Even if someone made a discovery decades earlier than it otherwise would have been, the long term consequences of that may be small or unpredictable. If your goal is to “achieve high counterfactual impact in your own research” (presumably predictably positive ones) you could potentially do that in certain fields (e.g., AI safety) even if you only counterfactually advance the science by a few months or years. I’m a bit confused why you’re asking people to think in the direction outlined in the OP.
Even if someone made a discovery decades earlier than it otherwise would have been, the long term consequences of that may be small or unpredictable. If your goal is to “achieve high counterfactual impact in your own research” (presumably predictably positive ones) you could potentially do that in certain fields (e.g., AI safety) even if you only counterfactually advance the science by a few months or years. I’m a bit confused why you’re asking people to think in the direction outlined in the OP.