I agree, but there’s an argument in favour of progress that you don’t mention. If we magically replace say 2015 with 2016, then we get one fewer year of 21st century conditions, and one more year of saturated-world conditions. If we think that an incredibly valuable saturated world is likely, then an extra year of it instead of the 21st century is well worth it.
Yes, this comes down to empirics: the fraction of extra resources we can reach by starting earlier is very small, so most of our long-term impact comes from nudges to the probability of having a long future at all.
It seems like the empirical question could have come out the other way, and then progress would be more important.
I agree, but there’s an argument in favour of progress that you don’t mention. If we magically replace say 2015 with 2016, then we get one fewer year of 21st century conditions, and one more year of saturated-world conditions. If we think that an incredibly valuable saturated world is likely, then an extra year of it instead of the 21st century is well worth it.
Or a light-cone that started a year earlier, and thus permanently one extra light year in radius.
Yes, this comes down to empirics: the fraction of extra resources we can reach by starting earlier is very small, so most of our long-term impact comes from nudges to the probability of having a long future at all.
It seems like the empirical question could have come out the other way, and then progress would be more important.