The kinds of numbers thrown around in the astronomical waste argument are sometimes accused of being a Pascal’s Mugging. Even if one has doubts about whether to work on existential risk reduction, it could be argued that because the Far Future has such overwhelming and immense value that the expected value of working on existential risk outweighs all other opportunities, e.g. near-term altruistic projects like global poverty, global health, and animal welfare.
Having sharper estimates of the potential of the Far Future, bounded by how much of the universe we can actually reach, could help us relate to astronomical waste arguments with far more principle than “aahhh, these are such big numbers!!”
The kinds of numbers thrown around in the astronomical waste argument are sometimes accused of being a Pascal’s Mugging. Even if one has doubts about whether to work on existential risk reduction, it could be argued that because the Far Future has such overwhelming and immense value that the expected value of working on existential risk outweighs all other opportunities, e.g. near-term altruistic projects like global poverty, global health, and animal welfare.
Having sharper estimates of the potential of the Far Future, bounded by how much of the universe we can actually reach, could help us relate to astronomical waste arguments with far more principle than “aahhh, these are such big numbers!!”
They’re big numbers, but not all numbers are equally big.