I was just wondering, what are some of the branches of rationality that you’re aware of that you’re currently most optimistic about, and/or would be glad to see more people spending time on, if any? Now that people are rapidly shifting effort to policymaking in DC and UK (including through EA) which is largely uncharted territory, what texts/posts/branches do you think might be a good fit for them?
I’ve been thinking that recommending more people to read ratfic would be unusually good for policy efforts, since it’s something very socially acceptable for high-minded people to do in their free time, should have a big impact through extant orgs without costing any additional money, and it’s not weird or awkward in the slightest to talk about the original source if a conversation gets anyone interested in going deeper into where they got the idea from.
Plus, it gets/keeps people in the right headspace the curveballs that DC hits people with, which tend to be largely human-generated and therefore simple enough for humans to easily understand, just like the cartoonish simplifications of reality in ratfic (unusually low levels of math/abstraction/complexity but unusually high levels of linguistic intelligence, creative intelligence, and quick reactions e.g. social situations).
But unlike you, I don’t have much of a track record making judgments about big decisions like this and then seeing how they play out over years in complicated systems.
thanks! basically, i think that the top priority should be to (quickly!) slow down the extinction race. if that’s successful, we’ll have time for more deliberate interventions — and the one you propose sounds confidently net positive to me! (with sign uncertainties being so common, confident net positive interventions are surprisingly rare).
Thank you for making so much possible.
I was just wondering, what are some of the branches of rationality that you’re aware of that you’re currently most optimistic about, and/or would be glad to see more people spending time on, if any? Now that people are rapidly shifting effort to policymaking in DC and UK (including through EA) which is largely uncharted territory, what texts/posts/branches do you think might be a good fit for them?
I’ve been thinking that recommending more people to read ratfic would be unusually good for policy efforts, since it’s something very socially acceptable for high-minded people to do in their free time, should have a big impact through extant orgs without costing any additional money, and it’s not weird or awkward in the slightest to talk about the original source if a conversation gets anyone interested in going deeper into where they got the idea from.
Plus, it gets/keeps people in the right headspace the curveballs that DC hits people with, which tend to be largely human-generated and therefore simple enough for humans to easily understand, just like the cartoonish simplifications of reality in ratfic (unusually low levels of math/abstraction/complexity but unusually high levels of linguistic intelligence, creative intelligence, and quick reactions e.g. social situations).
But unlike you, I don’t have much of a track record making judgments about big decisions like this and then seeing how they play out over years in complicated systems.
thanks! basically, i think that the top priority should be to (quickly!) slow down the extinction race. if that’s successful, we’ll have time for more deliberate interventions — and the one you propose sounds confidently net positive to me! (with sign uncertainties being so common, confident net positive interventions are surprisingly rare).