Indeed, I took that survey one year, and the reason why I wouldn’t put the difference at 10^23 or something extremely large than that is because there are flowthrough effects of other cause areas that still help with longtermist stuff (like, GiveWell has been pretty helpful for also getting more work to happen on longtermist stuff).
I do think that as a cause area from a utilitarian perspective, interventions that affect the longterm future are astronomically more effective than things that help the short term future but are very unlikely to have any effect on the long term, or even slightly harm the longterm.
Indeed, I took that survey one year, and the reason why I wouldn’t put the difference at 10^23 or something extremely large than that is because there are flowthrough effects of other cause areas that still help with longtermist stuff (like, GiveWell has been pretty helpful for also getting more work to happen on longtermist stuff).
I do think that as a cause area from a utilitarian perspective, interventions that affect the longterm future are astronomically more effective than things that help the short term future but are very unlikely to have any effect on the long term, or even slightly harm the longterm.