Unfortunately this author has had the bad luck that her new terminology stuck. And it stuck pretty hard.
The term “cluelessness” has been used in the philosophical literature for decades, to refer to the specific and well-defined problem faced by consequentialism and other moral theories which take future consequences into account. Greaves’s talk is a contribution to that literature. She wasn’t even the first to use the term in EA contexts; I believe Amanda Askell and probably other EAs were discussing cluelessness years before this talk.
Yes you are correct. I am not an expert here but my best guess is the story is something like
“Moral cluelessness” was a philosophical term that has been around for a while.
Hilary borrow the philosophy term and extended it to discuss “complex clulessness” (which a quick Google makes me think is a term she invented).
“complex cluelessness” is essentially identical to “deep uncertainty” and such concepts (at least as far as I can tell from reading her work, I think it was this paper I read) .
This and other articles then shorthanded “complex cluelessness” to just “cluelessness”.
I am not sure exactly, happy to be corrected. So maybe not an invented term but maybe a borrowed, slightly changed and then rephrased term. Or something like that. It all gets a bit confusing.
And sorry for picking on this talk if Hilary was just borrowing ideas from others, just saw it on the Decade Review list.
– –
Either way I don’t think this changes the point of my review. It is of course totally fine to invent / reinvent / borrow terminology, (in fact in academic philosophy it is almost a requirement as far as I can tell). And it is of course fine for philosophers to talk like philosophers. I just think sometimes adding new jargon to the EA space can cause more confusion than clarity, and this has been one of those times. I think in this case it would have been much better if EA had got into the habit of using the more common widely used terminology that is more applicable to this topic (this specific topic is not, as far as I can tell, a problem where philosophy has done the bulk of the work to date).
And insofar as the decade review is about reviewing what has been useful 1+ years later I would say this is a nice post that has in actuality turned out unfortunately to be dis-useful / net harmful. Not trying to place blame. Maybe there is just a lesson for all of us on being cautious on introducing terminology.
I’m open to the possibility that there are terms better than “cluelessness” to refer to the problem Hilary discusses in her talk. Perhaps we could continue this discussion elsewhere, such as on the ‘talk’ page of the cluelessness Wiki entry (note that the entry is currently just a stub)?
As noted, the term has been used in philosophy for quite some time. So if equivalent or related expressions exist in other disciplines, the question is, “Which of these terms should we settle for?” Whereas you make it seem like using “cluelessness” requires a special justification, relative to the other choices.
Since Hilary didn’t introduce the term, either in philosophy or in EA, it seems inappropriate to evaluate her talk negatively, even granting that it would have been desirable if a term other than “cluelessness” had become established.
Separately, I think Hilary’s talk is a valuable contribution to the problem, so I don’t think it warrants a negative evaluation. (But maybe you disagree and your views about the substance of the talk also influenced your assessment? In your follow-up comment, you say that the problem “has reasonable solutions”, though I am personally not aware of any such solution.)
The EA Forum wiki has talk pages!! Wow you learn something new every day :-)
Separately, I think Hilary’s talk is a valuable contribution to the problem, so I don’t think it warrants a negative evaluation
Yes I think that is ultimately the thing we disagree on. And perhaps it is one of those subjective things that we will always disagree on (e.g. maybe different life experiences means you read some content as new and exciting and I read the same thing as old and repetitive).
If I had to condense why I didn’t think it is a valuable contribution is it looks to me (given my background) that it is reinventing the wheel.
The rough topic of how to make decisions under uncertainty about the impact of those decisions (uncertainty about what the options are, what the probabilities are, how to decide, what is even valuable ect) in the face of unknown unknowns, etc – is a topic that military planners, risk managers, academics and others have been researching for decades. And they have a host of solutions: anti-fragility, robust-decision making, assumption based planning, sequence thinking, adaptive planning. And they have views on when to make such decisions, when to do more research, how to respond, etc.
I think any thorough analysis of the options for addressing uncertainty/cluelessness really should draw on some of that literature (before dismissing options like “make bolder estimates” / “make the analysis more sophisticated”) . Otherwise it would be like trying to reinvent the wheel, suggesting it should be square and then concluding it cannot be done and wheels don’t work.
Hope that explains where I am coming from.
