I think longterm value is quite binary in expectation.
I think a useful starting point is to ask: how many orders of magnitude does value span?
If we use the life of one happy individual today as one unit of goodness, then I think I think maximum value (originating from Earth in the next billion years, which is probably several orders of magnitude low) is around at least 10^50 units of goodness per century.
How I got 10^50 units of goodness (i.e. happy current people) per century from my forecast
I converted 10^42 trillion USD to 10^50 happy people by saying today’s economy is composed of about 10^10 happy people, and such a future economy would be about 10^40 times larger than today’s economy. If happy people today live 100 years, that gives 10^50 units of goodness per century as the optimal future a century from now.
I also of course assumed the relationship between GWP and value of people stays constant, which of course is highly dubious, but that’s also how I came up with my dubious forecast for future GWP.
Is Value roughly Binary?
Yes, I think. My forecast of maximum GWP in the next billion years (and thus my forecast of maximum value from Earth-originating life in the next billion years) appears to be roughly binary. I have a lot of weight around what I think the maximum value is (~10^42 trillion 2020 USD), and then a lot of weight on <10^15 trillion 2020 USD (i.e. near zero), but much less weigh on the orders of magnitude in between. If you plot this on a linear scale, I think the value looks even more binary. If my x-axis was not actual value, but fraction of whatever the true maximum possible value is, it would look even more binary (since the vast majority of my uncertainty near the top end would go away).
Note that this answer doesn’t explain why my maximum GWP forecast has the shape it does, so doesn’t actually make the case for the answer much, just reports that it’s what I believe. Rather than explain why my GWO forecast has the shape it does, I’d invite anyone who doesn’t think value is binary to show their corresponding forecast for maximum GWP (that implies value is not binary) and explain why it looks like that. Given that potential value spans so many order of magnitude, I think it’s quite hard to make a plausible seeming forecast in which value is not approximately binary.
Slightly pedantic note but shouldn’t the metaculus gwp question be phrased as the world gwp in our lightcone? We can’t reach most of the universe so unless I’m misunderstanding this would become a question of aliens and stuff that is completely unrelated/out of the control to/of humans.
Also somewhat confused what money even means, when you have complete control of all the matter in the universe. Is the idea trying to translate our levels of production into what they would be valued at today? Do people today value billions of sentient digital minds? Not saying this isn’t useful to think about but just trying to wrap
My head around it.
Good questions. Re the first, from memory I believe I required that the economic activity be causually the result of Earth’s economy today, so that rules out alien economys from consideration.
Re the second, I think it’s complicated and the notion of gross product may break down at some point. I don’t have some very clear answer for you other than that I could think of no better metric to measure the size of the future economy’s output than GWP. (I’m not an economist.)
Robin Hanson’s post “The Limits of Growth” may be useful for understanding how to compare potential future economies of immense size to today’s economy. IIRC he makes comparisons using consumers today having some small probability of achieving something that could be had in the very large future economy. (He’s an economist. In short, I’d ask the economists for help with interpreting what GWP in far-future contexts over me.)
Given that potential value spans so many order of magnitude, I think it’s quite hard to make a plausible seeming forecast in which value is not approximately binary.
In theory, it seems possible to have future value span lots of orders of magnitude while not being binary. For example, one could have a lognormal/loguniform distribution with median close to 10^15, and 95th percentile around 10^42. Even if one thinks there is a hard upper bound, there is the possibility of selecting a truncated lognormal/loguniform (I guess not in Metaculus).
I think longterm value is quite binary in expectation.
I think a useful starting point is to ask: how many orders of magnitude does value span?
If we use the life of one happy individual today as one unit of goodness, then I think I think maximum value (originating from Earth in the next billion years, which is probably several orders of magnitude low) is around at least 10^50 units of goodness per century.
My forecast on this Metaculus question reflects this: Highest GWP in the next Billion Years:
My current forecast:
How I got 10^50 units of goodness (i.e. happy current people) per century from my forecast
I converted 10^42 trillion USD to 10^50 happy people by saying today’s economy is composed of about 10^10 happy people, and such a future economy would be about 10^40 times larger than today’s economy. If happy people today live 100 years, that gives 10^50 units of goodness per century as the optimal future a century from now.
I also of course assumed the relationship between GWP and value of people stays constant, which of course is highly dubious, but that’s also how I came up with my dubious forecast for future GWP.
Is Value roughly Binary?
Yes, I think. My forecast of maximum GWP in the next billion years (and thus my forecast of maximum value from Earth-originating life in the next billion years) appears to be roughly binary. I have a lot of weight around what I think the maximum value is (~10^42 trillion 2020 USD), and then a lot of weight on <10^15 trillion 2020 USD (i.e. near zero), but much less weigh on the orders of magnitude in between. If you plot this on a linear scale, I think the value looks even more binary. If my x-axis was not actual value, but fraction of whatever the true maximum possible value is, it would look even more binary (since the vast majority of my uncertainty near the top end would go away).
Note that this answer doesn’t explain why my maximum GWP forecast has the shape it does, so doesn’t actually make the case for the answer much, just reports that it’s what I believe. Rather than explain why my GWO forecast has the shape it does, I’d invite anyone who doesn’t think value is binary to show their corresponding forecast for maximum GWP (that implies value is not binary) and explain why it looks like that. Given that potential value spans so many order of magnitude, I think it’s quite hard to make a plausible seeming forecast in which value is not approximately binary.
Slightly pedantic note but shouldn’t the metaculus gwp question be phrased as the world gwp in our lightcone? We can’t reach most of the universe so unless I’m misunderstanding this would become a question of aliens and stuff that is completely unrelated/out of the control to/of humans.
Also somewhat confused what money even means, when you have complete control of all the matter in the universe. Is the idea trying to translate our levels of production into what they would be valued at today? Do people today value billions of sentient digital minds? Not saying this isn’t useful to think about but just trying to wrap My head around it.
Good questions. Re the first, from memory I believe I required that the economic activity be causually the result of Earth’s economy today, so that rules out alien economys from consideration.
Re the second, I think it’s complicated and the notion of gross product may break down at some point. I don’t have some very clear answer for you other than that I could think of no better metric to measure the size of the future economy’s output than GWP. (I’m not an economist.)
Robin Hanson’s post “The Limits of Growth” may be useful for understanding how to compare potential future economies of immense size to today’s economy. IIRC he makes comparisons using consumers today having some small probability of achieving something that could be had in the very large future economy. (He’s an economist. In short, I’d ask the economists for help with interpreting what GWP in far-future contexts over me.)
Thanks for sharing!
In theory, it seems possible to have future value span lots of orders of magnitude while not being binary. For example, one could have a lognormal/loguniform distribution with median close to 10^15, and 95th percentile around 10^42. Even if one thinks there is a hard upper bound, there is the possibility of selecting a truncated lognormal/loguniform (I guess not in Metaculus).