On this set-up of the argument (which is what was in my head but I hadn’t worked through), I don’t make any claims about how likely it is that we are part of a very long future.
This does make a lot more sense than what you wrote in your post.
Do you agree that as written, the argument as written in your EA Forum post is quite flawed? If so, I think you should edit it to more clearly indicate that it was a mistake, given that people are still linking to it.
Yeah, I do think the priors-based argument given in the post was poorly stated, and therefore led to unnecessary confusion. Your suggestion is very reasonable, and I’ve now edited the post.
Actually, rereading my post I realize I had already made an edit similar to the one you suggest (though not linking to the article which hadn’t been finished) back in March 2020:
”[Later Edit (Mar 2020): The way I state the choice of prior in the text above was mistaken, and therefore caused some confusion. The way I should have stated the prior choice, to represent what I was thinking of, is as follows:
The prior probability of us living in the most influential century, conditional on Earth-originating civilization lasting for n centuries, is 1/n.
The unconditional prior probability over whether this is the most influential century would then depend on one’s priors over how long Earth-originating civilization will last for. However, for the purpose of this discussion we can focus on just the claim that we are at the most influential century AND that we have an enormous future ahead of us. If the Value Lock-In or Time of Perils views are true, then we should assign a significant probability to that claim. (i.e. they are claiming that, if we act wisely this century, then this conjunctive claim is probably true.) So that’s the claim we can focus our discussion on.
It’s worth noting that my proposal follows from the Self-Sampling Assumption, which is roughly (as stated by Teru Thomas (‘Self-location and objective chance’ (ms)): “A rational agent’s priors locate him uniformly at random within each possible world.” I believe that SSA is widely held: the key question in the anthropic reasoning literature is whether it should be supplemented with the self-indication assumption (giving greater prior probability mass to worlds with large populations). But we don’t need to debate SIA in this discussion, because we can simply assume some prior probability distribution over sizes over the total population—the question of whether we’re at the most influential time does not require us to get into debates over anthropics.]”
Oh man, I’m so sorry, you’re totally right that this edit fixes the problem I was complaining about. When I read this edit, I initially misunderstood it in such a way that it didn’t address my concern. My apologies.
This does make a lot more sense than what you wrote in your post.
Do you agree that as written, the argument as written in your EA Forum post is quite flawed? If so, I think you should edit it to more clearly indicate that it was a mistake, given that people are still linking to it.
Yeah, I do think the priors-based argument given in the post was poorly stated, and therefore led to unnecessary confusion. Your suggestion is very reasonable, and I’ve now edited the post.
Actually, rereading my post I realize I had already made an edit similar to the one you suggest (though not linking to the article which hadn’t been finished) back in March 2020:
”[Later Edit (Mar 2020): The way I state the choice of prior in the text above was mistaken, and therefore caused some confusion. The way I should have stated the prior choice, to represent what I was thinking of, is as follows:
The prior probability of us living in the most influential century, conditional on Earth-originating civilization lasting for n centuries, is 1/n.
The unconditional prior probability over whether this is the most influential century would then depend on one’s priors over how long Earth-originating civilization will last for. However, for the purpose of this discussion we can focus on just the claim that we are at the most influential century AND that we have an enormous future ahead of us. If the Value Lock-In or Time of Perils views are true, then we should assign a significant probability to that claim. (i.e. they are claiming that, if we act wisely this century, then this conjunctive claim is probably true.) So that’s the claim we can focus our discussion on.
It’s worth noting that my proposal follows from the Self-Sampling Assumption, which is roughly (as stated by Teru Thomas (‘Self-location and objective chance’ (ms)): “A rational agent’s priors locate him uniformly at random within each possible world.” I believe that SSA is widely held: the key question in the anthropic reasoning literature is whether it should be supplemented with the self-indication assumption (giving greater prior probability mass to worlds with large populations). But we don’t need to debate SIA in this discussion, because we can simply assume some prior probability distribution over sizes over the total population—the question of whether we’re at the most influential time does not require us to get into debates over anthropics.]”
Oh man, I’m so sorry, you’re totally right that this edit fixes the problem I was complaining about. When I read this edit, I initially misunderstood it in such a way that it didn’t address my concern. My apologies.