In the new 80,000 Hours interview of Toby Ord, Arden Koehler asks:
Arden Koehler: So I’m curious about this second stage: the long reflection. It felt, in the book, like this was basically sitting around and doing moral philosophy. Maybe lots of science and other things and calmly figuring out, how can we most flourish in the future? I’m wondering whether it’s more likely to just look like politics? So you might think if we come to have this big general conversation about how the world should be, our most big general public conversation right now is a political conversation that has a lot of problems. People become very tribal and it’s just not an ideal discourse, let’s say. How likely is it do you think that the long reflection will end up looking more like that? And is that okay? What do you think about that?
Ord then gives a lengthy answer, with the following portion the most directly responsive:
Toby Ord: . . . I think that the political discourse these days is very poor and definitely doesn’t live up to the kinds of standards that I loftily suggest it would need to live up to, trying to actually track the truth and to reach a consensus that stands the test of time that’s not just a political battle between people based on the current levels of power today, at the point where they’ll stop fighting, but rather the kind of thing that you expect people in a thousand years to agree with. I think there’s a very high standard and I think that we’d have [to] try very hard to have a good public conversation about it.
Initial response: Ooh, there’s a new 80k episode?! And it’s with Toby Ord?! [visibly excited, rushes to phone]
Secondary response: Thanks for sharing that! Sounds like, as hoped, his book will provide and prompt a more detailed discussion of this idea than there’s been so far. I look forward to gobbling that up.
In the new 80,000 Hours interview of Toby Ord, Arden Koehler asks:
Ord then gives a lengthy answer, with the following portion the most directly responsive:
Initial response: Ooh, there’s a new 80k episode?! And it’s with Toby Ord?! [visibly excited, rushes to phone]
Secondary response: Thanks for sharing that! Sounds like, as hoped, his book will provide and prompt a more detailed discussion of this idea than there’s been so far. I look forward to gobbling that up.