The point of this section is that since there are no good public estimates of the curvature of the philanthropic utility function for many top EA cause areas, like x-risk reduction, we don’t know if it’s more or less concave than a typical individual utility function. Appendix B just illustrates a bit more concretely how it could go either way. Does that make sense?
No, it doesn’t make sense. “We don’t know the curvature, ergo it could be anything” is not convincing. What you seem to think is “concrete” seems entirely arbitrary to me.
Hold on, just to try wrapping up the first point—if by “flat” you meant “more concave”, why do you say “I don’t see how [uncertainty] could flatten out the utility function. This should be in “Justifying a more cautious portfolio”?”
Did you mean in the original comment to say that you don’t see how uncertainty could make the utility function more concave, and that it should therefore also be filed under “Justifying a riskier portfolio”?
Argh, yes. I meant more concave.
No, it doesn’t make sense. “We don’t know the curvature, ergo it could be anything” is not convincing. What you seem to think is “concrete” seems entirely arbitrary to me.
Hold on, just to try wrapping up the first point—if by “flat” you meant “more concave”, why do you say “I don’t see how [uncertainty] could flatten out the utility function. This should be in “Justifying a more cautious portfolio”?”
Did you mean in the original comment to say that you don’t see how uncertainty could make the utility function more concave, and that it should therefore also be filed under “Justifying a riskier portfolio”?