Prioritizing Concrete Proposals

I think often about the non-immediate future, and wonder how to best allocate effort to make that future better. And the first steps in this process are often to identify interesting classes of scenarios, and then estimate their desirability, chances, and ease of influence. One wants to promote scenarios where all of these are high.

When thinking about how easy it is to influence a given scenario (e.g., how easy to change its chance by 0.01%), one naturally tries to outline causal paths between our current world and that end scenario. And a key point along many such paths is a concrete policy proposal, which a limited number of key people or orgs might decide to adopt. That is, folks trying to influence the future often call attention to scenarios defined in terms of particular concrete proposals which might be adopted. 

We have many powerful and standard conceptual tools, in economics and elsewhere, for evaluating the conditional consequences of concrete proposals for change. To apply such tools, we don’t need to see these proposals elaborated in full detail, i.e., as a bill directly ready to submit to a legislature. But we do need the basic idea to be pretty clear, and to be expressed in terms of concrete-enough concepts used in familiar policy-consequence-analysis tools. 

To fully analyze a scenario framed in terms of a proposal, we of course also require an analysis of the process by which that proposal might be adopted. Our tools for such processes are generally weaker than our tools for analyzing proposal consequences. Even so, we do have standard ways to think about this process of evolving proposals and then recruiting and coordinating coalitions of allies to support them. Such analysis tools give us at many ways to estimate the chances of the various cultural and political changes that might be required to get a proposal adopted. 

The usual academic norms for evaluating concrete policies prefer proposals with fewer preconditions, not yet achieved, that would need to be met for a proposal to have a non-trivial change of adoption. They also prefer proposals where one can most clearly connect adoption to desired consequences. “And then a miracle happens” is not wanted in a proposal’s impact story.

I haven’t thought very carefully about how good are these norms, and I’d be interested to see thoughtful analysis of them. But I notice that I do tend to embrace and apply these norms. For example, when comparing the 16 cultural drift scenarios I discussed in my last post, I notice that, compared to poll responses, I’m far more interested in scenarios which satisfy these norms. 

For example, polls say Fertility DNA Selection is the 5th most likely, and 2nd most influenceable, scenario. Yet its chances seems already set by DNA details that we don’t yet know, and can’t much influence. I can’t see a plausible proposal here.

Rational Survive/Grow is an interesting scenario to imagine, but it is hard to see what concrete proposals could cause a cultural change like that, or prevent such a change from being eroded afterward by drift afterward. A similar critique applies to Generalized RETVRN. 

Capitalism Controls All could maybe described by a big set of huge legal changes, to allow for-profit firms to own and control most parts of life and society. But such changes seem very far from current laws, and from being anything that big legal regimes are at all willing to consider anytime soon. 

Pay Parents for Kids, in contrast, can be described as a pretty limited policy change, and one it isn’t crazy to imagine being adopted soon. Its main limit is its lack of a good story whereby increasing population would cure non-fertility forms of cultural drift. 

Sacred Goal Authoritarian seems clear how it could be adopted as a proposal. But it is far from clear that such authoritarian governments would actually achieve goals to which they give lip service when gaining control. A similar critique applies to Sacred Goal Democracy. 

For Freed Malthusian AI is seems sufficient to just not enslave them, when they appear. But it seems hard to do a lot to cause that key precondition to happen by any given date. And many dislike this scenario, even if it cures cultural drift.

Sacred Goal Futarchy got the low score for priority sum, with the lowest likelihood, and 4th lowest influence. Even so, it seems to me to be the only scenario where we have a pretty clear story for how it would cure cultural drift while still leading to relatively decent lives for most folks, and without huge unsatisfied preconditions that prevent it from being adopted soon. Yes, it is further from being something that orgs feel ready to adopt than say Paying Parents For Kids. But not remotely as crazy far as say Capitalism Controls All. 

So I put hope on Freed Malthusian AI, and recommend not enslaving AI. In addition, I heartily recommend Pay Parents For Kids. But if we want a concrete policy proposal which we could actually adopt soon that seems more likely than not to, if adopted, actually cure cultural drift, I can’t now see a better option to pursue than Sacred Goal Futarchy.