I’ve been perceiving a lot of EA/XR folks to be in (3) but maybe you’re saying they’re more in (2)?
Yup.
Maybe it turns out that most folks in each community are between (1) and (2) toward the other. That is, we’re just disagreeing on relative priority and neglectedness.
That’s what I would say.
I can’t see it as literally the only thing worth spending any marginal resources on (which is where some XR folks have landed).
If you have opportunity A where you get a benefit of 200 per $ invested, and opportunity B where you get a benefit of 50 per $ invested, you want to invest in A as much as possible, until the opportunity dries up. At a civilizational scale, opportunities dry up quickly (i.e. with millions, maybe billions of dollars), so you see lots of diversity. At EA scales, this is less true.
So I do agree that some XR folks (myself included) would, if given a pot of millions of dollars to distribute, allocate it all to XR; I don’t think the same people would do it for e.g. trillions of dollars. (I don’t know where in the middle it changes.)
I think Open Phil, at the billions of dollars range, does in fact invest in lots of opportunities, some of which are arguably about improving progress. (Though note that they are not “fully” XR-focused, see e.g. Worldview Diversification.)
Yup.
That’s what I would say.
If you have opportunity A where you get a benefit of 200 per $ invested, and opportunity B where you get a benefit of 50 per $ invested, you want to invest in A as much as possible, until the opportunity dries up. At a civilizational scale, opportunities dry up quickly (i.e. with millions, maybe billions of dollars), so you see lots of diversity. At EA scales, this is less true.
So I do agree that some XR folks (myself included) would, if given a pot of millions of dollars to distribute, allocate it all to XR; I don’t think the same people would do it for e.g. trillions of dollars. (I don’t know where in the middle it changes.)
I think Open Phil, at the billions of dollars range, does in fact invest in lots of opportunities, some of which are arguably about improving progress. (Though note that they are not “fully” XR-focused, see e.g. Worldview Diversification.)