@Zach Stein-Perlman 's 2021 quick take Value Is Binary is very under-rated. I've referenced the idea well over a dozen times in the last 4+ years and just re-read it after being reminded of it again.
I agree with this. I meant to say: a strong version of bimodality would imply that the absolute variance within high-value futures is much smaller than the variance between high-value and zero-value, and so nobody should work on moving us between different high-value futures. But that seems false.
4WilliamKiely
Agreed that there is significant value in moving us between different high-value futures.
Intuitively though, I still think "weak bimodality" combined with my view that low-value futures are much more likely than high-value futures means that the main thing we should be aiming to do now is get to a high-value future. In other words, I still think maxipok is the right policy, where an "okay outcome" is defined as any high-value future.
Do you agree with this, or do you think some of our collective portfolio of actions should be focused on trying to raise the probability of very-high-value futures relative to somewhat-high-value-futures even while (or if) it is still the case that high-value futures are much less likely than low-value (near-zero-value) futures?
To a first approximation, I'm into maximizing EV; I'm only into maxipok insofar as a good heuristic for maximizing EV. Portfolio allocation depends on tractability, but yeah I'm excited about work like https://www.forethought.org/research/viatopia.