Can people stop using "agentic" except by when it is strictly needed? Just use "proactive" and derivates. Use of jargon when not needed is just status/in-group signalling.

I really appreciate this effort, I wish you success.

But it also cautions that large systems are difficult to change without unintended consequences, and that opinions are heavily divided on whether major structural shifts would be net positive.

One of my (smallish) problems with EA is that this exact same problem affects the long term, and yet longtermism is super popular while systemic change is kind of booed.

Rutger Bergman ;-)

well, you actually answered what i asked. It was me who didn't ask what I meant to ask... :-S

ok, but I mean ask about what the relation is of intimate partner violence with prediction markets.

If it is not indiscreet, can you explain what you mean by "intimate partner violence"? Couples fighting due to different views on bets? or more something like bets on couples' separations triggering the separation? I'm pretty curious what you mean.

This is awesome, Michael! Thanks. I have your post in my reading list, now :-)

It depends on the case, but there are definitely cases where I would.

Then it definitely fits with your vote. I just meant that the fact that you (and me) tend to think that making the near-future better also will make the far-future better shouldn't influence the answer to this question.

We just disagree on how confident we are on our assessment of how our actions will affect the far-future. And probably this is because of our age ;-)

Point 1 in favour reads very much like "focus on near-future benefits because this will (most likely) bring far-future benefits", which is in practice indistinguishable from just "focus on near-future benefits". Plus the assumption --improving near-future will most likely improve far-future, which I also tend to think-- is far from certain (you acknowledge it). With this reasoning, technically, the underlying reason to do X is improving the far-future, indeed. But the actual effect of X is improving the near-future with much higher certainty than improving the far-future; everything is aligned. This is not, AFAI understand, the point of the question. Who wouldn't do X? Answering assuming this scenario doesn't give any information.

Consider the following different scenario: doing X will make near-future worse with much higher certainty than it does far-future better (assume same value generation magnitudes as before, just make the value for near-future negative). Would you then advocate doing X? I think this gives the information the question is asking for.

I would overwhelmingly most likely not do X in that scenario. Because I know how dumb we (I) am and how complex reality is, so the longer the time frame, the less I trust any reasoning (cluelessness) [It is difficult enough to find out whether an action taken has actually been net positive for the immediate future!]. Would you? If your answer tends to No, then the far-future effects are not the most important determinant of what we ought to do for you.

Far-future effects are the most important determinant of what we ought to do

Cluelessness. The world is far too complex and we are far too dumb to pretend that we can predict whether if what we do now is going to be net-positive in the very long run.