I guess I would think that if one wants to argue for democracy as an intrinsic good, that would get you global democracy (and global control of EA funds), and it's practical and instrumental considerations (which, anyway, are all the considerations in my view) that bite against it.

Yes, that seems right.

It seems like the critics would claim that EA is, if not coercing or subjugating, at least substantially influencing something like the world population in a way that meets the criteria for democratisation. This seems to be the claim in arguments about billionaire philanthropy, for example. I'm not defending or vouching for that claim, but I think whether we are in a sufficiently different situation may be contentious.

Well I think MIC relies on some sort of discontinuity this century, and when we start getting into the range of precedented growth rates, the discontinuity looks less likely.

But we might not be disagreeing much here. It seems like a plausibly important update, but I'm not sure how large.

This is a valuable point, but I do think that giving real weight to a world where we have neither extinction nor 30% growth would still be an update to important views about superhuman AI. It seems like evidence against the Most Important Century thesis, for example.

It might be challenging to borrow (though I'm not sure), but there seem to be plenty of sophisticated entities that should be selling off their bonds and aren't. The top-level comment does cut into the gains from shorting (as the OP concedes), but I think it's right that there are borrowing-esque things to do.

I'm trying to make sure I understand: Is this (a more colorful version) of the same point as the OP makes at the end of "Bet on real rates rising"?

The other risk that could motivate not making this bet is the risk that the market – for some unspecified reason – never has a chance to correct, because (1) transformative AI ends up unaligned and (2) humanity’s conversion into paperclips occurs overnight. This would prevent the market from ever “waking up”.

However, to be clear, expecting this specific scenario requires both: 

1. Buying into specific stories about how takeoff will occur: specifically, Yudkowskian foom-type scenarios with fast takeoff.
2. Having a lot of skepticism about the optimization forces pushing financial markets towards informational efficiency.

You should be sure that your beliefs are actually congruent with these requirements, if you want to refuse to bet that real rates will rise. Additionally, we will see that the second suggestion in this section (“impatient philanthropy”) is not affected by the possibility of foom scenarios.

It doesn't seem all that relevant to me whether traders have a probability like that in their heads. Whether they have a low probability or are not thinking about it, they're approximately leaving money on the table in a short-timelines world, which should be surprising. People have a large incentive to hunt for important probabilities they're ignoring.

Of course, there are examples (cf. behavioral economics) of systemic biases in markets. But even within behavioral economics, it's fairly commonly known that it's hard to find ongoing, large-scale biases in financial markets.

Do you have a sense of whether the case is any stronger for specifically using cortical and pallial neurons? That's the approach Romain Espinosa takes in this paper, which is among the best work in economics on animal welfare.