Greaves and MacAskill don’t cover concerns about potential downsides of longtermist interventions in their paper. I think they implicitly make a few assumptions, such as that someone pursuing the interventions they mention would actually do them thoughtfully and carefully. I do agree that one can probably go into say DeepMind without really knowing their stuff and end up doing astronomical harm.
Overall I think your general point is fair. When it comes to allocating a specific person to a cause area, the difference in expected value across cause areas probably isn’t as large as I originally thought, for example due to considerations such as personal fit. Generally I think your comments have updated me away from my original claim that everyone should know all IBCs, but I do still feel fairly positive about more content being produced to improve understanding of some of these ideas and I’m quite excited about this possibility.
Slight aside about the Greaves and MacAskill paper—I personally found it a very useful paper that helped me understand the longtermism claim in a slightly more formal way than say an 80K blog post. It’s quite an accessible paper. I also found the (somewhat limited) discussion about the potential robustness of longtermism to different views very interesting. I’m sure Greaves and MacAskill will be strengthening that argument in the future. So overall I would recommend giving it a read!
I do still feel fairly positive about more content being produced to improve understanding of some of these ideas and I’m quite excited about this possibility.
Yeah, I’m definitely on the same page on those points!
So overall I would recommend giving it a read!
Ok, this has made it more likely that I’ll make time for reading the paper in the coming weeks. Thanks :)
Thanks for this.
Greaves and MacAskill don’t cover concerns about potential downsides of longtermist interventions in their paper. I think they implicitly make a few assumptions, such as that someone pursuing the interventions they mention would actually do them thoughtfully and carefully. I do agree that one can probably go into say DeepMind without really knowing their stuff and end up doing astronomical harm.
Overall I think your general point is fair. When it comes to allocating a specific person to a cause area, the difference in expected value across cause areas probably isn’t as large as I originally thought, for example due to considerations such as personal fit. Generally I think your comments have updated me away from my original claim that everyone should know all IBCs, but I do still feel fairly positive about more content being produced to improve understanding of some of these ideas and I’m quite excited about this possibility.
Slight aside about the Greaves and MacAskill paper—I personally found it a very useful paper that helped me understand the longtermism claim in a slightly more formal way than say an 80K blog post. It’s quite an accessible paper. I also found the (somewhat limited) discussion about the potential robustness of longtermism to different views very interesting. I’m sure Greaves and MacAskill will be strengthening that argument in the future. So overall I would recommend giving it a read!
Yeah, I’m definitely on the same page on those points!
Ok, this has made it more likely that I’ll make time for reading the paper in the coming weeks. Thanks :)