I find myself wondering what counts as “speculative” vs not. Here are some guesses at sufficient conditions for speculativeness:
An effect is speculative if it is highly sensitive to:
Physical or metaphysical assumptions that are themselves speculative
E.g., theories of cosmology, solutions to the measurement problem in quantum mechanics, theories of consciousness
Facts about the world / mechanisms we’re presently unaware of
E.g., improvements to SOTA AI architectures and training methods, entirely new mechanisms for extinction, facts challenging our current understanding of macroeconomics, biology, etc
I’m also very interested in this question, because it isn’t obvious to me where to draw the line in fields like wild animal welfare. I think I know as little about nematode sentience + welfare, for example, as I do about possible far future beings.
Maybe one difference is that it at least feels possible in theory to get more information about nematodes, but not really possible to get more information about far future beings? Although I’m skeptical of my intuitions here, since maybe it’s easier than I think to get information about far future beings and harder than I think to get information about nematode sentience.
Thanks for writing this, Anthony!
I find myself wondering what counts as “speculative” vs not. Here are some guesses at sufficient conditions for speculativeness:
An effect is speculative if it is highly sensitive to:
Physical or metaphysical assumptions that are themselves speculative
E.g., theories of cosmology, solutions to the measurement problem in quantum mechanics, theories of consciousness
Facts about the world / mechanisms we’re presently unaware of
E.g., improvements to SOTA AI architectures and training methods, entirely new mechanisms for extinction, facts challenging our current understanding of macroeconomics, biology, etc
I’m also very interested in this question, because it isn’t obvious to me where to draw the line in fields like wild animal welfare. I think I know as little about nematode sentience + welfare, for example, as I do about possible far future beings.
Maybe one difference is that it at least feels possible in theory to get more information about nematodes, but not really possible to get more information about far future beings? Although I’m skeptical of my intuitions here, since maybe it’s easier than I think to get information about far future beings and harder than I think to get information about nematode sentience.