(PS. To reiterate, in Hilary’s defense, EAs reinvent wheels all the time. No1 top flaw and all that. I just think this specific case has lead to lots of confusion. Eg people thinking there is no good research into uncertainty management)
Just to build on what Pablo has been saying, the term “cluelessness” goes back to at least 2000 where James Lenman used it specifically as an argument against consequentialism. Hilary in her 2016 paper was responding specifically to Lenman’s critique, so it seems fair that she used the term cluelessness there, and in this particular talk. She was indeed the first person to draw a distinction between “simple” and “complex” cluelessness.
By the way, in that paper Hilary has a footnote saying:
Here I am in agreement with Smart (1973, p.34), Kagan (1998, p.63) and Mason (2004), each of whom initially raises the issue of cluelessness in the context of consequentialism, but then notes that in fact the problem affects a much wider class of moral theories. In contrast, many others appear to regard the problem as peculiar to consequentialism (including: Norcross (1990), Lenman (2000), Cowen (2006), Feldman (2006), Dorsey (2012), Burch-Brown (2014)).
So the term may go all the way back to Smart in 1973 but I can’t be certain as I can’t access the specific text cited.
Regarding other terms such as Knightian Uncertainty. I’m far from sure about all this, but Knightian uncertainty seems something that we can work around and account for within a particular ethical framework (say consequentialism) through various tools—as you imply. However, cluelessness is an argument against ethical frameworks themselves, including consequentialism. In this case these seem very different concepts that rightly are referred to differently. (EDIT: although admittedly cluelessness has become something we are trying to work around within a consequentialist framework so you’re not entirely wrong...).
Sure, “cluelessness” is a long standing philosophical term that is “an argument against ethical frameworks themselves, including consequentialism”. Very happy to accept that.
But that doesn’t seem to be the case here in this talk. Hilary says “how confident should we be really that the cost-effectiveness analysis we’ve got is any decent guide at all to how we should be spending our money? That’s the worry that I call ‘cluelessness’”. This seems to be a practical decision making problem.
Which is why it looks like to me that a term has been borrowed from philosophy, and used in another context. (And even if it was never the intent to do so it seems to me that people in EA took the term to be used as pointing to the practical decision making challenges of making decisions under uncertainty.)
Borrowing terms happens all the time but unfortunately in this case it appears to have caused some confusion along the way. It would have been simpler to use the keep the philosophy term in the philosophy box to talk about topics such as the limits of knowledge and so on, and to use one of the terms from decision making (like “deep uncertainty”) to talk about practical issues like making decisions about where to donate given the things we don’t know, and kept everything nice and simple.
But also it is not really a big deal. Kind of confusing / pet peeve level, but no-one uses the right words all the time, I certainly don’t. (If there is a thing this post does badly it is the reinventing the wheel point, see my response to Pablo above, and the word choice is a part of that broader confusion about how to approach uncertainty).
To be a bit more concrete, I spend my time talking to politicians, policy makers, risk mangers, climate scientists, military strategists, activists. I think most of these people would understand “deep uncertainty” and “wicked problem” but less so “cluelessness”. I think they would mean the same thing by this term as this post means by “cluelessness”. I think the fact that “cluelessness” became the popular term in EA has made things a bit more challenging for me.
I recognise that expecting people to police their language against the possibility some term they introduce their audience to is suboptimal is a high bar. Philosophers use philosophy language and that is obviously fine. I just wish “cluelessness” hadn’t been the term that seemed to stick in EA and that one of these other words had been used (and also I think that the talk could have benefited from recognising that this is an issue that gets attention and has reasonable solutions outside of philosophy).
My understanding is that “complex cluelessness” is not essentially identical to”deep uncertainty”, although “deep uncertainty” could mean a few things and I’m not sure exactly what you have in mind.
My understanding is also that the term is not essentially identical to “uncertainty” “Knightian uncertainty” “wicked problems” “extreme model uncertainty” or “fragile credences”
I do however think that EAs often use the term “cluelessness” incorrectly in a way that makes it more similar to these other terms. I think this is because cluelessness is a confusing topic to wrap ones head around correctly.
Hmmm … I am not sure what it means that EAs use the term “cluelessness” incorrectly. I honestly never hear the term used outside of EA. So have been I assuming the way EAs use it is the only way (and hence correct), so maybe I have been using it incorrectly.
Would love some more clarity if you have time to provide it!
As far as I can tell
“complex clulessness” as defined by Hilary here just seems to be one specific form of (or maybe specific way of rephrasing) deep uncertainty , so a subcategory of “Knightian uncertainty” as defined by Wikipedia or “Deep uncertainty” as defined here.
