it seems like the main reason people got less doomy was seeing that other people were working hard on the problem [...]
This would be v surprising to me!
It seems like, to the extend that we’re less doomy about survival/flourishing, this isn’t bc we’ve seen a surprising amount of effort, and think effort is v correlated with success. It’s more like: our observations increase our confidence that the problem was easy all along, or that we have been living in a ‘lucky’ world all along.
I might ask you about this when I see you next—I didn’t attend the workshop so maybe I’m just wrong here.
This would be v surprising to me!
It seems like, to the extend that we’re less doomy about survival/flourishing, this isn’t bc we’ve seen a surprising amount of effort, and think effort is v correlated with success. It’s more like: our observations increase our confidence that the problem was easy all along, or that we have been living in a ‘lucky’ world all along.
I might ask you about this when I see you next—I didn’t attend the workshop so maybe I’m just wrong here.