And so you need to make a pitch not just “this pays for itself now” but instead something like “this will pay for itself for the whole trajectory that we care about, or it will be obvious when we should change our policy and it no longer pays for itself.”
I don’t think it will be obvious, but I think we’ll be able to make an imperfect estimate of when to change the policy that’s still better than giving up on future evaluation of such tradeoffs and committing reputational murder-suicide immediately. (I for one like free speech and will be happy to advocate for it on LW when conditions change enough to make it seem anything other than pointlessly self-destructive.)
I don’t think it will be obvious, but I think we’ll be able to make an imperfect estimate of when to change the policy that’s still better than giving up on future evaluation of such tradeoffs and committing reputational murder-suicide immediately. (I for one like free speech and will be happy to advocate for it on LW when conditions change enough to make it seem anything other than pointlessly self-destructive.)