Hi John, I’ll define here what I think you mean by “the time of perils”. I’ve heard of it before, but I had to Google it to refresh myself on what it means, and I got this from this forum post by Will MacAskill:
“According to the Time of Perils view, we live in a period of unusually high extinction risk, where we have the technological power to destroy ourselves but lack the wisdom to be able to ensure we don’t; after this point annual extinction risk will go to some very low level.”
It’s not clear to me how growth “shortens the time of perils” without increasing the extinction risk during the time of perils, which would be bad from a longtermist perspective. If we accelerate economic growth, we would likely accelerate climate change, and we would likely become more technologically advanced faster.
Being more technologically advanced at a faster rate would mean we have less time to research on how to mitigate existential risks from emerging technologies, i.e. how to build safe and aligned AGI. But I’m happy to hear counterarguments to this view!
P.S. I think you can put something like “(the time wherein existential risk is unusually high)” after you use the phrase “the time of perils”, so people not familiar with the term could better understand what you meant!
“The same technological progress that creates these risks is also what drives economic growth. Does that mean economic growth is inherently risky? Economic growth has brought about extraordinary prosperity. But for the sake of posterity, must we choose safe stagnation instead? This view is arguably becoming ever-more popular, particularly amongst those concerned about climate change; Greta Thunberg recently denounced “fairy tales of eternal economic growth” at the United Nations.
I argue that the opposite is the case. It is not safe stagnation and risky growth that we must choose between; rather, it is stagnation that is risky and it is growth that leads to safety.
We might indeed be in “time of perils”: we might be advanced enough to have developed the means for our destruction, but not advanced enough to care sufficiently about safety. But stagnation does not solve the problem: we would simply stagnate at this high level of risk. Eventually, a nuclear war or environmental catastrophe would doom humanity regardless.
Faster economic growth could initially increase risk, as feared. But it will also help us get past this time of perils more quickly. When people are poor, they can’t focus on much beyond ensuring their own livelihoods. But as people grow richer, they start caring more about things like the environment and protecting against risks to life. And so, as economic growth makes people richer, they will invest more in safety, protecting against existential catastrophes. As technological innovation and our growing wealth has allowed us to conquer past threats to human life like smallpox, so can faster economic growth, in the long run, increase the overall chances of humanity’s survival.
This argument is based on a recent paper of mine, in which I use the tools of economic theory—in particular, the standard models economists use to analyze economic growth—to examine the interaction between economic growth and the risks engendered by human activity.”
Hi John, I’ll define here what I think you mean by “the time of perils”. I’ve heard of it before, but I had to Google it to refresh myself on what it means, and I got this from this forum post by Will MacAskill:
It’s not clear to me how growth “shortens the time of perils” without increasing the extinction risk during the time of perils, which would be bad from a longtermist perspective. If we accelerate economic growth, we would likely accelerate climate change, and we would likely become more technologically advanced faster.
Being more technologically advanced at a faster rate would mean we have less time to research on how to mitigate existential risks from emerging technologies, i.e. how to build safe and aligned AGI. But I’m happy to hear counterarguments to this view!
P.S. I think you can put something like “(the time wherein existential risk is unusually high)” after you use the phrase “the time of perils”, so people not familiar with the term could better understand what you meant!
Leopold Aschenbrenner has written about this here.
“The same technological progress that creates these risks is also what drives economic growth. Does that mean economic growth is inherently risky? Economic growth has brought about extraordinary prosperity. But for the sake of posterity, must we choose safe stagnation instead? This view is arguably becoming ever-more popular, particularly amongst those concerned about climate change; Greta Thunberg recently denounced “fairy tales of eternal economic growth” at the United Nations.
I argue that the opposite is the case. It is not safe stagnation and risky growth that we must choose between; rather, it is stagnation that is risky and it is growth that leads to safety.
We might indeed be in “time of perils”: we might be advanced enough to have developed the means for our destruction, but not advanced enough to care sufficiently about safety. But stagnation does not solve the problem: we would simply stagnate at this high level of risk. Eventually, a nuclear war or environmental catastrophe would doom humanity regardless.
Faster economic growth could initially increase risk, as feared. But it will also help us get past this time of perils more quickly. When people are poor, they can’t focus on much beyond ensuring their own livelihoods. But as people grow richer, they start caring more about things like the environment and protecting against risks to life. And so, as economic growth makes people richer, they will invest more in safety, protecting against existential catastrophes. As technological innovation and our growing wealth has allowed us to conquer past threats to human life like smallpox, so can faster economic growth, in the long run, increase the overall chances of humanity’s survival.
This argument is based on a recent paper of mine, in which I use the tools of economic theory—in particular, the standard models economists use to analyze economic growth—to examine the interaction between economic growth and the risks engendered by human activity.”