Concretely, I think that we are justified in believing in the positive expected value of (i) avoiding human extinction and (ii) acquiring resources for longtermist goals.
I would be curious to know whether you still basically believe this, and whether you have meanwhile became convinced of the robustness of other actions.
(personal views only) In brief, yes, I still basically believe both of these things; and no, I donāt think I know of any other type or action that Iād consider ārobustly positiveā, at least from a strictly consequentialist perspective.
āTo be clear, my belief regarding (i) and (ii) is closer to āthere exist actions of these types that are robustly positiveā, as opposed to āany action that purports to be of one these types is robustly positiveā. E.g., itās certainly possible to try to reduce the risk of human extinction but for that attempt to be ineffective or even counterproductive (i.e., to on net increase the risk of extinction, or to otherwise cause significant harms such that Iād consider the action impermissible), itās possible for resources that were acquired for impartial welfarist purposes to eventually be misused, etc.,
I made some nuanced updates about āacquiring resources for longtermist goalsā, but they are mostly things like me having become more or less excited about particular examples/āsubstrategies, me having somewhat richer views on some pitfalls of that strategy (though I donāt think I became aware of qualitatively ānewā pitfalls), etc., as opposed to sweeping updates about that whole class of actions and whether they can be robustly positive.
Hi Max,
I would be curious to know whether you still basically believe this, and whether you have meanwhile became convinced of the robustness of other actions.
(personal views only) In brief, yes, I still basically believe both of these things; and no, I donāt think I know of any other type or action that Iād consider ārobustly positiveā, at least from a strictly consequentialist perspective.
āTo be clear, my belief regarding (i) and (ii) is closer to āthere exist actions of these types that are robustly positiveā, as opposed to āany action that purports to be of one these types is robustly positiveā. E.g., itās certainly possible to try to reduce the risk of human extinction but for that attempt to be ineffective or even counterproductive (i.e., to on net increase the risk of extinction, or to otherwise cause significant harms such that Iād consider the action impermissible), itās possible for resources that were acquired for impartial welfarist purposes to eventually be misused, etc.,
I made some nuanced updates about āacquiring resources for longtermist goalsā, but they are mostly things like me having become more or less excited about particular examples/āsubstrategies, me having somewhat richer views on some pitfalls of that strategy (though I donāt think I became aware of qualitatively ānewā pitfalls), etc., as opposed to sweeping updates about that whole class of actions and whether they can be robustly positive.
Thanks! I think I have converged towards a similar view.