“When you’re thinking about real life I often think that it’s better to come to conclusions based on weighing a large number of arguments, rather than trying to make one complete calculation of your conclusion”
I’m a little confused about this distinction. The process of weighing a large number of arguments IS a calculation of your conclusion, that’s complete insofar as you’ve weighed all the relevant arguments. Perhaps you mean something like “A complete calculation that mainly relies on only a few premises”? But in this case I’d say the main advantage of the EA mindset is in fact that it makes people more willing to change their careers in response to a few fundamental premises. I think most AI safety researchers, for instance, have (or should have) a few clear cruxes about why they’re in the field, whereas most AI researchers don’t. Or perhaps you’re just warning us not to think that we can make arguments about reality that are as conclusive as mathematical arguments?
“When you’re thinking about real life I often think that it’s better to come to conclusions based on weighing a large number of arguments, rather than trying to make one complete calculation of your conclusion”
I’m a little confused about this distinction. The process of weighing a large number of arguments IS a calculation of your conclusion, that’s complete insofar as you’ve weighed all the relevant arguments. Perhaps you mean something like “A complete calculation that mainly relies on only a few premises”? But in this case I’d say the main advantage of the EA mindset is in fact that it makes people more willing to change their careers in response to a few fundamental premises. I think most AI safety researchers, for instance, have (or should have) a few clear cruxes about why they’re in the field, whereas most AI researchers don’t. Or perhaps you’re just warning us not to think that we can make arguments about reality that are as conclusive as mathematical arguments?