The key problem is not doing collective action, but agreeing on what collective actions we think are worth doing. Governments excel at overcoming coordination problems to choose and implement collective actions. Its problem is that it often chooses badly.
There are many benefits to surrounding yourself with extremely bright rationalists and scientific generalists. But I wonder if Eliezer has been too successful in sparing himself from the tedium and the trouble of interacting with and observing the common run of scientifically-illiterate irrational not-particularly-bright humanity. If he had been forced to spend a few years in an ordinary American high school or in an ordinary workplace—or even if he had had lengthy dealings with a few of the many community activists of the San Francisco Bay Area where he lives—or even if he just had 20 more years of life experience—I wonder if he would still think it is a good idea to “make it possible / easier for groups of strangers to coalesce into an effective task force over the Internet” using only the skills for working in groups that come from the ancestral environment.
The way it is now, to devise an effective plan to change society, a person needs more rationality skill and more true information about their society than most people have. But I humbly submit that that is not a bug, but rather a feature! So is the fact that the instincts and emotions and biases that come from the ancestral environment are not enough to do it. (I sometimes go even further and say that it is important to be able to use rationality and deliberation to veto or override the instincts and emotions and biases that come from the ancestral environment.)
And I do not think it is particularly useful to frame what I just said as elitism. It is just an acknowledgement of the following reality: for almost any plan you can come up with for empowering the masses, I can come up with a plan that preferentially empowers the people more likely to use the new power for good—for some definition of “good” that you and I can both agree on. Science and technology and other means of empowering people have become too potent for scientists and technologists and others not to think through what people are likely to do with the new power.
EDIT: for the sake of perspective and balance, I note that the mere fact that a person has read this post and consequently probably has a strong interest in the subject matter of this web site might be enough evidence of rationality to ameliorate my concerns about empowering them with a new technology for collaboration provided that the collaboration has a goal or mission statement less ambiguous than the current mission statement of a certain institute that must not be named, but if Eliezer’s purpose is to empower only the people interested enough in rationality and knowledge to keep coming back to this web site, he should say so instead of speaking of empowering people in general.
There are certain resonances between Robin’s comment and this one, which is why I put it here.
The key problem is not doing collective action, but agreeing on what collective actions we think are worth doing. Governments excel at overcoming coordination problems to choose and implement collective actions. Its problem is that it often chooses badly.
There are many benefits to surrounding yourself with extremely bright rationalists and scientific generalists. But I wonder if Eliezer has been too successful in sparing himself from the tedium and the trouble of interacting with and observing the common run of scientifically-illiterate irrational not-particularly-bright humanity. If he had been forced to spend a few years in an ordinary American high school or in an ordinary workplace—or even if he had had lengthy dealings with a few of the many community activists of the San Francisco Bay Area where he lives—or even if he just had 20 more years of life experience—I wonder if he would still think it is a good idea to “make it possible / easier for groups of strangers to coalesce into an effective task force over the Internet” using only the skills for working in groups that come from the ancestral environment.
The way it is now, to devise an effective plan to change society, a person needs more rationality skill and more true information about their society than most people have. But I humbly submit that that is not a bug, but rather a feature! So is the fact that the instincts and emotions and biases that come from the ancestral environment are not enough to do it. (I sometimes go even further and say that it is important to be able to use rationality and deliberation to veto or override the instincts and emotions and biases that come from the ancestral environment.)
And I do not think it is particularly useful to frame what I just said as elitism. It is just an acknowledgement of the following reality: for almost any plan you can come up with for empowering the masses, I can come up with a plan that preferentially empowers the people more likely to use the new power for good—for some definition of “good” that you and I can both agree on. Science and technology and other means of empowering people have become too potent for scientists and technologists and others not to think through what people are likely to do with the new power.
EDIT: for the sake of perspective and balance, I note that the mere fact that a person has read this post and consequently probably has a strong interest in the subject matter of this web site might be enough evidence of rationality to ameliorate my concerns about empowering them with a new technology for collaboration provided that the collaboration has a goal or mission statement less ambiguous than the current mission statement of a certain institute that must not be named, but if Eliezer’s purpose is to empower only the people interested enough in rationality and knowledge to keep coming back to this web site, he should say so instead of speaking of empowering people in general.
There are certain resonances between Robin’s comment and this one, which is why I put it here.