I find the arguments extremely unconvincing, they are very much cherry-picked. If you think for 5 minutes, you can find equally good examples of good intentions leading to unexpected disastrous consequences in the long or medium term. Give it a try. In addition, there is nothing to compare these “positive influence” actions against. They tend to be implicitly compared against a hypothetical counterfactual world where no action is taken, even though we have no way of knowing how such a world would develop.
Here are a couple of counter-examples where doing medium- and long-term good backfires, after 30 sec of thinking:
Colonization, an obvious long-term good for Europeans, ended up wiping out most of the American indiginous population.
Dissolving the Soviet Union led to several bloody wars in Europe
Spreading the world of Jesus or Mohammad resulted in extermination of millions of people over the millennia
And one fictional but illuminating example is Asimov’s The End of Eternity.
Basically, the claim that “We can make their lives go better” long-term holds no water. Your predictability horizon dies off pretty quickly with time.
I find the arguments extremely unconvincing, they are very much cherry-picked. If you think for 5 minutes, you can find equally good examples of good intentions leading to unexpected disastrous consequences in the long or medium term. Give it a try. In addition, there is nothing to compare these “positive influence” actions against. They tend to be implicitly compared against a hypothetical counterfactual world where no action is taken, even though we have no way of knowing how such a world would develop.
Here are a couple of counter-examples where doing medium- and long-term good backfires, after 30 sec of thinking:
Colonization, an obvious long-term good for Europeans, ended up wiping out most of the American indiginous population.
Dissolving the Soviet Union led to several bloody wars in Europe
Spreading the world of Jesus or Mohammad resulted in extermination of millions of people over the millennia
And one fictional but illuminating example is Asimov’s The End of Eternity.
Basically, the claim that “We can make their lives go better” long-term holds no water. Your predictability horizon dies off pretty quickly with time.