I have just a superficial familiarity with the lit around this, and I’m wondering if what you’re calling “unawareness” is the same concept as what other people have been calling “cluelessness” in this context, or if it is distinct in some way. They seem at least similar.
In any case, thanks for trying to set forth in a rigorous way this problem with the EA project.
People use “cluelessness” to mean various importantly different things, which is why I de-emphasized that term in this sequence. I think unawareness is a (major) source of what Greaves called complex cluelessness, which is a situation where:
(CC1) We have some reasons to think that the unforeseeable consequences of A1 would systematically tend to be substantially better than those of A2; (CC2) We have some reasons to think that the unforeseeable consequences of A2 would systematically tend to be substantially better than those of A1; (CC3) It is unclear how to weigh up these reasons against one another.
(It’s a bit unclear how “unforeseeable” is defined. In context / in the usual ways people tend to talk about complex cluelessness, I think it’s meant to encompass cases where the problem isn’t unawareness but rather other obstacles to setting precise credences.)
But unawareness itself means “many possible consequences of our actions haven’t even occurred to us in much detail, if at all” (as unpacked in the introduction section). ETA: I think it’s important to conceptually separate this from complex cluelessness, because you might think unawareness is a challenge that demands a response beyond straightforward Bayesianism, even if you disagree that it implies complex cluelessness.
I have just a superficial familiarity with the lit around this, and I’m wondering if what you’re calling “unawareness” is the same concept as what other people have been calling “cluelessness” in this context, or if it is distinct in some way. They seem at least similar.
In any case, thanks for trying to set forth in a rigorous way this problem with the EA project.
Thanks!
People use “cluelessness” to mean various importantly different things, which is why I de-emphasized that term in this sequence. I think unawareness is a (major) source of what Greaves called complex cluelessness, which is a situation where:
(It’s a bit unclear how “unforeseeable” is defined. In context / in the usual ways people tend to talk about complex cluelessness, I think it’s meant to encompass cases where the problem isn’t unawareness but rather other obstacles to setting precise credences.)
But unawareness itself means “many possible consequences of our actions haven’t even occurred to us in much detail, if at all” (as unpacked in the introduction section). ETA: I think it’s important to conceptually separate this from complex cluelessness, because you might think unawareness is a challenge that demands a response beyond straightforward Bayesianism, even if you disagree that it implies complex cluelessness.