Basically, because it seems to me that if people had really huge amounts of epistemic rationality + competence + caring, they would already be impacting these problems. Their huge amounts of epistemic rationality and competence would allow them to find a path to high impact; and their caring would compel them to do it.
I agree with this, but I strongly disagree that epistemic rationality is the limiting factor in this equation. Looking at the world, I see massive lack of caring. I see innumerable people who care only about their own group, or their own interests, to the exclusion of others.
For example, many people give to ineffective local charities instead of more effective charities that invest their money in the developing world because they care more about the park down the street than they do about differently colored refugees in the developing world. People care more about other people who are closer to them and more like them than they do about different people further away. Change that, and epistemic rationality will take care of itself.
Solutions for the problems that exist in the world today are not limited by competence or epistemic rationality. (Climate change denial is a really good example: it’s pretty obvious that denial is politically and personally motivated and that the deniers are performing motivated reasoning, not seriously misinformed. Better epistemic rationality will not change their actions because they are acting rationally in their own self-interests. They’re simply willing to damage future generations and poorer people to protect their interests over those of people they don’t care about.)
Anna’s argument here is a classic example of the fallacy of assuming your opponents are stupid or misinformed, that they simply need to be properly educated and everyone will agree. This is rarely true. People disagree and cause the problems that exist in the world today because they have different values, not because they see the world incorrectly.
To the extent that people do see the world incorrectly, it is because epistemic rationality interferes with their values and goals, not because poor epistemic rationality causes them to have the wrong values and goals. That is, a lack of caring leads to poor epistemic rationality, not the other way around.
This is why I find CFAR to be a very low-effectiveness charity. It is attacking the wrong problem.
When it comes to helping folks, I am sure “the causal effect is 0,” because that’s just how it generally is.
But then they think it’s a success if they find one person at these workshops to work on super theoretical decision theory. Which I think is super weird and slightly misleading as far as what CFAR is really about.
it’s pretty obvious that denial is politically and personally motivated and that the deniers are performing motivated reasoning, not seriously misinformed.
CFAR mission isn’t informing people but teaching them to reason well. Not holding wrong beliefs because of motivated reasoning is part of that of it.
Caring doesn’t fix the problem of motivated reasoning. A person who believes that AI risk doesn’t exists because they think that an FAI would be really awesome has no problem with not caring for humanity.
Even on the issue of climate change you have problems of motivated reasoning on both sides of the isle.
A lot of the money invested into Green energy companies went bust because people didn’t think well about the sector and where the money has the biggest impact.
I agree with this, but I strongly disagree that epistemic rationality is the limiting factor in this equation. Looking at the world, I see massive lack of caring. I see innumerable people who care only about their own group, or their own interests, to the exclusion of others.
For example, many people give to ineffective local charities instead of more effective charities that invest their money in the developing world because they care more about the park down the street than they do about differently colored refugees in the developing world. People care more about other people who are closer to them and more like them than they do about different people further away. Change that, and epistemic rationality will take care of itself.
Solutions for the problems that exist in the world today are not limited by competence or epistemic rationality. (Climate change denial is a really good example: it’s pretty obvious that denial is politically and personally motivated and that the deniers are performing motivated reasoning, not seriously misinformed. Better epistemic rationality will not change their actions because they are acting rationally in their own self-interests. They’re simply willing to damage future generations and poorer people to protect their interests over those of people they don’t care about.)
Anna’s argument here is a classic example of the fallacy of assuming your opponents are stupid or misinformed, that they simply need to be properly educated and everyone will agree. This is rarely true. People disagree and cause the problems that exist in the world today because they have different values, not because they see the world incorrectly.
To the extent that people do see the world incorrectly, it is because epistemic rationality interferes with their values and goals, not because poor epistemic rationality causes them to have the wrong values and goals. That is, a lack of caring leads to poor epistemic rationality, not the other way around.
This is why I find CFAR to be a very low-effectiveness charity. It is attacking the wrong problem.
When it comes to helping folks, I am sure “the causal effect is 0,” because that’s just how it generally is.
But then they think it’s a success if they find one person at these workshops to work on super theoretical decision theory. Which I think is super weird and slightly misleading as far as what CFAR is really about.
CFAR mission isn’t informing people but teaching them to reason well. Not holding wrong beliefs because of motivated reasoning is part of that of it.
Caring doesn’t fix the problem of motivated reasoning. A person who believes that AI risk doesn’t exists because they think that an FAI would be really awesome has no problem with not caring for humanity.
Even on the issue of climate change you have problems of motivated reasoning on both sides of the isle. A lot of the money invested into Green energy companies went bust because people didn’t think well about the sector and where the money has the biggest impact.