This post left a bad taste in my mouth, and I wanted to briefly touch on why:
1. You say that the right time to act is now, but this is extremely ambiguous.
What should people do now? Maybe you’re referring to some of the actions mentioned later in the post like “consciously deciding if this is worth your time” and “doing research”.
This reminds me of a scene from Friends where one of the characters says that he has a plan. And his plan is that someone should come up with a new plan.
And there seems to be an inconsistency in your approach. You say there is a “slow increase in calls for research, increase in funds and increased public attention.” Instead, we should… call for more research??
2. You say that the right method is research, but your support for this is not strong.
You say you looked for different theories of war on the 80,000 hours website. I think this pays too much deference to the 80k team. They’re smart, but not all-knowing. There are other people with views on war. I searched Google Books for “theories of war” and got 4.9 million results. If someone writes up the 5 millionth book on war, is that a tractable way of reducing war?
More generally, the existence of research and the existence of easily comprehensible and actionable plans are two different things.
And are different theories of war even the right topic of research to focus on in the first place? There are other things that it could be helpful to understand (e.g. effective activism tactics, moral circle expansion, technical capabilities of weapons systems, the history of military/political leaders).
And is research the right course of action? How about political lobbying? How about relief for refugees? How about grassroots activism?
It seems like the sum of your reasoning on this is that the scope of nuclear war is really large. So figuring out how to stop nuclear war would be really good. So we should figure out how to stop nuclear war. Much of the rest of your post felt like applause lights.
Hello Nathan! Thank you for your reply! I appreciate the honesty and your comments are very clear. Allow me to elaborate:
1. Yes! The Friends scene where a character has a plan to make a plan (together) is exactly what I mean! I feel we are doing too little planning. Why wouldn’t this be a valid argument? It is like when you’re on a holiday, you’ve just arrived and everyone just starts doing something. One person starts building a tent, someone else is going for the dishes. You notice that everyone seems to forget to go to the camping owner to see if you’re even allowed to set up your tent. It also seems that we might need to go shopping before we start cooking. I think the right thing to do in those circumstances would be to call everyone together and make a plan together.
2a. Once again, your comment is very clear. If we already have 4.9 million books, why write another one? My point is this: even if there 4.9 million books, their content does not seem to have reached the EA community. What I’d like to see is to have a dedicated (EA) team find (and summarize) the best books and figure out the implications for EA, as I (tried to) describe in appendix 1.
2b. You suggest many different topics of research. That’s great. I agree that all of these are very much worth studying. It was never my intention to limit the scope of research (on the contrary!) and I think you mention worthwhile avenues. You also mention ideas other than research. I’m not a fan of those. I feel the comparative advantage of EA is “think first, act afterwards.” Also I feel that relief for refugees is lower in scope (and neglectedness).
Your summary does capture the essence of my article. However, I feel it doesn’t do it justice. I still feel that noticing that EA seems to be having a “act first, think later” mindset (instead of our comparative advantage “think first, act later”) is extremely important. And that appendix 1 offers both an indication of where our thinking is lacking, and indication of how to start improving our thinking.
This post left a bad taste in my mouth, and I wanted to briefly touch on why:
1. You say that the right time to act is now, but this is extremely ambiguous.
What should people do now? Maybe you’re referring to some of the actions mentioned later in the post like “consciously deciding if this is worth your time” and “doing research”.
This reminds me of a scene from Friends where one of the characters says that he has a plan. And his plan is that someone should come up with a new plan.
And there seems to be an inconsistency in your approach. You say there is a “slow increase in calls for research, increase in funds and increased public attention.” Instead, we should… call for more research??
2. You say that the right method is research, but your support for this is not strong.
You say you looked for different theories of war on the 80,000 hours website. I think this pays too much deference to the 80k team. They’re smart, but not all-knowing. There are other people with views on war. I searched Google Books for “theories of war” and got 4.9 million results. If someone writes up the 5 millionth book on war, is that a tractable way of reducing war?
More generally, the existence of research and the existence of easily comprehensible and actionable plans are two different things.
And are different theories of war even the right topic of research to focus on in the first place? There are other things that it could be helpful to understand (e.g. effective activism tactics, moral circle expansion, technical capabilities of weapons systems, the history of military/political leaders).
And is research the right course of action? How about political lobbying? How about relief for refugees? How about grassroots activism?
It seems like the sum of your reasoning on this is that the scope of nuclear war is really large. So figuring out how to stop nuclear war would be really good. So we should figure out how to stop nuclear war. Much of the rest of your post felt like applause lights.
Hello Nathan! Thank you for your reply! I appreciate the honesty and your comments are very clear. Allow me to elaborate:
1. Yes! The Friends scene where a character has a plan to make a plan (together) is exactly what I mean! I feel we are doing too little planning. Why wouldn’t this be a valid argument? It is like when you’re on a holiday, you’ve just arrived and everyone just starts doing something. One person starts building a tent, someone else is going for the dishes. You notice that everyone seems to forget to go to the camping owner to see if you’re even allowed to set up your tent. It also seems that we might need to go shopping before we start cooking. I think the right thing to do in those circumstances would be to call everyone together and make a plan together.
2a. Once again, your comment is very clear. If we already have 4.9 million books, why write another one? My point is this: even if there 4.9 million books, their content does not seem to have reached the EA community. What I’d like to see is to have a dedicated (EA) team find (and summarize) the best books and figure out the implications for EA, as I (tried to) describe in appendix 1.
2b. You suggest many different topics of research. That’s great. I agree that all of these are very much worth studying. It was never my intention to limit the scope of research (on the contrary!) and I think you mention worthwhile avenues. You also mention ideas other than research. I’m not a fan of those. I feel the comparative advantage of EA is “think first, act afterwards.” Also I feel that relief for refugees is lower in scope (and neglectedness).
Your summary does capture the essence of my article. However, I feel it doesn’t do it justice. I still feel that noticing that EA seems to be having a “act first, think later” mindset (instead of our comparative advantage “think first, act later”) is extremely important. And that appendix 1 offers both an indication of where our thinking is lacking, and indication of how to start improving our thinking.