Which empirical beliefs you hold would have to change for this to be the case?
For starters, we’d either need:
all the factors discussed in this section to be much simpler (or otherwise structured in a way that we could model with the requisite precision); or
sufficiently strong evidence that our intuitions can implicitly weigh up such complex factors with the requisite precision.
(Sorry if this is more high-level than you’re asking for. The concrete empirical factors are elaborated in the linked section.)
Re: your claim that “expected effects of actions decrease over time and space”: To me the various mechanisms for potential lock-in within our lifetimes seem not too implausible. So it seems overconfident to have a vanishingly small credence that your action makes the difference between two futures of astronomically different value. See also Mogensen’s examples of mechanisms by which an AMF donation could affect extinction risk. But please let me know if there’s some nuance in the arguments of the posts you linked that I’m not addressing.
As far as I can tell, the factors you mention refer to the possibility of influencing astronomically valuable worlds. I agree locking in some properties of the world may be possible. However, even in this case, I would expect the interventions causing the lock-in to increase the probability of astronomically valuable worlds by an astronomically small amount. I think the counterfactual interventions would cause a similarly valuable lock-in slightly later, and that the difference between the factual and counterfactual expected impartial welfare would quickly tend to 0 over time, such that is is negligible after 100 years or so.
For starters, we’d either need:
all the factors discussed in this section to be much simpler (or otherwise structured in a way that we could model with the requisite precision); or
sufficiently strong evidence that our intuitions can implicitly weigh up such complex factors with the requisite precision.
(Sorry if this is more high-level than you’re asking for. The concrete empirical factors are elaborated in the linked section.)
Re: your claim that “expected effects of actions decrease over time and space”: To me the various mechanisms for potential lock-in within our lifetimes seem not too implausible. So it seems overconfident to have a vanishingly small credence that your action makes the difference between two futures of astronomically different value. See also Mogensen’s examples of mechanisms by which an AMF donation could affect extinction risk. But please let me know if there’s some nuance in the arguments of the posts you linked that I’m not addressing.
As far as I can tell, the factors you mention refer to the possibility of influencing astronomically valuable worlds. I agree locking in some properties of the world may be possible. However, even in this case, I would expect the interventions causing the lock-in to increase the probability of astronomically valuable worlds by an astronomically small amount. I think the counterfactual interventions would cause a similarly valuable lock-in slightly later, and that the difference between the factual and counterfactual expected impartial welfare would quickly tend to 0 over time, such that is is negligible after 100 years or so.