Welcome to all of the beautiful new good young moneyers who have joined us since last Thursday. We’re building a values movement, join us!
Hi 👋 hello. This week we’re thinking about timing. When actions are irreversible, the most important thing we can have is time. There are some things for which we can be more patient, and some things for which we no longer have any time. Like climate change.
For much of our lives, we’ve had economic growth of a few percent a year. So too, have our parents and grandparents. It seems reasonable to assume this growth will continue, no?
Holden Karnofsky, co-founder and CEO of Open Philanthropy, calls this living in the ‘Business As Usual’ world in ‘Cold Takes’.
“In Business As Usual, the world is constantly changing, and the change is noticeable, but it's not overwhelming or impossible to keep up with. There is a constant stream of new opportunities and new challenges, but if you want to take a few extra years to adapt to them while you mostly do things the way you were doing them before, you can usually (personally) get away with that. In terms of day-to-day life, 2019 was pretty similar to 2018, noticeably but not hugely different from 2010, and hugely but not crazily different from 1980.”
The paradox of the Business As Usual world is that these are abnormal times. Zooming out to 5000BCE, we are living in the fastest economic expansion in human history.
Karnofsky calls this abnormality the This Can’t Go On world. While what we’re experiencing looks like a fairly stable chart of growth - up and to the right, what we’re actually experiencing becomes closer to a hedge fund manager’s dream on a longer time horizon:
Karnofsky goes on to suggest that All Possible Views About Humanity’s Future Are Wild. The gist is that we could be living in the fastest period of economic activity in human history before humanity’s inevitable decline, or this is the century that could determine the entire future of the galaxy for billions of years to come. Either way, pretty wild, and I encourage you to read Karnofsky’s cold takes on The Most Important Century.
This type of ultra-longtermist perspective may be one of the most helpful lenses we can use to view the world, if we’re going to change it.
First, it’s a lens that helps us to be more open minded and optimistic. If we accept the view that all perspectives on the future of humanity will be unlike anything we’ve ever known, then what we have is an open playing field to question the narratives that no longer serve us, and rebuild them. Such as:
In the backdrop of the climate crisis, the whole concept of negative externalities (that the private cost of an action can be separated from the environmental or social cost).
That formal, tertiary education is a prerequisite for a well-paying job.
That creative professions are less valuable, the trope of starving artists is just how it is.
Second, being open-minded about the future helps us to better understand and act on risk. We’re living with the very real risks of misaligned AI and other catastrophic risks such as climate change, world wars, and cyber-terrorism. To be closed off to some of these possibilities is like trying to drive with one eye shut, or, to leave our future up to fate:
“The word “risk” derives from the early Italian risicare, which means “to dare.” In this sense, risk is a choice rather than a fate. The actions we dare to take, which depend on how free we are to make choices, are what the story of risk is all about.” - Peter Bernstein
Third, the longtermist perspective helps us to think about the world in terms of second and third and fourth order consequences. There is no more haunting explanation of the consequences of the consequences of our actions than in Fathoms: The World in Whale by Rebecca Giggs (although I am open to being proven wrong).
If you’re lucky enough to have seen a whale in the wild, it’s hard not to feel a sense of awe about the world. But while they are beautiful and majestic creatures, whales are ‘living landfill’. Where you or I or birds can eliminate toxins, whales collect and store pollution in their bodies, Giggs writes:
“Because whales are so well-insulated by their thick layer of blubber, they attract fat soluble toxicants, absorbing molecular heavy metals and inorganic compounds that comprise pesticides, fertilisers, and other pollutants that have come to powder the modern sea...to view animals as pollution is both worrisome and novel.”
Some species of whales in Europe have been found to carry an especially terrible class of chemicals, Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs), which, although phased out in the 70s and 80s, do not break down for several decades:
“Research models released in 2018 foretold that all killer whale populations offshore from nations that had used PCBs would die out in thirty to fifty years.”
And now Giggs gets to the importance of thinking beyond the immediate consequences of our actions:
“From a detailed article on the development of PCBs...I discovered that these [PCBs]...were first engineered by chemists as isolates from gases rendered out of whale oil.”
The possible extinction of killer whales from a compound produced from whale oil is a terrible awful consequence of the whaling industry, but it is far from grounds to hate on humanity - we know a lot more now about these compounds than we did in the past. There will always be unknown unknowns. Faced with our future, it’s normal to feel fearful and uncertain and a desire to act all at once, to which Karnofsky issues a Call To Vigilance:
“Instead of a call to action, I want to make a call to vigilance. If you're convinced by the arguments in this piece, then don't rush to "do something" and then move on. Instead, take whatever robustly good actions you can today, and otherwise put yourself in a better position to take important actions when the time comes.”
To be vigilant is to accept that risk is a choice. That this is not Business As Usual. That the unintended consequences of our actions matter. That our choices matter. That the world will change anyway, with or without us. That it’s up to each of us, individually and collectively to be prepared to act in the face of risk, when the time is right.
“Time matters most when decisions are irreversible.” - Peter Bernstein
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