This was very thought-provoking. I expect I’ll come back to it a number of times.
I suspect that how the model works depends a lot on exactly how this definition is interpreted:
a time ti is more influential (from a longtermist perspective) than a time tj iff you would prefer to give an additional unit of resources,[1] that has to be spent doing direct work (rather than investment), to a longtermist altruist living at ti rather than to a longtermist altruist living at tj.
In particular, I think you intend direct work to include extinction risk reduction, and to be opposite to strategies which punt decisions to future generations. However, extinction risk reduction seems like the mother of all punting strategies, so it seems naturally categorised as not direct work for the purpose of considering whether to punt. Due to this, I expect some weirdness around the categorisation, and would guess that a precise definition would be productive.
(Added formatting and bold to the quote for clarity.)
Extinction risk reduction (and other type of “direct work”) affects all future generations similarly. If the most influential century is still to come, extinction risk reduction also affects the people alive during that century (by making sure they exist). Thus, extinction risk reduction has a “punting to future generations that live in hingey times” component. However, extinction risk reduction also affects all the unhingey future generations directly, and the effects are not primarily mediated through the people alive in the most influential centuries.
(Then, by definition, if ours is not a very hingey time, direct work is not a very promising strategy for punting. The effect on people alive during the “most influential times” has to be small by definition. If direct work did strongly enable the people living in the most influential century (e.g. by strongly increasing the chance that they come into existence), it would also enable many other generations a lot. This would imply that the present was quite hingey after all, in contradiction to the assumption that the present is unhingey.)
Punting strategies, in contrast, affect future generations primarly via their effect on the people alive in the most influential centuries.
Punting strategies, in contrast, affect future generations primarly via their effect on the people alive in the most influential centuries.
That seems like a sufficiently precise definition. Whether there are any interventions in that category seems like an open question. (Maybe it is a lot more narrow than Will’s intention.)
Thanks! I hadn’t seen the Cotton-Barratt piece before.
Extinction risk reduction punts on the question of which future problems are most important to solve, but not how best to tackle the problem of extinction risk specifically. Building capacity for future extinction risk reduction work punts on how best to tackle the problem of extinction risk specifically, but not the question of which future problems are most important to solve. They seem to do more/less punting than one another along different dimensions, so, depending on one’s definition of direct vs punting, each could be more of a punt than the other. I’m not clear on whether this means we should pick a dimension to talk about, or whether there is no meaningful single spectrum of directness vs punting.
This was very thought-provoking. I expect I’ll come back to it a number of times.
I suspect that how the model works depends a lot on exactly how this definition is interpreted:
In particular, I think you intend direct work to include extinction risk reduction, and to be opposite to strategies which punt decisions to future generations. However, extinction risk reduction seems like the mother of all punting strategies, so it seems naturally categorised as not direct work for the purpose of considering whether to punt. Due to this, I expect some weirdness around the categorisation, and would guess that a precise definition would be productive.
(Added formatting and bold to the quote for clarity.)
How I see it:
Extinction risk reduction (and other type of “direct work”) affects all future generations similarly. If the most influential century is still to come, extinction risk reduction also affects the people alive during that century (by making sure they exist). Thus, extinction risk reduction has a “punting to future generations that live in hingey times” component. However, extinction risk reduction also affects all the unhingey future generations directly, and the effects are not primarily mediated through the people alive in the most influential centuries.
(Then, by definition, if ours is not a very hingey time, direct work is not a very promising strategy for punting. The effect on people alive during the “most influential times” has to be small by definition. If direct work did strongly enable the people living in the most influential century (e.g. by strongly increasing the chance that they come into existence), it would also enable many other generations a lot. This would imply that the present was quite hingey after all, in contradiction to the assumption that the present is unhingey.)
Punting strategies, in contrast, affect future generations primarly via their effect on the people alive in the most influential centuries.
That seems like a sufficiently precise definition. Whether there are any interventions in that category seems like an open question. (Maybe it is a lot more narrow than Will’s intention.)
I agree that it seems important to get more clarity over the direct work vs buck-passing/punting distinction.
Building capacity for future extinction risk reduction work may be seen as more “meta”/”buck-passing/”punting” still.
There has been an interesting discussion on direct vs meta-level work to reduce existential risk; see Toby Ord and Owen Cotton-Barratt.
Thanks! I hadn’t seen the Cotton-Barratt piece before.
Extinction risk reduction punts on the question of which future problems are most important to solve, but not how best to tackle the problem of extinction risk specifically. Building capacity for future extinction risk reduction work punts on how best to tackle the problem of extinction risk specifically, but not the question of which future problems are most important to solve. They seem to do more/less punting than one another along different dimensions, so, depending on one’s definition of direct vs punting, each could be more of a punt than the other. I’m not clear on whether this means we should pick a dimension to talk about, or whether there is no meaningful single spectrum of directness vs punting.