Thanks for asking this question. I found it helpful to introspect on my reasons for thinking this.
Roughly, I picture a model where I have huge uncertainty over how far the movement will spread (~ 5 orders of magnitude), and merely large uncertainty over how much the average person involved will do (< 2 orders of magnitude). This makes it more important right now to care about gaining percentile improvements in movement breadth than commitment. Additionally, the growth model likely includes an exponential component, so nudging up the rate has compounding effects.
To put that another way, I see a lot of the expected value of the movement coming from scenarios where it gets very big (even though these are unlikely), so it’s worth trying to maximise the chance of that happening. If we get to a point where it seems with high likelihood that it will become very big, it seems more worthwhile to start optimising value/person.
Two caveats here:
(i) It might be that demanding standards will help growth rather than hinder it. My intuition says not and that it’s important to make drivers feel positive rather than negative, but I’m not certain.
(ii) My reasoning suggests paying a lot more attention at the margin to the effects on growth than on individual altruism than you might first think, but it doesn’t say the ratio is infinite. We should err in both directions, taking at least some actions which push people to do more even if they hinder growth. The question is where we are on the spectrum right now. My perception is that we’re already making noticeable trade-offs in this direction, so perhaps going too far, but I might be persuadable otherwise.
Thanks for asking this question. I found it helpful to introspect on my reasons for thinking this.
Roughly, I picture a model where I have huge uncertainty over how far the movement will spread (~ 5 orders of magnitude), and merely large uncertainty over how much the average person involved will do (< 2 orders of magnitude). This makes it more important right now to care about gaining percentile improvements in movement breadth than commitment. Additionally, the growth model likely includes an exponential component, so nudging up the rate has compounding effects.
To put that another way, I see a lot of the expected value of the movement coming from scenarios where it gets very big (even though these are unlikely), so it’s worth trying to maximise the chance of that happening. If we get to a point where it seems with high likelihood that it will become very big, it seems more worthwhile to start optimising value/person.
Two caveats here:
(i) It might be that demanding standards will help growth rather than hinder it. My intuition says not and that it’s important to make drivers feel positive rather than negative, but I’m not certain.
(ii) My reasoning suggests paying a lot more attention at the margin to the effects on growth than on individual altruism than you might first think, but it doesn’t say the ratio is infinite. We should err in both directions, taking at least some actions which push people to do more even if they hinder growth. The question is where we are on the spectrum right now. My perception is that we’re already making noticeable trade-offs in this direction, so perhaps going too far, but I might be persuadable otherwise.