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.
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.