I made a critique of EA that I think qualifies as “deep” in the sense that it challenges basic mechanisms established for bayesianism as EA’s practice it, what you call IBT, but also epistemic motives or attitude. This was not my red-team, but something a bit different.
The Scout Mindset offers a partitioning of attitudes relevant to epistemics if its categories of “scout” and “soldier” are interpreted broadly. If I have an objection to Julia Galef’s book “The Scout Mindset”, it is in its discussion of odds. Simply the mention of “odds.” I see it as a minor flaw in an otherwise wonderful and helpful book. But it is a flaw. Well, it goes further, I know, but that’s an aside.
A current of betting addiction running through EA could qualify as a cause for acceptance of FTX money. These crypto-currency markets are known financial risks and also known purveyors to corrupt financial interests. Their lack of regulation has been noted by the SEC and for years, crypto has been associated with scams. For the last couple years, the addition of obviously worthless financial instruments via “web3” was an even bigger sign of trouble. However, to someone who sees betting as a fun, normal, or necessary activity, an investment or placement of faith in FTX makes more sense. It’s just another bet.
The vice of betting, one of the possibilities that explains IBT results, is in my view obvious, and has been known for 1000′s of years, to have bad results. While you EA folks associate betting with many types of outcomes other than earnings for yourselves, and many scenarios of use of money (for example, investments in charitable efforts), overall, betting should have the same implications to you as it has had to human communities for 1000′s of years. It leads away from positive intentions and outcomes, and corrupts its practitioners. The human mind distorts betting odds in the pursuit of the positive outcome of a bet. Far from improving your epistemics, betting hinders your epistemics. On this one point, folks like Julia Galef and Annie Duke are wrong.
When did EA folks decide that old, generations-tested ideas of vices, were irrelevant? I think, if there’s a failure in the “smartest people in the room” mentality that EA fosters, it’s in the rejection of common knowledge about human failings. Consequences of vices identify themselves easily. However you consider their presence in common-sense morality, common knowledge is there for you.
Meanwhile, I don’t know the etiology of the “easy going” approach to vices common now. While I can see that many people’s behaviors in life remain stable despite their vices, many others fall, and perhaps it’s just a question of when. In a group, vices are corrosive. They can harm everyone else too, eventually, somehow. You built EA on the metaphor of betting. That will come back to bite you, over and over.
Your many suggestions are worthwhile, and Scout Mindset is a necessary part of them, but Galef didn’t address vices, and you folks didn’t either, even though vices wreck individual epistemics and thereby group epistemics. They’re an undercurrent in EA, just like in many other groups. Structural changes that ignore relevant vices are not enough here.
You folks lost billions of dollars promised by a crypto guy. Consider the vice of betting as a cause, for your choice to trust in him and his actions in response and in general. Regardless of whether it was corrupt or sanctioned betting, it was still betting, the same movie, the typical ending. Well, actually, since betting is now a sport and skilled bettors are now heroes, I guess common knowledge isn’t so common anymore, at least if you watch the movies.
I made a critique of EA that I think qualifies as “deep” in the sense that it challenges basic mechanisms established for bayesianism as EA’s practice it, what you call IBT, but also epistemic motives or attitude. This was not my red-team, but something a bit different.
The Scout Mindset offers a partitioning of attitudes relevant to epistemics if its categories of “scout” and “soldier” are interpreted broadly. If I have an objection to Julia Galef’s book “The Scout Mindset”, it is in its discussion of odds. Simply the mention of “odds.” I see it as a minor flaw in an otherwise wonderful and helpful book. But it is a flaw. Well, it goes further, I know, but that’s an aside.
A current of betting addiction running through EA could qualify as a cause for acceptance of FTX money. These crypto-currency markets are known financial risks and also known purveyors to corrupt financial interests. Their lack of regulation has been noted by the SEC and for years, crypto has been associated with scams. For the last couple years, the addition of obviously worthless financial instruments via “web3” was an even bigger sign of trouble. However, to someone who sees betting as a fun, normal, or necessary activity, an investment or placement of faith in FTX makes more sense. It’s just another bet.
The vice of betting, one of the possibilities that explains IBT results, is in my view obvious, and has been known for 1000′s of years, to have bad results. While you EA folks associate betting with many types of outcomes other than earnings for yourselves, and many scenarios of use of money (for example, investments in charitable efforts), overall, betting should have the same implications to you as it has had to human communities for 1000′s of years. It leads away from positive intentions and outcomes, and corrupts its practitioners. The human mind distorts betting odds in the pursuit of the positive outcome of a bet. Far from improving your epistemics, betting hinders your epistemics. On this one point, folks like Julia Galef and Annie Duke are wrong.
When did EA folks decide that old, generations-tested ideas of vices, were irrelevant? I think, if there’s a failure in the “smartest people in the room” mentality that EA fosters, it’s in the rejection of common knowledge about human failings. Consequences of vices identify themselves easily. However you consider their presence in common-sense morality, common knowledge is there for you.
Meanwhile, I don’t know the etiology of the “easy going” approach to vices common now. While I can see that many people’s behaviors in life remain stable despite their vices, many others fall, and perhaps it’s just a question of when. In a group, vices are corrosive. They can harm everyone else too, eventually, somehow. You built EA on the metaphor of betting. That will come back to bite you, over and over.
Your many suggestions are worthwhile, and Scout Mindset is a necessary part of them, but Galef didn’t address vices, and you folks didn’t either, even though vices wreck individual epistemics and thereby group epistemics. They’re an undercurrent in EA, just like in many other groups. Structural changes that ignore relevant vices are not enough here.
You folks lost billions of dollars promised by a crypto guy. Consider the vice of betting as a cause, for your choice to trust in him and his actions in response and in general. Regardless of whether it was corrupt or sanctioned betting, it was still betting, the same movie, the typical ending. Well, actually, since betting is now a sport and skilled bettors are now heroes, I guess common knowledge isn’t so common anymore, at least if you watch the movies.