Some actions might speed up development, or might be aimed at doing so. For example, actions might speed up economic growth, scientific and technological progress, or expected future changes in values, laws, or political systems. This can also be referred to as speeding up progress, although that may be problematic in implying that the developments are necessarily good things that should be advanced.
Beckstead describes speeding up development as one of three main types of benefits from attempts to improve the world, with the other two being “trajectory changes” (including existential risk reduction) and “proximate benefits” (meaning “the fairly short-run, fairly predictable benefits that we ordinarily think about when we cure some child’s blindness, save a life, or help an old lady cross the street”).[1]
It is possible that speeding up development in various ways would make trajectory changes more or less likely, and that this would be the most significant effect of speeding up development in those ways. For example, faster economic growth might decrease or increase existential risk, with this benefit or harm outweighing the other effects of that growth.
Some people have argued that speeding up development is in itself the best way to improve the long-term future. One argument that could be made for this position is that every delay to development causes astronomical waste. However, others have argued that we should instead focus on trajectory changes because roughly “where we end up” matters more than “how fast we get there”.[2][3]
Related entries
differential progress | economic growth | moral advocacy | scientific progress
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Beckstead, Nick (2013) A proposed adjustment to the astronomical waste argument, Effective Altruism Forum, May 27.
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Todd, Benjamin (2017) The case for reducing existential risks, 80,000 Hours, October.
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See also Bostrom, Nick (2003) Astronomical waste: the opportunity cost of delayed technological development, Utilitas, vol. 15, pp. 308–314.
There are a bunch more relevant sources here, some of which should probably be linked to from here, or be integrated into the actual text of the entry (but I don’t have time to do that myself at the moment, so please can someone else do so :) )
Here’s some more content from a draft of mine which could perhaps be integrated into this entry, or taken as inspiration. I’ll also tag the post once I finally post it.
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Beckstead writes that our actions might, instead of or in addition to “slightly or significantly alter[ing] the world’s development trajectory”, speed up development:
Technically, I think that increases in the pace of development are trajectory changes. At the least, they would change the steepness of one part of the curve. We can illustrate this with the following graph, where actions aimed at speeding up development would be intended to increase the likelihood of the green trajectory relative to the navy one:
This seems to be the sort of picture Benjamin Todd has in mind when he writes:
However, I think speeding up development could also affect “where we end up”, for two reasons.
Firstly, if it makes us spread to the stars earlier and faster, this may increase the amount of resources we can ultimately use. We can illustrate this with the following graph, where again actions aimed at speeding up development would be intended to increase the likelihood of the green trajectory relative to the navy one:
Secondly, more generally, speeding up development could affect which trajectory we’re likely to take. For example, faster economic growth might decrease existential risk by reducing international tensions, or increase it by allowing us less time to prepare for and adjust to each new risky technology. Arguably, this might be best thought of as a way in which speeding up development could, as a side effect, affect other types of trajectory change.