I basically agree with those two points, but also think they donāt really defeat the case for strong longtermism, or at least for e.g. some tens or hundreds or thousands of people doing āsecond- or third-orderā research on these things.
This research could, for example, attempt to:
flesh out the two points you raised
quantify how much those points reduce the value of second- or third-order research into longtermism
consider whether there are any approaches to first- or second- or third-order longtermism-related work that donāt suffer those objections, or suffer them less
Itās hard to know how to count these things, but, off the top of my head, Iād estimate that:
something like 50-1000 people have done serious, focused work to identify high-priority longtermist interventions
fewer have done serious, focused work to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of those interventions, or to assess arguments for and against longtermism (e.g., work like this paper or Tarsneyās epistemic challenge paper)
So I think we should see āstrong longtermism actually isnāt right, e.g. due to the epistemic challengeā as a live hypothesis, but that it does seem too early to say weāve concluded that or that weāve concluded itās not worth looking into. It seems that weāre sufficiently uncertain, the potential stakes are sufficiently high, and the questions have been looked into sufficiently little that, whether weāre leaning towards thinking strong longtermism is true or that itās false, itās worth having at least some people doing serious, focused work to ādouble-checkā.
I basically agree with those two points, but also think they donāt really defeat the case for strong longtermism, or at least for e.g. some tens or hundreds or thousands of people doing āsecond- or third-orderā research on these things.
This research could, for example, attempt to:
flesh out the two points you raised
quantify how much those points reduce the value of second- or third-order research into longtermism
consider whether there are any approaches to first- or second- or third-order longtermism-related work that donāt suffer those objections, or suffer them less
Itās hard to know how to count these things, but, off the top of my head, Iād estimate that:
something like 50-1000 people have done serious, focused work to identify high-priority longtermist interventions
fewer have done serious, focused work to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of those interventions, or to assess arguments for and against longtermism (e.g., work like this paper or Tarsneyās epistemic challenge paper)
So I think we should see āstrong longtermism actually isnāt right, e.g. due to the epistemic challengeā as a live hypothesis, but that it does seem too early to say weāve concluded that or that weāve concluded itās not worth looking into. It seems that weāre sufficiently uncertain, the potential stakes are sufficiently high, and the questions have been looked into sufficiently little that, whether weāre leaning towards thinking strong longtermism is true or that itās false, itās worth having at least some people doing serious, focused work to ādouble-checkā.