Whether longtermism is a crux will depend on what we mean by ‘long,’ but I think concern for future people is a crux for x-risk reduction. If future people don’t matter, then working on global health or animal welfare is the more effective way to improve the world. The more optimistic of the calculations that Carl and I do suggest that, by funding x-risk reduction, we can save a present person’s life for about $9,000 in expectation. But we could save about 2 present people if we spent that money on malaria prevention, or we could mitigate the suffering of about 12.6 million shrimp if we donated to SWP.
This seems clearly wrong. If you believe that it would take a literal Manhattan project for AI safety ($26 billion adjusting for inflation) to reduce existential risk by a mere 1% and only care about the current 8 billion people dying, then you can save a present person’s life for $325, swamping any GiveWell-recommended charity.
Whether longtermism is a crux will depend on what we mean by ‘long’
Yep, I was being imprecise. I think the most plausible (and actually believed-in) alternative to longtermism isn’t “no care at all for future people”, but “some >0 discount rate”, and I think xrisk reduction will tend to look good under small >0 discount rates.
I do also agree that there are some combinations of social discount rate and cost-effectiveness of longtermism, such that xrisk reduction isn’t competitive with other ways of saving lives. I don’t yet think this is clearly the case, even given the numbers in your paper — afaik the amount of existential risk reduction you predicted was pretty vibes-based, so I don’t really take the cost-effectiveness calculation it produces seriously. (And I haven’t done the math myself on discount rates and cost-effectiveness.)
Even if xrisk reduction doesn’t look competitive with e.g. donating to AMF, I think it would be pretty reasonable for some people to spend more time thinking about it to figure out if they could identify more cost-effective interventions. (And especially if they seemed like poor fits for E2G or direct work.)
Makes sense! Unfortunately any x-risk cost-effectiveness calculation has to be a little vibes-based because one of the factors is ‘By how much would this intervention reduce x-risk?’, and there’s little evidence to guide these estimates.
Whether longtermism is a crux will depend on what we mean by ‘long,’ but I think concern for future people is a crux for x-risk reduction. If future people don’t matter, then working on global health or animal welfare is the more effective way to improve the world. The more optimistic of the calculations that Carl and I do suggest that, by funding x-risk reduction, we can save a present person’s life for about $9,000 in expectation. But we could save about 2 present people if we spent that money on malaria prevention, or we could mitigate the suffering of about 12.6 million shrimp if we donated to SWP.
This seems clearly wrong. If you believe that it would take a literal Manhattan project for AI safety ($26 billion adjusting for inflation) to reduce existential risk by a mere 1% and only care about the current 8 billion people dying, then you can save a present person’s life for $325, swamping any GiveWell-recommended charity.
Yep, I was being imprecise. I think the most plausible (and actually believed-in) alternative to longtermism isn’t “no care at all for future people”, but “some >0 discount rate”, and I think xrisk reduction will tend to look good under small >0 discount rates.
I do also agree that there are some combinations of social discount rate and cost-effectiveness of longtermism, such that xrisk reduction isn’t competitive with other ways of saving lives. I don’t yet think this is clearly the case, even given the numbers in your paper — afaik the amount of existential risk reduction you predicted was pretty vibes-based, so I don’t really take the cost-effectiveness calculation it produces seriously. (And I haven’t done the math myself on discount rates and cost-effectiveness.)
Even if xrisk reduction doesn’t look competitive with e.g. donating to AMF, I think it would be pretty reasonable for some people to spend more time thinking about it to figure out if they could identify more cost-effective interventions. (And especially if they seemed like poor fits for E2G or direct work.)
Makes sense! Unfortunately any x-risk cost-effectiveness calculation has to be a little vibes-based because one of the factors is ‘By how much would this intervention reduce x-risk?’, and there’s little evidence to guide these estimates.