“Sensitive assumptions in longtermist modeling” by Owen Murphy
This is a link post. {Epistemic Status: Repeating critiques from David Thorstad's excellent papers (link, link) and blog, with some additions of my own. The list is not intended to be representative and/or comprehensive for either critiques or rebuttals. Unattributed graphs are my own and more likely to contain errors.} I am someone generally sympathetic to philosophical longtermism and total utilitarianism, but like many effective altruists, I have often been skeptical about the relative value of actual longtermism-inspired interventions. Unfortunately, though, for a long time I was unable to express any specific, legible critiques of longtermism other than a semi-incredulous stare. Luckily, this condition has changed in the last several months since I started reading David Thorstad's excellent blog (and papers) critiquing longtermism.[1] His points cover a wide range of issues, but in this post, I would like to focus on a couple of crucial and plausibly incorrect modeling assumptions [...] ---Outline:(01:14) Model assumptions noted by Thorstad(01:18) 1. Baseline risk (blog post)(03:54) 2. Future Population (blog post)(06:21) Other model assumptions/considerations I think are important(06:27) 1. Intervention decay(08:28) 2. Suffering risks (S-risks)(11:06) Counter-arguments for the value of existential risk reduction(11:11) 1. The ‘time of perils hypothesis’ versus ‘baseline risk’ and ‘intervention decay’(14:06) 2. Hedonic lotteries(15:22) Final thoughtsThe original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. The original text contained 11 images which were described by AI. --- First published: September 18th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2eYxQDbPbqHypFihe/sensitive-assumptions-in-longtermist-modeling --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.