Firstly, I think this is the best post I’ve read in a while.
However, I notice I am confused. It seems that much of your argument is basically “the future is very big; as such, we should invest now rather than consuming, because
ROI > 0
Discount Rate = 0
...where in this case, investing in basically anything other than Xrisk counts as consumption.
However, this argument pulls roughly equally against many things. (Uniform) economic growth is not very much worse than deworming, or animal welfare, or civil liberties—they’re all basically irrelevant compared to the astronomic waste. So I’m not sure of the reason for your emphasis in this article.
Of course, this has clear implications for the virtues of non-uniform economic growth/
Firstly, I think this is the best post I’ve read in a while.
However, I notice I am confused. It seems that much of your argument is basically “the future is very big; as such, we should invest now rather than consuming, because
ROI > 0
Discount Rate = 0
...where in this case, investing in basically anything other than Xrisk counts as consumption.
However, this argument pulls roughly equally against many things. (Uniform) economic growth is not very much worse than deworming, or animal welfare, or civil liberties—they’re all basically irrelevant compared to the astronomic waste. So I’m not sure of the reason for your emphasis in this article.
Of course, this has clear implications for the virtues of non-uniform economic growth/