Interesting view. It seems to me like it makes sense, but I also feel like it’d be valuable for it to be fleshed out and critiqued further to see how solid it is. (Perhaps this has already been done somewhere—I do feel like I’ve heard vaguely similar arguments here and there.)
Also, arriving at this thread 5 months late, I notice Toby Ord makes a similar argument in The Precipice. He writes about:
a subtle form of correlation—not between two risks, but between risks and the value of the future. There might be risks that are much more likely to occur in worlds with high potential. For example, if it is possible to create artificial intelligence that far surpasses humanity in every domain, this would increase the risk from misaligned AGI, but would also increase the value we could achieve using AGI that was aligned with human values. By ignoring this correlation, the total risk approach underweights the value of work on this risk.
This can be usefully understood in terms of there being a common cause for the risk and the benefit, producing the correlation. A high ceiling on technological capability might be another common cause between a variety of risks and extremely positive futures. I will set this possibility aside in the rest of the book, but it is an important issue for future work to explore.
Interesting view. It seems to me like it makes sense, but I also feel like it’d be valuable for it to be fleshed out and critiqued further to see how solid it is. (Perhaps this has already been done somewhere—I do feel like I’ve heard vaguely similar arguments here and there.)
Thanks! I’m not sure if I made it up or not. I will try to find some time to write more about it.
I think it’s worth noting that, for predictions concerning the next few decades, accelerating growth or “the god of straight lines” with 2% growth are not the only possibilities. There is for instance this piece by Tyler Cowen and Ben Southwood on the slowing down of scientific progress, which I find very good. Also, in Chapter 18 of Gordon’s book on “the rise and fall of American growth”, he predicts (under assumptions that I find reasonable) that the median disposable income per person in the US will grow by about 0.3% per year on average over the period 2015-2040. (This does not affect your argument though, as far as I understand it.)
Interesting view. It seems to me like it makes sense, but I also feel like it’d be valuable for it to be fleshed out and critiqued further to see how solid it is. (Perhaps this has already been done somewhere—I do feel like I’ve heard vaguely similar arguments here and there.)
Also, arriving at this thread 5 months late, I notice Toby Ord makes a similar argument in The Precipice. He writes about:
Thanks! I’m not sure if I made it up or not. I will try to find some time to write more about it.
I think it’s worth noting that, for predictions concerning the next few decades, accelerating growth or “the god of straight lines” with 2% growth are not the only possibilities. There is for instance this piece by Tyler Cowen and Ben Southwood on the slowing down of scientific progress, which I find very good. Also, in Chapter 18 of Gordon’s book on “the rise and fall of American growth”, he predicts (under assumptions that I find reasonable) that the median disposable income per person in the US will grow by about 0.3% per year on average over the period 2015-2040. (This does not affect your argument though, as far as I understand it.)