No offense to Neel’s writing, but it’s instructive that Scott manages to write the same thesis so much better. It:
is 1⁄3 the length
Caveats are naturally interspersed, e.g. “Philosophers shouldn’t be constrained by PR.”
No extraneous content about Norman Borlaug, leverage, etc
has a less bossy title
distills the core question using crisp phrasing, e.g. “Does Long-Termism Ever Come Up With Different Conclusions Than Thoughtful Short-Termism?” (my emphasis)
...and a ton of other things. Long-live the short EA Forum post!
I didn’t mean to imply that you were plagiarising Neel. I more wanted to point out that that many reasonable people (see also Carl Shulman’s podcast) are pointing out that the existential risk argument can go through without the longtermism argument.
I posted the graphic below on twitter back in Nov. These three communities & sets of ideas overlap a lot and I think reinforce one another, but they are intellectually & practically separable, and there are people in each section doing great work. Just because someone is in one section doesn’t mean they have to be, or are, committed to others.
No worries, I’m excited to see more people saying this! (Though I did have some eerie deja vu when reading your post initially...)
I’d be curious if you have any easy-to-articulate feedback re why my post didn’t feel like it was saying the same thing, or how to edit it to be better?
(EDIT: I guess the easiest object-level fix is to edit in a link at the top to your’s, and say that I consider you to be making substantially the same point...)
See also Neel Nanda’s recent Simplify EA Pitches to “Holy Shit, X-Risk”.
No offense to Neel’s writing, but it’s instructive that Scott manages to write the same thesis so much better. It:
is 1⁄3 the length
Caveats are naturally interspersed, e.g. “Philosophers shouldn’t be constrained by PR.”
No extraneous content about Norman Borlaug, leverage, etc
has a less bossy title
distills the core question using crisp phrasing, e.g. “Does Long-Termism Ever Come Up With Different Conclusions Than Thoughtful Short-Termism?” (my emphasis)
...and a ton of other things. Long-live the short EA Forum post!
FWIW I would not be offended if someone said Scott’s writing is better than mine. Scott’s writing is better than almost everyone’s.
Your comment inspired me to work harder to make my writings more Scott-like.
Thanks, I had read that but failed to internalize how much it was saying this same thing. Sorry to Neel for accidentally plagiarizing him.
I didn’t mean to imply that you were plagiarising Neel. I more wanted to point out that that many reasonable people (see also Carl Shulman’s podcast) are pointing out that the existential risk argument can go through without the longtermism argument.
I posted the graphic below on twitter back in Nov. These three communities & sets of ideas overlap a lot and I think reinforce one another, but they are intellectually & practically separable, and there are people in each section doing great work. Just because someone is in one section doesn’t mean they have to be, or are, committed to others.
No worries, I’m excited to see more people saying this! (Though I did have some eerie deja vu when reading your post initially...)
I’d be curious if you have any easy-to-articulate feedback re why my post didn’t feel like it was saying the same thing, or how to edit it to be better?
(EDIT: I guess the easiest object-level fix is to edit in a link at the top to your’s, and say that I consider you to be making substantially the same point...)