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Noah Birnbaum's avatar

Great post, Amos!

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Carlos's avatar

I never felt comfortable with the argument that expected value calculations justify giving priority to moonshots. I have made some counterarguments previously, but I thought of another just now, which is that the economy, which is how we accomplish most things, doesn't really run off of moonshots, most of the work is done in pursuit of much surer things.

I do think EA as a whole sees the moonshot as one tool among many, and accordingly, there are a lot of efforts in stuff that is higher probability.

An interesting corollary of the EV stuff is that perhaps we would all be wealthier if more money were being put into market moonshots. It's an interesting question whether we have the right ratio of unicorn chasing, both in the economy, and in EA.

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