the rather implausible claim that interventions targeted at improving the long-term are astronomically more important/cost-effective than those targeted at improving the near-term. It seems to me that many longtermists believe (i) but that almost no-one believes (ii).
I think I believe (ii), but it’s complicated and I feel a bit confused about it. This is mostly because many interventions that target the near-term seem negative from a long-term perspective, because they increase anthropogenic existential risk by accelerating the speed of technological development. So it’s pretty easy for there to be many orders of magnitude in effectiveness between different interventions (in some sense infinitely many, if I think that many interventions that look good from a short-term perspective are actually bad in the long term).
Please see my above response to jackmalde’s comment. While I understand and respect your argument, I don’t think we are justified in placing high confidence in this model of the long-term flowthrough effects of near-term targeted interventions. There are many similar more-or-less plausible models of such long-term flowthrough effects, some of which would suggest a positive net effect of near-term targeted interventions on the long-term future, while others would suggest a negative net effect. Lacking strong evidence that would allow us to accurately assess the plausibility of these models, we simply shouldn’t place extreme weight on one specific model (and its practical implications) while ignoring other models (which may arrive at the opposite conclusion).
Yep, not placing extreme weight. Just medium levels of confidence that when summed over, add up to something pretty low or maybe mildly negative. I definitely am not like 90%+ confidence on the flowthrough effects being negative.
I think I believe (ii), but it’s complicated and I feel a bit confused about it. This is mostly because many interventions that target the near-term seem negative from a long-term perspective, because they increase anthropogenic existential risk by accelerating the speed of technological development. So it’s pretty easy for there to be many orders of magnitude in effectiveness between different interventions (in some sense infinitely many, if I think that many interventions that look good from a short-term perspective are actually bad in the long term).
Please see my above response to jackmalde’s comment. While I understand and respect your argument, I don’t think we are justified in placing high confidence in this model of the long-term flowthrough effects of near-term targeted interventions. There are many similar more-or-less plausible models of such long-term flowthrough effects, some of which would suggest a positive net effect of near-term targeted interventions on the long-term future, while others would suggest a negative net effect. Lacking strong evidence that would allow us to accurately assess the plausibility of these models, we simply shouldn’t place extreme weight on one specific model (and its practical implications) while ignoring other models (which may arrive at the opposite conclusion).
Yep, not placing extreme weight. Just medium levels of confidence that when summed over, add up to something pretty low or maybe mildly negative. I definitely am not like 90%+ confidence on the flowthrough effects being negative.