even if we’re at some enormously influential time right now, if there’s some future time that is even more influential, then the most obvious EA activity would be to invest resources (whether via financial investment or some sort of values-spreading) in order that our resources can be used at that future, more high-impact, time. Perhaps there’s some reason why that plan doesn’t make sense; but, currently, almost no-one is even taking that possibility seriously.
To me it seems that the biggest constraint on being able to invest in future centuries is the continuous existence of a trustworthy movement from now until then. I imagine that a lot of meta work implicitly contributes towards this; so the idea that the HoH is far in the future is an argument for more meta work (and more meta work targeted towards EA longevity in particular). But my prior on a given movement remaining trustworthy over long time periods is quite low, and becomes lower the more money it is entrusted with.
But there are future scenarios that we can imagine now that would seem very influential:
To the ones you listed, I would add:
The time period during which we reach technological completion, since from then on the stochasticity from the rate of technological advancement becomes a much less important factor.
As you mentioned previously, the time period during which we develop comprehensive techniques for engineering the motivations and values of the subsequent generation—if it actually happens to not be very close to us. (E.g. it might require a much more developed understanding of sociology than we currently have to carry out in practice).
Nice post :) A couple of comments:
To me it seems that the biggest constraint on being able to invest in future centuries is the continuous existence of a trustworthy movement from now until then. I imagine that a lot of meta work implicitly contributes towards this; so the idea that the HoH is far in the future is an argument for more meta work (and more meta work targeted towards EA longevity in particular). But my prior on a given movement remaining trustworthy over long time periods is quite low, and becomes lower the more money it is entrusted with.
To the ones you listed, I would add:
The time period during which we reach technological completion, since from then on the stochasticity from the rate of technological advancement becomes a much less important factor.
As you mentioned previously, the time period during which we develop comprehensive techniques for engineering the motivations and values of the subsequent generation—if it actually happens to not be very close to us. (E.g. it might require a much more developed understanding of sociology than we currently have to carry out in practice).