Executive summary: Doing more good often requires challenging conventional wisdom, but extreme or unilateral contrarianism risks causing unintended harms. Moderation helps balance ambition with humility.
Key points:
Maximizing good may require radical ideas, but we are often wrong, so moderation balances ambition and uncertainty.
Extremism historically enabled harm despite good intentions; reputation and cooperation matter.
Conventional wisdom is a reasonable prior; make a few careful bets against it after vetting.
Eliminate plans that seem clearly harmful; then seek upside, maximizing cautiously.
Focus especially on avoiding harming others or violating rights.
Have some normality in life, consider multiple outcomes, take disagreement seriously.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: Doing more good often requires challenging conventional wisdom, but extreme or unilateral contrarianism risks causing unintended harms. Moderation helps balance ambition with humility.
Key points:
Maximizing good may require radical ideas, but we are often wrong, so moderation balances ambition and uncertainty.
Extremism historically enabled harm despite good intentions; reputation and cooperation matter.
Conventional wisdom is a reasonable prior; make a few careful bets against it after vetting.
Eliminate plans that seem clearly harmful; then seek upside, maximizing cautiously.
Focus especially on avoiding harming others or violating rights.
Have some normality in life, consider multiple outcomes, take disagreement seriously.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.