seems to be responding to tone rather than the substance of the argument.
Thatās roughly true for me saying āIn any case, āutterly obliviousā seems to me to be both a rude phrasing and a strong claim.ā
But I donāt think itās true for my comment as a whole. Masrani makes specific claims here, and the claims are inaccurate.
And given that (I think) weāre interested in the substantive question rather than the social legitimacy of the criticism, I think that it is more useful to engage with the strongest version of the argument.
I think steelmanning is often really useful. But I think thereās also valuing in noticing when a person/āpost/āwhatever is just actually incorrect about something, and in trying to understand what arguments theyāre actually making. Some reasons:
Making it less likely that other people walk away remembering the incorrect claim as actually true
Prioritising which arguments/ācriticisms to bother engaging with
We obviously shouldnāt choose arguments at random from the entire pool of available arguments in the world, or the entire pool of available arguments on a given topic. Itās probably often more efficient to engage with arguments that are already quite strong, rather than steelmanning less strong arguments that we happen to have stumbled upon
So here Iām actually not solely interested in the substantive questions raised by Masraniās post, but also in countering misconceptions that I think the post may have generated, and giving indications of why I think people might find it more useful to engage with other criticisms of longtermism instead (e.g., the ones linked to in the body of my post itself).
One final thing worth noting is that this was a quickly produced post adapting notes Iād made anyway. I do think that if Iād spent quite a while on this, itād be fair to say āWhy didnāt you just talk about the best arguments against longtermism, and the points missing from Greaves & MacAskill, instead?ā
I think that there are valuable points about secondary uncertainty, value of information, and similar issues that are ignored by Greaves and MacAskill in their sketch of the ideal decision-theoretic reasoning.
Yeah, I imagine there are many things in this vicinity that Greaves & MacAskill didnāt cover yet that are relevant to the case for strong longtermism or how to implement it in practice, and Iād be happy to see (a) recommendations of sources where those things are discussed well, and/āor (b) other people generate new useful discussions of those things. Ideally applied to longtermism specifically, but general discussionsāor general discussions plus a quick explanation of the relevanceāseems useful too.
I definitely donāt mean to imply with this post that I see strong longtermism as clearly true; Iām just quickly countering a specific set of misconceptions and objections.
As I mentioned in my other reply, I donāt see as much value in responding to weak-man claims here on the forum, but agree that they can be useful more generally.
Regarding āsecondary uncertainty, value of information, and similar issues,ā Iād be happy to point to sources that are relevant on these topics generally, especially Morgan and Henrionās āUncertainty,ā which is a general introduction to some of these ideas, and my RAND dissertation chairs work on policy making under uncertainty, focused on US DOD decisions, but applicable more widely. Unfortunately, I havenāt put together my ideas on this, and donāt know that anyone at GPI has done so eitherābut I do know that they have engaged with several people at RAND who do this type of work, so itās on their agenda.
Thatās roughly true for me saying āIn any case, āutterly obliviousā seems to me to be both a rude phrasing and a strong claim.ā
But I donāt think itās true for my comment as a whole. Masrani makes specific claims here, and the claims are inaccurate.
I think steelmanning is often really useful. But I think thereās also valuing in noticing when a person/āpost/āwhatever is just actually incorrect about something, and in trying to understand what arguments theyāre actually making. Some reasons:
Something like epistemic spot-checking /ā combatting something like Gell-Mann Amnesia
Making it less likely that other people walk away remembering the incorrect claim as actually true
Prioritising which arguments/ācriticisms to bother engaging with
We obviously shouldnāt choose arguments at random from the entire pool of available arguments in the world, or the entire pool of available arguments on a given topic. Itās probably often more efficient to engage with arguments that are already quite strong, rather than steelmanning less strong arguments that we happen to have stumbled upon
So here Iām actually not solely interested in the substantive questions raised by Masraniās post, but also in countering misconceptions that I think the post may have generated, and giving indications of why I think people might find it more useful to engage with other criticisms of longtermism instead (e.g., the ones linked to in the body of my post itself).
One final thing worth noting is that this was a quickly produced post adapting notes Iād made anyway. I do think that if Iād spent quite a while on this, itād be fair to say āWhy didnāt you just talk about the best arguments against longtermism, and the points missing from Greaves & MacAskill, instead?ā
Yeah, I imagine there are many things in this vicinity that Greaves & MacAskill didnāt cover yet that are relevant to the case for strong longtermism or how to implement it in practice, and Iād be happy to see (a) recommendations of sources where those things are discussed well, and/āor (b) other people generate new useful discussions of those things. Ideally applied to longtermism specifically, but general discussionsāor general discussions plus a quick explanation of the relevanceāseems useful too.
I definitely donāt mean to imply with this post that I see strong longtermism as clearly true; Iām just quickly countering a specific set of misconceptions and objections.
As I mentioned in my other reply, I donāt see as much value in responding to weak-man claims here on the forum, but agree that they can be useful more generally.
Regarding āsecondary uncertainty, value of information, and similar issues,ā Iād be happy to point to sources that are relevant on these topics generally, especially Morgan and Henrionās āUncertainty,ā which is a general introduction to some of these ideas, and my RAND dissertation chairs work on policy making under uncertainty, focused on US DOD decisions, but applicable more widely. Unfortunately, I havenāt put together my ideas on this, and donāt know that anyone at GPI has done so eitherābut I do know that they have engaged with several people at RAND who do this type of work, so itās on their agenda.