Long-termism and Economic Growth: Exploring Well-being, Risk, and Morality

📚 Long-termism focuses on the far future effects of our actions, and the talk explores the impact of economic growth on the long-term future.

📈 Tyler Karens argues that faster economic growth is crucial for well-being, while Benjamin Friedman believes it promotes altruism and morality to solve global problems.

⚖️ The discussion also examines the relationship between economic growth and existential risk, with considerations of state risks versus transition risks.

📈 Long-term economic growth can lead to significant well-being gains in the future.

🤔 The utility gains from economic growth may diminish in the far future due to the likelihood of significant future consumption growth and diminishing marginal utility.

🌍 Economic growth not only improves individual living standards but also shapes social, political, and moral aspects of a society.

👉 Embracing a fanatical point of view involves minimizing existential risk in decision-making.

💡 State risks have a constant rate per unit time, while transition risks are associated with changing states.

⏰ Speeding up economic growth can lower total existential state risk by minimizing the time of perils.

💡 According to the existential security hypothesis, economic growth is necessary for rational utility maximizers to prioritize safety measures.

💭 The lack of progress in wisdom is hindering our ability to address existential threats posed by advancing technology.

🧠 Economic growth may contribute to progress in wisdom, although the relationship is not definitive.

🤖 Faster economic growth can potentially accelerate the development of friendly artificial general intelligence (AGI).

⚖️ Changes in economic growth rate should also consider the impact on the probability of achieving friendly AGI.

📚 Certain transitions in economic development generate existential risks.

📈 Faster economic growth tends to increase these risks.

⏳ Slower economic growth may be beneficial to delay dangerous transitions.

📚 Slowing economic growth may also slow down progress towards AGI and safety research.

💡 Safety research may be slowed down less, favoring slower economic growth.

🔄 Transition risks seem to favor slower economic growth over state risks in terms of existential risk.

📚 Longtermism and economic growth need to be considered in relation to existential risks.

🔄 Transition risks, such as the transition to AGI, can have significant impacts on the future.

🤝 Collaboration with the Global Priorities Institute is possible through workshops and research programs.