“clulessness” as it is most commonly used by EAs seems to be the same as “Knightian uncertainty” as defined by Wikipedia or “deep uncertainty” as defined here.
The term “cluelessness” has been used in the philosophical literature for decades, to refer to the specific and well-defined problem faced by consequentialism and other moral theories which take future consequences into account. Greaves’s talk is a contribution to that literature. She wasn’t even the first to use the term in EA contexts; I believe Amanda Askell and probably other EAs were discussing cluelessness years before this talk.
Yes you are correct. I am not an expert here but my best guess is the story is something like
“Moral cluelessness” was a philosophical term that has been around for a while.
Hilary borrow the philosophy term and extended it to discuss “complex clulessness” (which a quick Google makes me think is a term she invented).
“complex cluelessness” is essentially identical to “deep uncertainty” and such concepts (at least as far as I can tell from reading her work, I think it was this paper I read) .
This and other articles then shorthanded “complex cluelessness” to just “cluelessness”.
I am not sure exactly, happy to be corrected. So maybe not an invented term but maybe a borrowed, slightly changed and then rephrased term. Or something like that. It all gets a bit confusing.
And sorry for picking on this talk if Hilary was just borrowing ideas from others, just saw it on the Decade Review list.
– –
Either way I don’t think this changes the point of my review. It is of course totally fine to invent / reinvent / borrow terminology, (in fact in academic philosophy it is almost a requirement as far as I can tell). And it is of course fine for philosophers to talk like philosophers. I just think sometimes adding new jargon to the EA space can cause more confusion than clarity, and this has been one of those times. I think in this case it would have been much better if EA had got into the habit of using the more common widely used terminology that is more applicable to this topic (this specific topic is not, as far as I can tell, a problem where philosophy has done the bulk of the work to date).
And insofar as the decade review is about reviewing what has been useful 1+ years later I would say this is a nice post that has in actuality turned out unfortunately to be dis-useful / net harmful. Not trying to place blame. Maybe there is just a lesson for all of us on being cautious on introducing terminology.
A few thoughts:
I’m open to the possibility that there are terms better than “cluelessness” to refer to the problem Hilary discusses in her talk. Perhaps we could continue this discussion elsewhere, such as on the ‘talk’ page of the cluelessness Wiki entry (note that the entry is currently just a stub)?
As noted, the term has been used in philosophy for quite some time. So if equivalent or related expressions exist in other disciplines, the question is, “Which of these terms should we settle for?” Whereas you make it seem like using “cluelessness” requires a special justification, relative to the other choices.
Since Hilary didn’t introduce the term, either in philosophy or in EA, it seems inappropriate to evaluate her talk negatively, even granting that it would have been desirable if a term other than “cluelessness” had become established.
Separately, I think Hilary’s talk is a valuable contribution to the problem, so I don’t think it warrants a negative evaluation. (But maybe you disagree and your views about the substance of the talk also influenced your assessment? In your follow-up comment, you say that the problem “has reasonable solutions”, though I am personally not aware of any such solution.)
The EA Forum wiki has talk pages!! Wow you learn something new every day :-)
Yes I think that is ultimately the thing we disagree on. And perhaps it is one of those subjective things that we will always disagree on (e.g. maybe different life experiences means you read some content as new and exciting and I read the same thing as old and repetitive).
If I had to condense why I didn’t think it is a valuable contribution is it looks to me (given my background) that it is reinventing the wheel.
The rough topic of how to make decisions under uncertainty about the impact of those decisions (uncertainty about what the options are, what the probabilities are, how to decide, what is even valuable ect) in the face of unknown unknowns, etc – is a topic that military planners, risk managers, academics and others have been researching for decades. And they have a host of solutions: anti-fragility, robust-decision making, assumption based planning, sequence thinking, adaptive planning. And they have views on when to make such decisions, when to do more research, how to respond, etc.
I think any thorough analysis of the options for addressing uncertainty/cluelessness really should draw on some of that literature (before dismissing options like “make bolder estimates” / “make the analysis more sophisticated”) . Otherwise it would be like trying to reinvent the wheel, suggesting it should be square and then concluding it cannot be done and wheels don’t work.
Hope that explains where I am coming from.
(PS. To reiterate, in Hilary’s defense, EAs reinvent wheels all the time. No1 top flaw and all that. I just think this specific case has lead to lots of confusion. Eg people thinking there is no good research into uncertainty management)
Thanks for the reply. Although this doesn’t resolve our disagreement, it helps to clarify it.
