MichaelA🔸 comments on Formalising the “Washing Out Hypothesis”

[MichaelA🔸]

Whoops, yeah, having just re-skimmed the post, I now think that your comment is a more accurate portrayal of Beckstead’s post than mine was. Here’s a key quote from that post:

Bostrom does have arguments that speeding up development and providing proximate benefits are not as important, in themselves, as reducing existential risk. And these arguments, I believe, have some plausibility. Since we don’t have an argument that reducing existential risk is better than trying to create other positive [path dependent] trajectory changes and an existential catastrophe is one type of [path dependent] trajectory change, it seems more reasonable for defenders of the astronomical waste argument to focus on [path dependent] trajectory changes in general.