I don’t have as strong intuitions about this as So8res does, but I do think this is a useful heuristic. The post feels both useful epistemically, and motivationally. I liked reading comments from other people describing plans they embarked on because it seemed like “holy shit, is nobody doing this?”
I do kinda wish I had more than vague intuitions backing this up. Ironically, while I’d be interested in someone studying “What motivations tend to drive the largest effect sizes on humanity? How do you control for survivorship bias? Is So8res right about this being a useful prompt?”… it neither gives me a strong sense of “geez, everyone is idiotically dropping the ball on this, I believe in my heart this is the best thing” nor seem really like the top result of a measured, careful spreadsheet of possible goals.
(But, you’re reading this and thinking either “man, people are idiotically dropping the ball not having done a rigorous analysis of this” or “man I think So8res is wrong that you need to believe in your goals for them to be particularly useful, and my careful spreadsheet of goals says that measuring this effect is the best use of my time”, um, I’m interested in what you find)
What motivations tend to drive the largest effect sizes on humanity?
FWIW, I think questions like “what actually causes globally consequential things to happen or not happen” are one of the areas in which we’re most dropping the ball. (AI Impacts has been working on a few related question, more like “why do people sometimes not do the consequential thing?”)
How do you control for survivorship bias?
I think it’s good to at least spot check and see if there are interesting patterns. If “why is nobody doing X???” is strongly associated with large effects, this seems worth knowing, even if it doesn’t constitute a measure of expected effect sizes.
Curated.
I don’t have as strong intuitions about this as So8res does, but I do think this is a useful heuristic. The post feels both useful epistemically, and motivationally. I liked reading comments from other people describing plans they embarked on because it seemed like “holy shit, is nobody doing this?”
I do kinda wish I had more than vague intuitions backing this up. Ironically, while I’d be interested in someone studying “What motivations tend to drive the largest effect sizes on humanity? How do you control for survivorship bias? Is So8res right about this being a useful prompt?”… it neither gives me a strong sense of “geez, everyone is idiotically dropping the ball on this, I believe in my heart this is the best thing” nor seem really like the top result of a measured, careful spreadsheet of possible goals.
(But, you’re reading this and thinking either “man, people are idiotically dropping the ball not having done a rigorous analysis of this” or “man I think So8res is wrong that you need to believe in your goals for them to be particularly useful, and my careful spreadsheet of goals says that measuring this effect is the best use of my time”, um, I’m interested in what you find)
FWIW, I think questions like “what actually causes globally consequential things to happen or not happen” are one of the areas in which we’re most dropping the ball. (AI Impacts has been working on a few related question, more like “why do people sometimes not do the consequential thing?”)
I think it’s good to at least spot check and see if there are interesting patterns. If “why is nobody doing X???” is strongly associated with large effects, this seems worth knowing, even if it doesn’t constitute a measure of expected effect sizes.