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The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

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Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#91

Post by shrimpx »

rhaps0dy wrote: post #7

This article just attempts to discredit the idea of longtermism by ridiculing it, instead of presenting any actual counterarguments. It just writes about the implications of its strawman over and over in a sardonic tone. The only thing it wants to get across is “some rich people and philosophy weirdos like this idea, therefore it is bad”. Where are the actual counter-arguments in the article? I suppose it relies on t…

One takeaway from the article, for me, is that some of the rhetoric of longermism by itself has dangerous potentials in society. For example it could be weaponized politically to marginalize groups.

Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#92

Post by shrimpx »

I see a lot of people taking for granted the nearby existence of AI superintelligence that will save or destroy us. It seems these people take for granted multiple technological paradigm shifts that will level-up the AI in unforeseen ways: Neural nets/GPT-3 -> ... ... -> AGI superintelligence.

How do pragmatic and scientifically-minded people end up stretching their beliefs across such knowledge voids, and not only that, but they take for granted that those things will manifest in reality?

Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#93

Post by shrimpx »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #6
tunesmith wrote: post #2

I've seen people on twitter ranting about "Longtermism" before. What an unfortunate name - in the article they try to make a distinction between "longtermism" and "long-term-thinking", but that distinction is very clearly lost on others who are content to paint with a broad brush when criticizing the EA movement. Buying malaria medicine and nets actually do save the lives of people Right Now. Can't it just be suffici…

You're getting dangerously close to suggesting that people should actually have agency in deciding which problems they care more about, and put their resources towards solving those problems. Surely the article couldn't be wrong; are you saying there are people other than a few wealthy easily demonized individuals who have priorities that society as a whole isn't paying attention to yet? In all seriousness: yes, it o…

To be fair to the article, it does extensively quote prominent people in this field. Some of the most scandalous content in that article, to my taste, is direct quotes from Ord and Bostrom.

Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#94

Post by sammalloy »

ThomPete wrote: post #88
sammalloy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see, on the one hand we have climate change, the largest threat to humanity in this century, which is currently killing around 400,000 people a year and costing the world $1.2 trillion, impacting agricultural production, causing deaths from malnutrition, contributing to poverty, and increasing the incidence of disease. On the other hand, it is the opinion of astronomers that "no known asteroids currently pose a…

climate change is NOT the largest threat no matter how many times you repeat it. Astroids, suns exploding, super vulcanos etc these are actual potential extinction level events. Things that have actually been demonstrated to happen without human intervention. “No known” is what you are looking for. There are no known demonstrated consequences of climate change that we dont know how to deal with. More people are saved…

Climate change, caused by humans, is in fact the largest threat facing civilization at this time. And it will require human technology to mitigate it. You appear to making denialist arguments of some kind or another and changing the subject for some reason. There is currently no threat to humanity from asteroids, supernovae, supervolcanoes, or other types of existential risks. We know anthropogenic climate change is the biggest threat facing humanity at this time.

Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#95

Post by mrow84 »

rhaps0dy wrote: post #7

This article just attempts to discredit the idea of longtermism by ridiculing it, instead of presenting any actual counterarguments. It just writes about the implications of its strawman over and over in a sardonic tone. The only thing it wants to get across is “some rich people and philosophy weirdos like this idea, therefore it is bad”. Where are the actual counter-arguments in the article? I suppose it relies on t…

My reading of the article’s core argument is the following: longtermism assumes that it is possible to perform an accounting of future outcomes, and from this expected value calculations, even if just in sketch, that can be used to allocate resources in the present, so as to maximise total “good”. This process is incredibly prone to bias, and in reality appears to amount to little more than selective speculation about its proponents’ desired futures, and a corresponding proposal for the targeting of present resources.

I find this argument compelling - most methodologies for inter-temporal decision making acknowledge the large uncertainties associated with the future, and, either explicitly or implicitly, avoid making claims about the distant future, either in terms of what plans we should make for the future, or in how future states should affect our current plans.

