I’d like to flag that I would really like to see a more elegant term than ‘hingeyness’ become standard for referring to the ease of influence in different periods.
Some ideas: “Leverage”, “temporal leverage”, “path-dependence”, “moment” (in relation to the concept from physics), “path-criticality” (meaning how many paths are closed off by decisions in the current time). Anyone else with ideas?
I like “leverage” (which I’d imagine being used in ways like “the highest leverage time in history” or “the time in history where an altruist can have the highest leverage”). Compared to the other options Will suggested, “leverage” seems to me to somewhat more clearly signal the “per capita/resource” element highlighted above (or more simply the sense that one isn’t just saying that x time is important, but also that something can predictably be done at x time to influence the future).
One potential downside is that it’s possible “leverage” would cause a bit of confusion for some people, if the financial sense of “leverage” comes to their mind more readily than the sort of “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world” sense.
Some ideas: “Leverage”, “temporal leverage”, “path-dependence”, “moment” (in relation to the concept from physics), “path-criticality” (meaning how many paths are closed off by decisions in the current time). Anyone else with ideas?
I like “leverage” (which I’d imagine being used in ways like “the highest leverage time in history” or “the time in history where an altruist can have the highest leverage”). Compared to the other options Will suggested, “leverage” seems to me to somewhat more clearly signal the “per capita/resource” element highlighted above (or more simply the sense that one isn’t just saying that x time is important, but also that something can predictably be done at x time to influence the future).
One potential downside is that it’s possible “leverage” would cause a bit of confusion for some people, if the financial sense of “leverage” comes to their mind more readily than the sort of “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world” sense.