You’re right that the constant predicted benefits for each intervention is an important simplifying assumption. However, as you mention, it would be relatively easy to change the integrand to allow for different shapes of signalled benefits. For example, a signal that suggests increasing benefits as we increase the time horizon might increase the relative value of the longtermist intervention.
It quickly becomes an empirical question what the predicted-benefit function looks like, and so it will depend on the exact intervention we are looking at, along with various other empirical predictions. An important one is indeed whether we think the “size”/”scale” of the future will be much larger in value terms (e.g. if the number of individuals increases continuously in the future, the predicted benefits of L could plausibly increase over time).
About attractor states, you say:
attractor states mostly seem good by limiting the unpredictability rather than by increasing the impact
I think that’s basically true, although we need to be careful here about what we mean by “impact”. Even if the “impact” at any one time of being in a good attractor state vs a bad attractor state may be relatively small, the overall “impact” of getting into that attractor state may be large because it persists for so long.
You’re right that the constant predicted benefits for each intervention is an important simplifying assumption. However, as you mention, it would be relatively easy to change the integrand to allow for different shapes of signalled benefits. For example, a signal that suggests increasing benefits as we increase the time horizon might increase the relative value of the longtermist intervention.
It quickly becomes an empirical question what the predicted-benefit function looks like, and so it will depend on the exact intervention we are looking at, along with various other empirical predictions. An important one is indeed whether we think the “size”/”scale” of the future will be much larger in value terms (e.g. if the number of individuals increases continuously in the future, the predicted benefits of L could plausibly increase over time).
About attractor states, you say:
I think that’s basically true, although we need to be careful here about what we mean by “impact”. Even if the “impact” at any one time of being in a good attractor state vs a bad attractor state may be relatively small, the overall “impact” of getting into that attractor state may be large because it persists for so long.