the returns from the best opportunities can’t get too good (or they’d be taken by others). And I’m not concerned about the zero-sum point, because I don’t think that the longtermist worldview is just an arbitrary set of beliefs; I think that it has ~truth on its side, and providing people with arguments plus encouraging them to reflect will on average be quite good for its market share (and to the extent that it isn’t, maybe that’s a sign that it’s getting something wrong). This is a pretty major advantage and makes it plausible that there are some really excellent opportunities available. Then I think growth over the last few years is evidence that at least some of the activities people engage in have really good returns; the crucial question is how much there are really good ones being left on the table.