There is no reason to believe that the proponents of longtermism have addressed this issue - indeed if they had it would be a very significant breakthrough, and we could apply their method to more immediate problems as well. What seems much more likely is that they have not addressed the issue at all, and that their purported accounting is really just a regurgitation of their prior beliefs, and thus, as the article suggests, consequently serves only to justify the existing behaviours of those who subscribe to it.

Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#96

Post by sammalloy »

ThomPete wrote: post #89
sammalloy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might have missed the point of this criticism. It is not science that is the problem, it is the way it is practiced, which in this case tends to be too conservative and operates by consensus. Bill McGuire explains the problem: > "They’re conservative, because insufficient attention has been given to the importance of tipping points, feedback loops and outlier predictions; consensus, because more extreme s…

you are arguing against one type of bias by introducing another. This is not science this is ideology.

My argument represents the exact opposite of bias. If the IPCC estimates are too conservative and result in poor predictions, and if their consensus mechanism excludes worst case scenarios, then more inclusive estimates and including more scenarios leads to more impartiality—the opposite of bias.

Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#97

Post by ThomPete »

sammalloy wrote: post #96
ThomPete wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are arguing against one type of bias by introducing another. This is not science this is ideology.

My argument represents the exact opposite of bias. If the IPCC estimates are too conservative and result in poor predictions, and if their consensus mechanism excludes worst case scenarios, then more inclusive estimates and including more scenarios leads to more impartiality—the opposite of bias.

how do you know that your choice of sources isnt the one thats biased? You dont. You are engaging in ideology not science. The very fact that you dont see this and just assume you have the right perspective illustrates my point. You are an ideologue.

Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#98

Post by ThomPete »

sammalloy wrote: post #94
ThomPete wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

climate change is NOT the largest threat no matter how many times you repeat it. Astroids, suns exploding, super vulcanos etc these are actual potential extinction level events. Things that have actually been demonstrated to happen without human intervention. “No known” is what you are looking for. There are no known demonstrated consequences of climate change that we dont know how to deal with. More people are saved…

Climate change, caused by humans, is in fact the largest threat facing civilization at this time. And it will require human technology to mitigate it. You appear to making denialist arguments of some kind or another and changing the subject for some reason. There is currently no threat to humanity from asteroids, supernovae, supervolcanoes, or other types of existential risks. We know anthropogenic climate change is…

I am denying your climate catastrophism claims for which there is no scientifically demonstrated base. You are engaging in speculation not science.

Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#99

Post by sokoloff »

tunesmith wrote: post #33
sokoloff wrote: post #28

We have a concept of discounting the future for uncertainty, resulting in a “net present value”. If you think you can make 10^23 people’s lives better far in the future, you discount that future outcome by the inherent uncertainty that things will play out resulting in that gain. You can then readily compare that to the uncertainty between now and next year to see if a change next year for a billion people is better…

What interest rate would be appropriate?

Hard to say the discount rate to apply, but I’d think that almost no discount rate would ever be lower than 1% per decade and if there’s any inherent risk in a proposal that it would need to be at least 5% per decade.

When you talk about “this specific initiative succeeding”, it’s probably more like 1% per year as a minimum. (“Will SpaceX [or its direct descendants] colonize Mars?” is a much less certain proposition than “Will anyone from Earth colonize Mars?” and even the latter is in serious question.)

Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#100

Post by em-bee »

all this discussion misses the real solution to improve our life in the short and long term:

education!

only if we raise the level of education in the worlds population as a whole, only if we give everyone the tools to understand the dangers we are facing, and we allow everyone to make the right decision without blindly following any leaders, only then we will be able to lift humanity to new heights and solve all our problems, both in the sort term and in the long term.

climate change is not a leadership problem (as one commenter here puts it). having a charismatic leader tell everyone what to do may work for a short term, until the next leader comes along and tells something else.

climate change is an education problem. only if everyone actually understands why it is a problem, are we able to make effective changes. the same is true for every other problem we are facing.

education will help lift people out of poverty, it will remove racism and any other form of discrimination. it will enable everyone to make a contribution to the advancement of humanity.

education will allow us to better understand any problems we are facing, and solve them faster. it will enable global cooperation towards a better future for everyone.

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