First of all. Thanks Nate. An engaging outlook on overcoming point and shoot morality.
You can stop trusting the internal feelings to guide your actions and switch over to manual control.
Moral Tribes, Joshua Greene`s book, addresses the question of when to do this manual switch. Interested readers may want to check it out.
Some of us—where “us” here means people who are really trying—take your approach. They visualize the sinking ship, the hanging souls silently glaring at them in desperation, they shut up and multiply, and to the extent possible, they let go of the anchoring emotions that are sinking the ship.
They act.
This approach is invaluable, and I see it working for some of the heroes of our age, you, Geoff Anders, Bastien Stern, Brian Tomasik, Julian Savulescu, yet I don’t think it’s the only way to help a lot—and we need all the approaches we can get—so I’ll expose the other one, currently a minority, best illustrated by Anders Sandberg.
Like those you address, some people really want to care, however, the emotional bias that is stopping them from doing so is not primarily scope insensitivity, but something akin to loss aversion, except it manifests as a distaste for negative motivation and an overwhelming drive for positive motivation. When facing a choice between
Join our team of Transhumanists who will improve the human condition
Help us transform the world into a place as happy as possible
Help us prevent catastrophe, hurry up, people are suffering
Join our cause, we will decrease risks that humanity will be extinct
they will always pick one of the top two, because they are framed positively. The bottom two may sound more pressing, but they mention negative, undesirable, uncomfortable forces. They are staged in a frame where we feel overpowered by nature. Nature is a force trying to change our state into a worse state, and you are asked to join the gate keepers who will contain the destructive invasion that is to come.
The top two however, are not only more cheerful, they are set in a completely different frame: you are given a grandiose vision of a possible future, and told you can be part of the force that will sculpt it. What they tell you is we have the tools for you, join us, and with our amazing equipment, we will reshape the earth.
I am one of these people, Stephen Frey, João Fabiano, Anders Sandberg, being some other examples. David Pearce once attentively noticed this underlying characteristic, and jokingly attributed to this category the welcoming name of “Positive Utilitarian”.
Some of us, who are driven by this cheerful positive idea, have found a way to continue our efforts on the right lane despite that strong inclination to go towards the riches instead of away from darkness.
We are driven by the awesomeness of it all.
Pretend for an instant the problems of the world are shades, pitch black shades. They are spread around everywhere. The world is mostly dark. You now find yourself in a world illuminated in exact proportion to the good things it has, all you see around you are faint glimpses of beauty and awesome here and there, candles of good intention, and the occasional lamps of concerted effort. What moves you is an exploratory urge. You want to see more, to feel more. Those dark areas are not helping you with that. Since they are problems, your job is to be inventive, to find solutions. You are told once upon a time it was all dark, your ancestors were able to ignite the first twigs into a bone fire. Sat by the fire you hear from wise sages’ stories of the dark age that lies behind us, Hans Rosling, Robert Wright, Jared Diamond and Steve Pinker show how all the gadgets, symbols and technologies we created gave light to all we see now. By now we have lamps of many kinds and shapes, but you know more can be found. With diligence, smarts and help, you know we can beam lasers and create floodlights, we can solve things at scale, we can cause the earth to shine. But you are not stopping there, you are ambitious. You want to harness the sun.
It so happens that there’s a million billion billion suns out there, so we too, shut up and multiply.
Why do we look at the world this way, why do we feel energized by this metaphor but not the prevention one? I don’t know. As long as both teams continue in this lifelong quest together, and as long as both shut up and multiply, it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, we act alike. I just want to make sure that we get as many as possible, as strong as possible, and set the controls for the heart of the sun.
Cross commented from the EA forum
First of all. Thanks Nate. An engaging outlook on overcoming point and shoot morality.
Moral Tribes, Joshua Greene`s book, addresses the question of when to do this manual switch. Interested readers may want to check it out.
Some of us—where “us” here means people who are really trying—take your approach. They visualize the sinking ship, the hanging souls silently glaring at them in desperation, they shut up and multiply, and to the extent possible, they let go of the anchoring emotions that are sinking the ship.
They act.
This approach is invaluable, and I see it working for some of the heroes of our age, you, Geoff Anders, Bastien Stern, Brian Tomasik, Julian Savulescu, yet I don’t think it’s the only way to help a lot—and we need all the approaches we can get—so I’ll expose the other one, currently a minority, best illustrated by Anders Sandberg.
Like those you address, some people really want to care, however, the emotional bias that is stopping them from doing so is not primarily scope insensitivity, but something akin to loss aversion, except it manifests as a distaste for negative motivation and an overwhelming drive for positive motivation. When facing a choice between
Join our team of Transhumanists who will improve the human condition
Help us transform the world into a place as happy as possible
Help us prevent catastrophe, hurry up, people are suffering
Join our cause, we will decrease risks that humanity will be extinct
they will always pick one of the top two, because they are framed positively. The bottom two may sound more pressing, but they mention negative, undesirable, uncomfortable forces. They are staged in a frame where we feel overpowered by nature. Nature is a force trying to change our state into a worse state, and you are asked to join the gate keepers who will contain the destructive invasion that is to come.
The top two however, are not only more cheerful, they are set in a completely different frame: you are given a grandiose vision of a possible future, and told you can be part of the force that will sculpt it. What they tell you is we have the tools for you, join us, and with our amazing equipment, we will reshape the earth.
I am one of these people, Stephen Frey, João Fabiano, Anders Sandberg, being some other examples. David Pearce once attentively noticed this underlying characteristic, and jokingly attributed to this category the welcoming name of “Positive Utilitarian”.
Some of us, who are driven by this cheerful positive idea, have found a way to continue our efforts on the right lane despite that strong inclination to go towards the riches instead of away from darkness.
We are driven by the awesomeness of it all.
Pretend for an instant the problems of the world are shades, pitch black shades. They are spread around everywhere. The world is mostly dark. You now find yourself in a world illuminated in exact proportion to the good things it has, all you see around you are faint glimpses of beauty and awesome here and there, candles of good intention, and the occasional lamps of concerted effort. What moves you is an exploratory urge. You want to see more, to feel more. Those dark areas are not helping you with that. Since they are problems, your job is to be inventive, to find solutions. You are told once upon a time it was all dark, your ancestors were able to ignite the first twigs into a bone fire. Sat by the fire you hear from wise sages’ stories of the dark age that lies behind us, Hans Rosling, Robert Wright, Jared Diamond and Steve Pinker show how all the gadgets, symbols and technologies we created gave light to all we see now. By now we have lamps of many kinds and shapes, but you know more can be found. With diligence, smarts and help, you know we can beam lasers and create floodlights, we can solve things at scale, we can cause the earth to shine. But you are not stopping there, you are ambitious. You want to harness the sun.
It so happens that there’s a million billion billion suns out there, so we too, shut up and multiply.
Why do we look at the world this way, why do we feel energized by this metaphor but not the prevention one? I don’t know. As long as both teams continue in this lifelong quest together, and as long as both shut up and multiply, it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, we act alike. I just want to make sure that we get as many as possible, as strong as possible, and set the controls for the heart of the sun.