One way to frame this is that we do need extraordinarily strong evidence to update from thinking that we’re almost certainly not the most influential time to thinking that we might plausibly be the most influential time. However, we don’t need extraordinarily strong evidence pointing towards us almost certainly being the most influential (that then “averages out” to thinking that we’re plausibly the most influential). It’s sufficient to get extraordinarily strong evidence that we are at a point in history which is plausibly the most influential. And if we condition on the future being long and that we aren’t in a simulation (because that’s probably when we have the most impact), we do in fact have extraordinarily strong evidence that we are very early in history, which is a point that’s plausibly the most influential.
One way to frame this is that we do need extraordinarily strong evidence to update from thinking that we’re almost certainly not the most influential time to thinking that we might plausibly be the most influential time. However, we don’t need extraordinarily strong evidence pointing towards us almost certainly being the most influential (that then “averages out” to thinking that we’re plausibly the most influential). It’s sufficient to get extraordinarily strong evidence that we are at a point in history which is plausibly the most influential. And if we condition on the future being long and that we aren’t in a simulation (because that’s probably when we have the most impact), we do in fact have extraordinarily strong evidence that we are very early in history, which is a point that’s plausibly the most influential.