On the main topic of the post, I’ve been assuming, without having put too much thought into it, that slower economic growth is good for eventually getting FAI.
Here’s an attempt to verbalize why I think this, which is a bit different from Eliezer’s argument (which I also buy to some extent). First I think UFAI is much easier than FAI and we are putting more resources into the former than the latter. To put this into numbers for clarity, let’s say UFAI takes 1000 units of work, and FAI takes 2000 units of work, and we’re currently putting 10 units of work into UFAI per year, and only 1 unit of work per year into FAI. If we had a completely stagnant economy, with 0% growth, we’d have 100 years to do something about this, or for something to happen to change this, before it’s too late. If the economy was instead growing at 5% per year, and this increased both UFAI and FAI work by 5% per year, the window of time “for something to happen” shrinks to about 35 years. The economic growth might increase the probability per year of “something happening” but it doesn’t seem like it would be enough to compensate for the shortened timeline.
Also: Many likely reasons for something to happen about this center around, in appropriate generality, the rationalist!EA movement. This movement is growing at a higher exponent than current economic growth.
I think this is the strongest single argument that economic growth might currently be bad. However even then what matters is the elasticity of movement growth rates with economic growth rates. I don’t know how we can measure this; I expect it’s positive and less than one, but I’m rather more confident about that lower bound than the upper bound.
Here’s an attempt to verbalize why I think this, which is a bit different from Eliezer’s argument (which I also buy to some extent). First I think UFAI is much easier than FAI and we are putting more resources into the former than the latter. To put this into numbers for clarity, let’s say UFAI takes 1000 units of work, and FAI takes 2000 units of work, and we’re currently putting 10 units of work into UFAI per year, and only 1 unit of work per year into FAI. If we had a completely stagnant economy, with 0% growth, we’d have 100 years to do something about this, or for something to happen to change this, before it’s too late. If the economy was instead growing at 5% per year, and this increased both UFAI and FAI work by 5% per year, the window of time “for something to happen” shrinks to about 35 years. The economic growth might increase the probability per year of “something happening” but it doesn’t seem like it would be enough to compensate for the shortened timeline.
Also: Many likely reasons for something to happen about this center around, in appropriate generality, the rationalist!EA movement. This movement is growing at a higher exponent than current economic growth.
I think this is the strongest single argument that economic growth might currently be bad. However even then what matters is the elasticity of movement growth rates with economic growth rates. I don’t know how we can measure this; I expect it’s positive and less than one, but I’m rather more confident about that lower bound than the upper bound.