I highly agree with the overall premise of “you should take a step back from the frame this post is premised around”, and agree that each of the frames listed here is an important piece of a puzzle.
I do still feel like there’s a frame missing here, which is the “look at the deontological underpinnings Katja is pointing at at face value and take them seriously.” I think it’s a mistake to only look at those without the other frames you mention, but just as much of a mistake to not acknowledge them as an important element. I think your “here’s my attempt at verbalizing” does end up including a bit of this, but feels incomplete.
My summary of my-own-version of this is something like...
...
“It’s okay to want people to be better off, happy, fulfilled, independent of anything that has to do with cooperation. It’s okay to actually just think ‘yeah, there are suffering people in the world, or existential dangers on the horizon, and this is bad, and I have the power to help, and… it’s not quite right not call that an obligation, but it’s also not quite right to call that a whim or personal preference. It’s okay to think this is not just ‘a thing I want’, but something that I think is… deeply good in some way. Not objectively good, but important in some way.
Because I’m a monkey running on weird hardware, my intuitions about this will not always be consistent, and figuring out how to make them consistent is important, but just because they’re inconsistent doesn’t mean that they’re meaningless or suspect.”
I think theunitofcaring.tumblr.com is the the place that most consistently embodies the spirit I’m pointing at. There’s also a Rob Bensinger FB comment somewhere I can’t find that argues “Effective Altruism is an oblitunity” which is maybe the single most succinct explanation of it (and slightly more accurate-feeling that Nate’s altruistic motivations post).
So, yes, in addition to my own story I have more thoughts about what kind of story I want for people in general, roughly along these lines:
And he said – no, absolutely, stay in your career right now. In fact, his philosophy was that you should do exactly what you feel like all the time, and not worry about altruism at all, because eventually you’ll work through your own problems, and figure yourself out, and then you’ll just naturally become an effective altruist.
Or not, and that would also be fine.
I have strong intuitions about a thing which I’ll roughly label “not skipping developmental stages.” I think there is something like a developmental stage at which thinking about altruism is natural and won’t slowly corrupt your soul, and I worry about something like people not knowing what stage they’re at, not being at this stage, and trying to pretend to themselves and others that they are. The problem is roughly, I think most people are trying to do EA at Kegan 3, which is subject to tons of Goodharting / signaling issues, and it seems like a bad idea to me to seriously try to do EA until Kegan 4 or 5.
I highly agree with the overall premise of “you should take a step back from the frame this post is premised around”, and agree that each of the frames listed here is an important piece of a puzzle.
I do still feel like there’s a frame missing here, which is the “look at the deontological underpinnings Katja is pointing at at face value and take them seriously.” I think it’s a mistake to only look at those without the other frames you mention, but just as much of a mistake to not acknowledge them as an important element. I think your “here’s my attempt at verbalizing” does end up including a bit of this, but feels incomplete.
My summary of my-own-version of this is something like...
...
“It’s okay to want people to be better off, happy, fulfilled, independent of anything that has to do with cooperation. It’s okay to actually just think ‘yeah, there are suffering people in the world, or existential dangers on the horizon, and this is bad, and I have the power to help, and… it’s not quite right not call that an obligation, but it’s also not quite right to call that a whim or personal preference. It’s okay to think this is not just ‘a thing I want’, but something that I think is… deeply good in some way. Not objectively good, but important in some way.
Because I’m a monkey running on weird hardware, my intuitions about this will not always be consistent, and figuring out how to make them consistent is important, but just because they’re inconsistent doesn’t mean that they’re meaningless or suspect.”
I think theunitofcaring.tumblr.com is the the place that most consistently embodies the spirit I’m pointing at. There’s also a Rob Bensinger FB comment somewhere I can’t find that argues “Effective Altruism is an oblitunity” which is maybe the single most succinct explanation of it (and slightly more accurate-feeling that Nate’s altruistic motivations post).
So, yes, in addition to my own story I have more thoughts about what kind of story I want for people in general, roughly along these lines:
Or not, and that would also be fine.
I have strong intuitions about a thing which I’ll roughly label “not skipping developmental stages.” I think there is something like a developmental stage at which thinking about altruism is natural and won’t slowly corrupt your soul, and I worry about something like people not knowing what stage they’re at, not being at this stage, and trying to pretend to themselves and others that they are. The problem is roughly, I think most people are trying to do EA at Kegan 3, which is subject to tons of Goodharting / signaling issues, and it seems like a bad idea to me to seriously try to do EA until Kegan 4 or 5.