I think this falls under the general concept of Pascal’s abuser: “Hey, I am doing something obviously harmful, but under my reasoning it has a microscopic chance of saving the world, therefore it’s okay.”
This feels somehow like a straw, but reflecting on it briefly it also feels like a hole in my explanation, and maybe that I’m just wrong here.
Maybe a different story I could tell would be that it’s more like “if you want, you can join us in trying to do something really hard, which has power law returns, knowing that the modal outcome is burnout and some psychological damage”, so comparable to competitive bodybuilding, or maybe classical musical training, or doing a startup. (Edit: note, Maple doesn’t include the “modal outcome is moderate psychological damage” part, though neither do the examples really.)
I don’t know enough about Maple to have an opinion on it. Here I am operating on feelings, and they remind me of Leverage Research. A project separate enough, so it’s not my business what they are doing… except when they fuck up, and then it becomes an “abuse in the rationalist community”. Also, they recruit a lot in the rationalist community.
These projects are justified by potential benefits, but I also see some potential negative externalities. (And by the same Pascalian logic, we should be extra careful about bad things happening to people who want to save the world?)
I think this falls under the general concept of Pascal’s abuser: “Hey, I am doing something obviously harmful, but under my reasoning it has a microscopic chance of saving the world, therefore it’s okay.”
Which is precisely what Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults? is about.
This feels somehow like a straw, but reflecting on it briefly it also feels like a hole in my explanation, and maybe that I’m just wrong here.
Maybe a different story I could tell would be that it’s more like “if you want, you can join us in trying to do something really hard, which has power law returns, knowing that the modal outcome is burnout and some psychological damage”, so comparable to competitive bodybuilding, or maybe classical musical training, or doing a startup. (Edit: note, Maple doesn’t include the “modal outcome is moderate psychological damage” part, though neither do the examples really.)
I don’t know enough about Maple to have an opinion on it. Here I am operating on feelings, and they remind me of Leverage Research. A project separate enough, so it’s not my business what they are doing… except when they fuck up, and then it becomes an “abuse in the rationalist community”. Also, they recruit a lot in the rationalist community.
These projects are justified by potential benefits, but I also see some potential negative externalities. (And by the same Pascalian logic, we should be extra careful about bad things happening to people who want to save the world?)