Affecting the very long run

Potential Research Projects

If macroeconomic trajectory changes appear more promising than existential risk reductions, which such changes appear most promising?

ECONOMICS - GROWTH, MACROECONOMIC THEORY


Policymakers typically discount dollar-valued social costs and benefits not only for temporally neutral reasons, such as the prospect of higher average consumption in the future, but also to incorporate citizens’ pure time preferences and as a reflection of short-term political incentives. How would policy recommendations change on evaluating social costs and benefits from an intertemporally neutral perspective? How might a patient agent provide incentives for an impatient government to implement policy consistent with placing a higher valuation on the future? How might an unusually patient government provide incentives for future (possibly impatient) governments to continue to make future-oriented investments?

ECONOMICS - DISCOUNTING, SOCIAL CHOICE THEORY, POLITICAL ECONOMY, INTERGENERATIONAL EQUITY, INTERGENERATIONAL GOVERNANCE, MECHANISM DESIGN


How, concretely, should we adapt (endogenous) growth models to account for the risks and benefits that growth may pose for the long term? How should indices of economic development (such as GDP) be adjusted to incorporate these risks?

Economics - GROWTH, CATASTROPHIC RISK


Economic research into the role of institutions is one field that directly attempts to influence the long term. Certain institutions, such as ‘inclusive’ governments, appear to be associated both with substantial increases in economic growth, across many generations, and with decreases in the probability of events that may be associated with catastrophic risk. How can we estimate the effectiveness of various institution-building efforts on the long term?

ECONOMICS - GROWTH, CATASTROPHIC RISK, INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMICS


When faced with an important, irreversible decision with respect to which one will soon learn relevant information, it is rational to preserve ‘option value’: to delay the decision until after the information has been acquired. In delaying an important social decision intergenerationally, however, we may worry that future generations’ values and preferences will differ from our own. Facing this tradeoff, under what circumstances should we ‘principals’ defer irreversible decisions to better-informed future ‘agents’? For example, does option value give us good reason to prevent human extinction even if we're unsure about the sign of the value of the future?

ECONOMICS - INTERGENERATIONAL GOVERNANCE, MECHANISM DESIGN, VALUE OF INFORMATION


If we could ensure that our descendants would carry out our plans from their improved informational position, deferring irreversible decisions to them would offer us the best of both worlds. Can long-term inter-generational mechanisms be designed so as to enable this possibility? What might they look like?

ECONOMICS - INTERGENERATIONAL GOVERNANCE, MECHANISM DESIGN, VALUE OF INFORMATION


The idea of the long reflection is that of a period of perhaps tens of thousands of years, where humans have much greater cognitive abilities than today, should be dedicated to working out what is ultimately of value before humanity decides whether to undertake an irreversible decision of immense importance (e.g. whether to attempt to spread to the stars). Does this idea make sense? If so, what are the conditions that we should try to bake into the long reflection?

PHILOSOPHY - MORAL UNCERTAINTY
ECONOMICS - INTERGENERATIONAL GOVERNANCE, MECHANISM DESIGN, VALUE OF INFORMATION


Technological developments in the recent past, such as stem cell research, have opened possibilities about whose moral value there is wide disagreement. It seems plausible that technological developments over coming centuries (such as machine intelligence, brain emulation, and nanotechnology) will create many more such morally contentious opportunities, at much higher stakes—our responses to them even contributing substantially, perhaps, to the moral value of the future. What high-stakes moral conflicts are most likely to arise with future technologies, and how can the global community best navigate them?

PHILOSOPHY - MORAL UNCERTAINTY
ECONOMICS - TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT, POLITICAL ECONOMY, BARGAINING THEORY

> Existing Academic Literature

> Existing Informal Discussion