I have tended to focus on meta level issues in this sort of context, because I know from experience how untrustworthy our object level thoughts are.
For example, there’s a really obvious non-singleton solution to the “serial killer somehow creates his own fully populated solar system torture chamber” problem: a hundred concerned neighbors point Nicoll-Dyson lasers at him and make him an offer he can’t refuse. It’s a simple enough solution for a reasonably bright five year old to figure out in 10 seconds; the fact that I didn’t figure it out for months, makes it clear exactly how much to trust my thinking here.
The reason for this untrustworthiness is itself not too hard to figure out: our Cro-Magnon brains are hardwired to think about interpersonal interactions in ways that were appropriate for our ancestral environment at the cost of performing worse than random chance in sufficiently different environments.
But fear is not harmless. Where was the largest group of Americans killed by the 9/11 attacks? In the Twin Towers? No: on the roads, in the excess road accident toll caused by people driving for fear of airline terrorism.
If the smartest thinkers in the world can’t get together without descending into a spiral of paranoid fantasy, is there hope for the future of intelligent life in the universe? If we can avoid that descent, then it is time to begin doing so.
I have tended to focus on meta level issues in this sort of context, because I know from experience how untrustworthy our object level thoughts are.
For example, there’s a really obvious non-singleton solution to the “serial killer somehow creates his own fully populated solar system torture chamber” problem: a hundred concerned neighbors point Nicoll-Dyson lasers at him and make him an offer he can’t refuse. It’s a simple enough solution for a reasonably bright five year old to figure out in 10 seconds; the fact that I didn’t figure it out for months, makes it clear exactly how much to trust my thinking here.
The reason for this untrustworthiness is itself not too hard to figure out: our Cro-Magnon brains are hardwired to think about interpersonal interactions in ways that were appropriate for our ancestral environment at the cost of performing worse than random chance in sufficiently different environments.
But fear is not harmless. Where was the largest group of Americans killed by the 9/11 attacks? In the Twin Towers? No: on the roads, in the excess road accident toll caused by people driving for fear of airline terrorism.
If the smartest thinkers in the world can’t get together without descending into a spiral of paranoid fantasy, is there hope for the future of intelligent life in the universe? If we can avoid that descent, then it is time to begin doing so.