I agree that it’s possible that your scenario 2 just shifts everything back uniformly in time, but think in expectation the spacing will be denser.
Toy model: looking at the spacing between self-driving cars and some future automation technology X. A major driver of the time X is adopted is technological sophistication. Whether or not we adopt self-driving cars now won’t have too much effect on the point when we reach technological sophistication level for technology X. If we had the same social position either way, this would mean that we would adopt X at roughly the same time regardless of when we adopt self-driving cars. Of course social views might be different depending on what happened with self-driving cars.
If we want to maximise the time between self-driving cars and X, we’d be best adopting the cars as soon as possible (given technological constraints), and pushing back adoption of X as long as possible.
Your toy model makes sense. However, if instead of considering the future automation technology X we consider some past (already adopted) automation technology Y, the conclusion would be opposite. Therefore, to complete your argument you need to show that in some sense the next significant step in automation after self-driving cars is closer in time than the previous significant step in automation.
I see what you’re thinking. We break the symmetry not by thinking that the next step is going to be closer in time, but that the next step(s) are going to be more important to get right than either self-driving cars or earlier automation.
In a way, the two are interchangeable: if we define “steps” as changes of given magnitude then faster change means more densely spaced steps.
There is another effect that has to be taken into account. Namely, some progress in understanding how to adapt to automation might be happening without the actual adoption of automation, that is, progress that occurs because of theoretical deliberation and broader publicity for the relevant insights. This sort of progress creates an incentive to move all adoption later in time.
I agree that it’s possible that your scenario 2 just shifts everything back uniformly in time, but think in expectation the spacing will be denser.
Toy model: looking at the spacing between self-driving cars and some future automation technology X. A major driver of the time X is adopted is technological sophistication. Whether or not we adopt self-driving cars now won’t have too much effect on the point when we reach technological sophistication level for technology X. If we had the same social position either way, this would mean that we would adopt X at roughly the same time regardless of when we adopt self-driving cars. Of course social views might be different depending on what happened with self-driving cars.
If we want to maximise the time between self-driving cars and X, we’d be best adopting the cars as soon as possible (given technological constraints), and pushing back adoption of X as long as possible.
Your toy model makes sense. However, if instead of considering the future automation technology X we consider some past (already adopted) automation technology Y, the conclusion would be opposite. Therefore, to complete your argument you need to show that in some sense the next significant step in automation after self-driving cars is closer in time than the previous significant step in automation.
I see what you’re thinking. We break the symmetry not by thinking that the next step is going to be closer in time, but that the next step(s) are going to be more important to get right than either self-driving cars or earlier automation.
In a way, the two are interchangeable: if we define “steps” as changes of given magnitude then faster change means more densely spaced steps.
There is another effect that has to be taken into account. Namely, some progress in understanding how to adapt to automation might be happening without the actual adoption of automation, that is, progress that occurs because of theoretical deliberation and broader publicity for the relevant insights. This sort of progress creates an incentive to move all adoption later in time.