Trajectory change
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Applied to On the Value of Advancing Progress ago
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Applied to Robust longterm comparisons ago
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Applied to Long Reflection Reading List ago
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Applied to Balancing safety and waste ago
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Applied to Shaping Humanity's Longterm Trajectory ago
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Applied to Why we may expect our successors not to care about suffering ago
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Applied to A Longermist Case for Theological Inquiry ago
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Applied to Assessing the case for population growth as a priority ago
Most longtermist interventions focus on trajectory changes, including but not limited to existential risk reduction.
Does existential risk reduction qualify as a trajectory change? It seems not, by the definition given:
a trajectory change is a persistent change to total value at every point in the long-term future.
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On a related note, this definition of trajectory change and the usage Will MacAskill uses in What We Owe the Future (similar if not identical) are not what I intuitively assumed when I first heard the phrase "trajectory change."
My layperson understanding was that if we change the trajectory of civilization in these next few decades, we may for example increase the probability of successfully navigating some critical period of high existential risk.
In WWOTF MacAskill says (IIRC) that it's a positive trajectory change only if the total welfare per year is higher, but we could imagine that the change in the trajectory of civilization in the next few decades actually involves decreased welfare for people in the next few decades, but nevertheless prepares us better for existential risks, such that the long-term future is higher EV. I'd want to call this a positive trajectory change, but the definition given here and in WWOTF doesn't want to call it that.
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Applied to How binary is longterm value? ago
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Applied to Most harmful people in history? ago
On a related note, this definition of trajectory change and the usage Will MacAskill uses in What We Owe the Future (similar if not identical) are not what I intuitively assumed when I first heard the phrase "trajectory change."
My layperson understanding was that if we change the trajectory of civilization in these next few decades, we may for example increase the probability of successfully navigating some critical period of high existential risk.
In WWOTF MacAskill says (IIRC) that it's a positive trajectory change only if the total welfare per year is higher, but we could imagine that the change in the trajectory of civilization in the next few decades actually involves decreased welfare for people in the next few decades, but nevertheless prepares us better for existential risks, such that the long-term future is higher EV. I'd want to call this a positive trajectory change, but the definition given here and in WWOTF doesn't want to call it that.