I agree we are learning more about how to effectively exert resources to affect the future, but if your definition is concerned with the effect of a marginal increment of resources (rather than the total capacity of an era), then you need to wrestle with the issue of diminishing returns.
I agree with this, though if we’re unsure about how many resources will be put towards longtermist causes in the future, then the expected value of saving will come to be dominated by the scenario where very few resources are devoted to it. (As happens in the Ramsey model for discounting if one includes uncertainty over future growth rates and the possibility of catastrophe.) This considerations gets stronger if one thinks the diminishing marginal returns curve is very steep.
E.g. perhaps in 150 years’ time, EA and Open Phil and longtermist concern will be dust; in which case those who saved for the future (and ensured that there would be at least some sufficiently likeminded people to pass their resources onto) will have an outsized return. And perhaps returns diminish really steeply, so that what matters is guaranteeing that there are at least some longtermists around. If the outsized return in this scenario if large enough, then even a low probability of this scenario might be the dominant consideration.
Founding fields like AI safety or population ethics is much better on a per capita basis than expanding them by 1% after they have developed more.
Strongly agree, though by induction it seems we should think there will be more such fields in the future.
The longtermist of 1600 would indeed have mostly ‘invested’ in building a movement and eventually in things like financial assets when movement-building returns fell below financial returns, but they also should have made concrete interventions like causing the leveraged growth of institutions like science and the Enlightenment that looked to have a fair chance of contributing to HoH scenarios over the coming centuries, and those could have paid off.
You might think the counterfactual is unfair here, but I wouldn’t regard it as accessible to someone in 1600 to know that they could make contributions to science and the Enlightenment as a good way of influencing the long-run future.
This is analogous to the general point in financial markets that assets classes with systematically high returns only have them before those returns are widely agreed on to be valuable and accessible...
A world in which everyone has shared correct values and strong knowledge of how to improve things is one in which marginal longtermist resources are gilding the lily.
Though if we’re really clueless right now (perhaps not much better than the person in 1600) then perhaps that’s the best we can do.
And it would seem that the really high-value scenario is where (i) knowledge is very high but (ii) concern for the very long-run future is very low (but not nonexistent, allowing for resources to be passed onto those times.)
In terms of the financial analogy, that would be like how someone with strange preferences, who gets extraordinary utility from eating bread and potatoes, gets a much higher return (when measured in utility gained) from a regular salary than other people would.
And in general I’m more inclined to believe stories of us having extraordinary impact if that primarily results from a difference in what we care about compared with others, rather than from having greater insight.
I will say, though: the argument “we’re at an unusual period where longtermist (/impartial consequentialish) concern is very low but not nonexistent” as a reason for now being a particularly influential time seems pretty good to me, and wasn’t one that I included in my list of arguments in favour of HoH.
You might think the counterfactual is unfair here, but I wouldn’t regard it as accessible to someone in 1600 to know that they could make contributions to science and the Enlightenment as a good way of influencing the long-run future.
Is longtermism accessible today? That’s a philosophy of a narrow circle, as Baconian science and the beginnings of the culture of progress were in 1600. If you are a specialist focused on moral reform and progress today with unusual knowledge, your might want to consider a counterpart in the past in a similar position for their time.
I agree with this, though if we’re unsure about how many resources will be put towards longtermist causes in the future, then the expected value of saving will come to be dominated by the scenario where very few resources are devoted to it. (As happens in the Ramsey model for discounting if one includes uncertainty over future growth rates and the possibility of catastrophe.) This considerations gets stronger if one thinks the diminishing marginal returns curve is very steep.
E.g. perhaps in 150 years’ time, EA and Open Phil and longtermist concern will be dust; in which case those who saved for the future (and ensured that there would be at least some sufficiently likeminded people to pass their resources onto) will have an outsized return. And perhaps returns diminish really steeply, so that what matters is guaranteeing that there are at least some longtermists around. If the outsized return in this scenario if large enough, then even a low probability of this scenario might be the dominant consideration.
Strongly agree, though by induction it seems we should think there will be more such fields in the future.
You might think the counterfactual is unfair here, but I wouldn’t regard it as accessible to someone in 1600 to know that they could make contributions to science and the Enlightenment as a good way of influencing the long-run future.
Though if we’re really clueless right now (perhaps not much better than the person in 1600) then perhaps that’s the best we can do.
And it would seem that the really high-value scenario is where (i) knowledge is very high but (ii) concern for the very long-run future is very low (but not nonexistent, allowing for resources to be passed onto those times.)
In terms of the financial analogy, that would be like how someone with strange preferences, who gets extraordinary utility from eating bread and potatoes, gets a much higher return (when measured in utility gained) from a regular salary than other people would.
And in general I’m more inclined to believe stories of us having extraordinary impact if that primarily results from a difference in what we care about compared with others, rather than from having greater insight.
I will say, though: the argument “we’re at an unusual period where longtermist (/impartial consequentialish) concern is very low but not nonexistent” as a reason for now being a particularly influential time seems pretty good to me, and wasn’t one that I included in my list of arguments in favour of HoH.
Is longtermism accessible today? That’s a philosophy of a narrow circle, as Baconian science and the beginnings of the culture of progress were in 1600. If you are a specialist focused on moral reform and progress today with unusual knowledge, your might want to consider a counterpart in the past in a similar position for their time.