Eliezer’s Politics is the Mind Killer sequence (named after but larger than the article by that name) is relevant, particularly Are Your Enemies Innately Evil. While people deliberately choosing evil over good does happen, it is very, very rare. Much more common is evil that’s shrouded in muddled thinking, and misperception of people as evil due to correspondence bias and tribalism.
I’m going to have to re-absorb that sequence, and see if I can teach myself to understand on a deep gut level what practical differences there are between “how to deal with people who want to do things to you you don’t like because they want to help you” and “how to deal with people who want to do things to you you don’t like because they want to help themselves”.
“Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence”
“how to deal with people who want to do things to you you don’t like because they want to help themselves”
Another issue is that while they may have done whatever out of self-interest, they aren’t necessarily trying to do damage to you.
What’s probably much much more common in bad outcomes is people doing something and not knowing its impact on other things, not thinking about it at all, or just thinking that it was in fact a good idea in the first place.
Every revolutionary thinks that they’re right, and most people in power think that they’re exercising it for the good of the people, and act in ways that they think will actually help.
Eliezer’s Politics is the Mind Killer sequence (named after but larger than the article by that name) is relevant, particularly Are Your Enemies Innately Evil. While people deliberately choosing evil over good does happen, it is very, very rare. Much more common is evil that’s shrouded in muddled thinking, and misperception of people as evil due to correspondence bias and tribalism.
I’m going to have to re-absorb that sequence, and see if I can teach myself to understand on a deep gut level what practical differences there are between “how to deal with people who want to do things to you you don’t like because they want to help you” and “how to deal with people who want to do things to you you don’t like because they want to help themselves”.
“Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence”
Another issue is that while they may have done whatever out of self-interest, they aren’t necessarily trying to do damage to you.
What’s probably much much more common in bad outcomes is people doing something and not knowing its impact on other things, not thinking about it at all, or just thinking that it was in fact a good idea in the first place.
Every revolutionary thinks that they’re right, and most people in power think that they’re exercising it for the good of the people, and act in ways that they think will actually help.