Thank you Pablo. Have edited my review. Hopefully it is fairer and more clear now. Thank you for the helpful feedback!!
Just to build on what Pablo has been saying, the term “cluelessness” goes back to at least 2000 where James Lenman used it specifically as an argument against consequentialism. Hilary in her 2016 paper was responding specifically to Lenman’s critique, so it seems fair that she used the term cluelessness there, and in this particular talk. She was indeed the first person to draw a distinction between “simple” and “complex” cluelessness.
By the way, in that paper Hilary has a footnote saying:
So the term may go all the way back to Smart in 1973 but I can’t be certain as I can’t access the specific text cited.
Regarding other terms such as Knightian Uncertainty. I’m far from sure about all this, but Knightian uncertainty seems something that we can work around and account for within a particular ethical framework (say consequentialism) through various tools—as you imply. However, cluelessness is an argument against ethical frameworks themselves, including consequentialism. In this case these seem very different concepts that rightly are referred to differently. (EDIT: although admittedly cluelessness has become something we are trying to work around within a consequentialist framework so you’re not entirely wrong...).
Hi Jack, lovely to get your input.
Sure, “cluelessness” is a long standing philosophical term that is “an argument against ethical frameworks themselves, including consequentialism”. Very happy to accept that.
But that doesn’t seem to be the case here in this talk. Hilary says “how confident should we be really that the cost-effectiveness analysis we’ve got is any decent guide at all to how we should be spending our money? That’s the worry that I call ‘cluelessness’”. This seems to be a practical decision making problem.
Which is why it looks like to me that a term has been borrowed from philosophy, and used in another context. (And even if it was never the intent to do so it seems to me that people in EA took the term to be used as pointing to the practical decision making challenges of making decisions under uncertainty.)
Borrowing terms happens all the time but unfortunately in this case it appears to have caused some confusion along the way. It would have been simpler to use the keep the philosophy term in the philosophy box to talk about topics such as the limits of knowledge and so on, and to use one of the terms from decision making (like “deep uncertainty”) to talk about practical issues like making decisions about where to donate given the things we don’t know, and kept everything nice and simple.
But also it is not really a big deal. Kind of confusing / pet peeve level, but no-one uses the right words all the time, I certainly don’t. (If there is a thing this post does badly it is the reinventing the wheel point, see my response to Pablo above, and the word choice is a part of that broader confusion about how to approach uncertainty).
Thank you Pablo. Have edited my review. Hopefully it is fairer and more clear now. Thank you for the helpful feedback!!
To be a bit more concrete, I spend my time talking to politicians, policy makers, risk mangers, climate scientists, military strategists, activists. I think most of these people would understand “deep uncertainty” and “wicked problem” but less so “cluelessness”. I think they would mean the same thing by this term as this post means by “cluelessness”. I think the fact that “cluelessness” became the popular term in EA has made things a bit more challenging for me.
I recognise that expecting people to police their language against the possibility some term they introduce their audience to is suboptimal is a high bar. Philosophers use philosophy language and that is obviously fine. I just wish “cluelessness” hadn’t been the term that seemed to stick in EA and that one of these other words had been used (and also I think that the talk could have benefited from recognising that this is an issue that gets attention and has reasonable solutions outside of philosophy).
My understanding is that “complex cluelessness” is not essentially identical to”deep uncertainty”, although “deep uncertainty” could mean a few things and I’m not sure exactly what you have in mind.
My understanding is also that the term is not essentially identical to “uncertainty” “Knightian uncertainty” “wicked problems” “extreme model uncertainty” or “fragile credences”
I do however think that EAs often use the term “cluelessness” incorrectly in a way that makes it more similar to these other terms. I think this is because cluelessness is a confusing topic to wrap ones head around correctly.
Hmmm … I am not sure what it means that EAs use the term “cluelessness” incorrectly. I honestly never hear the term used outside of EA. So have been I assuming the way EAs use it is the only way (and hence correct), so maybe I have been using it incorrectly.
Would love some more clarity if you have time to provide it!
As far as I can tell
“complex clulessness” as defined by Hilary here just seems to be one specific form of (or maybe specific way of rephrasing) deep uncertainty , so a subcategory of “Knightian uncertainty” as defined by Wikipedia or “Deep uncertainty” as defined here.
“clulessness” as it is most commonly used by EAs seems to be the same as “Knightian uncertainty” as defined by Wikipedia or “deep uncertainty” as defined here.
Is that correct?