We don’t need to predict every detail, nor could we if we tried. But if we want to make the future better, we need to identify actions that have positive effects on balance over very long timescales.

Much the same will be true for the issues that I cover in this book. I’m not saying that we should be confident that value lock-in or major catastrophe will occur this century. What I am saying is that their chance of occurring is very real—certainly more than 1 percent, and certainly greater than many everyday risks, like dying in a car crash. When combined with how much is at stake, the expected value of trying to ensure a good future is enormous. When we’re applying the significance, persistence, and contingency framework, we should therefore be thinking about expected significance, expected persistence, and expected contingency.

When confronted with the empirical and evaluative complexity that faces us, it can be easy to feel clueless, as if there’s nothing at all we can do. But that would be too pessimistic. Even if we’re walking backwards into the future—and even if the terrain we’re walking on is unexplored, it’s dark and foggy, and we have few clues to guide us—nonetheless, some plans are smarter than others. We can employ three rules of thumb.

Perhaps some changes to the world’s institutions and cultures would be valuable trajectory changes. Either of these would be enormously important to identify. These and other crucial issues are worked on at places like the Global Priorities Institute, the Future of Humanity Institute, and Open Philanthropy.

One robust account of the concept of “sageliness” in Chinese philosophy can be found in Feng (1997,6-9).” (notes to footnote 4, Chapter 4, p.75)