You list a greater appreciation of transhumanism as one of the benefits of x-rationality, but the causal linkage doesn’t impress me.
The benefit I’m trying to list isn’t “greater appreciation of transhumanism” so much as “directing one’s efforts to ‘make the world a better place’ in directions that actually do efficiently make the world a better place”.
As to the evidence and its significance:
Even if we skip transhumanism, and look fully outside the Eliezer/Robin/Vassar orbit, folks like Holden Karnofsky of Givewell are impressive, both in terms of ability to actually analyze the world, and in terms of positive impact. You might say it’s just traditional rationality Holden is using—certainly he didn’t get it from Eliezer—but it’s beyond the level common among “intelligent, science-literate people” (who mostly donate their money in much less effective ways).
Within transhumanism… I agree that the existing correlation between transhumanism and rationality-emphasis will tend to create future correlation, whether or not rationality helps one see merits in transhumanism. And that’s an important point. But it’s also bizarrely statistically significant that when people show up and say they want to spend their lives reducing AI risks, they’re often people who spent unusual effort successfully becoming better thinkers before they ever heard of Eliezer or Robin, or met anyone else working on this stuff. It’s true that maybe we’re just recognizing “oh, someone who cares about actually getting things right, that means I can relax and believe them” (or, worse, “oh, someone with my brand of tennis shoes, let me join the in-group”). But…
Recognizing that someone else has good epistemic standards and can be believed is rationality working, even without independently deriving the same conclusions (though under the tennis shoe interpretation, not so much);
Many of us (independently, before reading or being in contact with anyone in this orbit) said we were looking for the most efficient use of some time/money, and it’s probably not an accident that trying to become a good thinker, and asking what use of time/money will actually help the world, tend to correlate, and tend to lead to modes of action that actually do help the world.
The benefit I’m trying to list isn’t “greater appreciation of transhumanism” so much as “directing one’s efforts to ‘make the world a better place’ in directions that actually do efficiently make the world a better place”.
As to the evidence and its significance:
Even if we skip transhumanism, and look fully outside the Eliezer/Robin/Vassar orbit, folks like Holden Karnofsky of Givewell are impressive, both in terms of ability to actually analyze the world, and in terms of positive impact. You might say it’s just traditional rationality Holden is using—certainly he didn’t get it from Eliezer—but it’s beyond the level common among “intelligent, science-literate people” (who mostly donate their money in much less effective ways).
Within transhumanism… I agree that the existing correlation between transhumanism and rationality-emphasis will tend to create future correlation, whether or not rationality helps one see merits in transhumanism. And that’s an important point. But it’s also bizarrely statistically significant that when people show up and say they want to spend their lives reducing AI risks, they’re often people who spent unusual effort successfully becoming better thinkers before they ever heard of Eliezer or Robin, or met anyone else working on this stuff. It’s true that maybe we’re just recognizing “oh, someone who cares about actually getting things right, that means I can relax and believe them” (or, worse, “oh, someone with my brand of tennis shoes, let me join the in-group”). But…
Recognizing that someone else has good epistemic standards and can be believed is rationality working, even without independently deriving the same conclusions (though under the tennis shoe interpretation, not so much);
Many of us (independently, before reading or being in contact with anyone in this orbit) said we were looking for the most efficient use of some time/money, and it’s probably not an accident that trying to become a good thinker, and asking what use of time/money will actually help the world, tend to correlate, and tend to lead to modes of action that actually do help the world.