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One criticism that immediately springs to my mind is around this equivalence of the trillions yet to come to the billions now. Ok, let’s say we play in this sa

One criticism that immediately springs to my mind is around this equivalence of the trillions yet to come to the billions now. Ok, let’s say we play in this sandbox and accept that we need to build some level of thinking about future generations into our policy and politics and that we are capable of knowing anything about them. It seems to me we should be applying a heavy discount to each successive generation since we may be able to intelligently guess at our children’s lives and what would be good for their wellbeing, but by the time we get to our great great grandchildren maybe it’s just sheer fucking hubris to think we can know anything about their world, what they need from us and whether they will be living on Earth, have harnessed free-energy or even exist. So these EA people can make up models of the future all day long, but they are pretty clearly an exercise in using fancy math to support some pet conclusion.

scarmig 4y ago
Isn't demanding a high discount rate itself an exercise of using fancy math to support a pet conclusion? Although future generations are different from us, so too are current potential beneficiaries of charity; and though charity aimed at future generations can certainly have unanticipated effects, so too can charity aimed at contemporaneous people. My general ethics around philanthropy is to acknowledge uncertainty and that most people are grasping around in the dark to try to do the best thing. Despite that, it's likely that limiting consumption for personal benefit and directing that instead to things you think likely will do good is best. When people inevitably come to different conclusions about what that is, that's not a defect; that's allowing us to cover all our bases.
MaxfordAndSons 4y ago
As sib notes, this is sort of trying to beat them at their own game. I think the better move is to reject the proposition that far future population estimates/EV calculations of various projects are meaningful at all, on the grounds that the further out we project the more sensitive to errors or noise in the initial input said calculations are (aka the butterfly effect). We have ample evidence that we (humans) are great at short term predictions, okay at medium term predictions, and pretty shit at long term predictions. The longtermists presume to be an exception to this rule, but they should not be given so much credit. (Also I don't think our mathematical edifices should be considered as separate from us, as they are still artifacts/products of human reasoning, though I know this is a whole other can of worms).

scarmig 4y ago

Isn't demanding a high discount rate itself an exercise of using fancy math to support a pet conclusion? Although future generations are different from us, so too are current potential beneficiaries of charity; and though charity aimed at future generations can certainly have unanticipated effects, so too can charity aimed at contemporaneous people. My general ethics around philanthropy is to acknowledge uncertainty and that most people are grasping around in the dark to try to do the best thing. Despite that, it's likely that limiting consumption for personal benefit and directing that instead to things you think likely will do good is best. When people inevitably come to different conclusions about what that is, that's not a defect; that's allowing us to cover all our bases.

MaxfordAndSons 4y ago

As sib notes, this is sort of trying to beat them at their own game. I think the better move is to reject the proposition that far future population estimates/EV calculations of various projects are meaningful at all, on the grounds that the further out we project the more sensitive to errors or noise in the initial input said calculations are (aka the butterfly effect). We have ample evidence that we (humans) are great at short term predictions, okay at medium term predictions, and pretty shit at long term predictions. The longtermists presume to be an exception to this rule, but they should not be given so much credit. (Also I don't think our mathematical edifices should be considered as separate from us, as they are still artifacts/products of human reasoning, though I know this is a whole other can of worms).