The idea of a “polycrisis” strikes me as a bit nebulous—can we name any points in human history in which there weren’t several ongoing tangentially-connected crises at once? This seems like it’s just a universal condition of global civilization, insofar as the news defines a “crisis” as “whatever problems are most newsworthy at the moment”. In March 2020, there was no “polycrisis”—instead we had the rare monocrisis, when the problem of a global pandemic was big enough to obviously outclass all other problems. Similar moments of monocrisis—world war in 1939, nuclear tensions in 1963, etc—seem more serious than the worst moments of ambient polycrisis. (1918, with pandemic + war? To some extent all crises can be described as poly, eg WW2 featuring simultaneous pacific and atlantic theaters.)
I also don’t think that we realistically need to worry too much about EA becoming such a dominant worldview that it crowds out all competitors/successors and all of its flaws as a movement become permanently embedded into the edifice of civilization. EA is growing fast, certainly. Also, EA philosophy aspires to be / sometimes acts like it is a totalizing and complete system of knowledge offering solutions to all worldly problems… this naturally makes it easy to imagine a future world where EA really does become enthroned as the final philosophy. But I don’t think that EA is really a complete philosophy in that way, and neither I suspect do many of EA’s biggest supporters. (A few glaring examples: It doesn’t have much to offer in terms of helping people find happiness and understand themselves in the way that mindfulness traditions do. It doesn’t offer much of a vision for community / family life. And it doesn’t have enough to say about politics and governance here in the developed world, thus spawning spinoff movements like “progress studies”.) I think even if EA becomes extremely successful in the future, it will still eventually be surpassed or complemented by other movements and philosophies that address its flaws/gaps.
[Unrelated to the above two comments: as a happily married man, I declare that I am personally innocent of wrongdoing in any “poly” crisis that rationalist culture might inadvertently be stirring up.]
Your first paragraph is basically Littlewood’s Law, and since humans have a bias towards more interesting or controversial stories, everything seems like a crisis or miracle. It’s also why the news is useless nowadays.
Thanks for the helpful input and bearing with me as I circled back (it’s been a pretty hectic period!).
Re the conceptualisation of polycrsis, I’d agree that this is pretty universal condition of globalised society. I should probably clarify upfront that I’m not claiming this is a new thing, but that focusing on the interconnection of crises nonetheless is a valuable frame for approaching them. I’d probbaly also put the pandemic in the poly rather than mono category, given the knock on economic effects etc but that’s somewhat of a tangental point.
Re EA’s success, I definitely take your point. I think again I should clarify that my claim here is not that EA will itself dominate and lead the world astray, but that its current activity is contributng to/propping up a way of viewing the world which is potentialy harmful. My view, and the argument above, is that this is something to be concerned about even if we think this contribution is in the grand scheme of things relatively minor at this stage, given the potential consequences and moral opportunity costs vs trying to advance aa contray worldview.
Re Littlewood’s Law, thanks for sharing the interestig article! I definitely take your point and think we should discount for thos perceptual biases in our assessments. I would still probably claim, though, that even despite this we are in a particular time of crisis. I know there’s debate about the hingey-ness of the present time (to borrow MacAskill’s term) so perhaps we just diverge around that assessment, which is certainly fair enough.
The idea of a “polycrisis” strikes me as a bit nebulous—can we name any points in human history in which there weren’t several ongoing tangentially-connected crises at once? This seems like it’s just a universal condition of global civilization, insofar as the news defines a “crisis” as “whatever problems are most newsworthy at the moment”. In March 2020, there was no “polycrisis”—instead we had the rare monocrisis, when the problem of a global pandemic was big enough to obviously outclass all other problems. Similar moments of monocrisis—world war in 1939, nuclear tensions in 1963, etc—seem more serious than the worst moments of ambient polycrisis. (1918, with pandemic + war? To some extent all crises can be described as poly, eg WW2 featuring simultaneous pacific and atlantic theaters.)
I also don’t think that we realistically need to worry too much about EA becoming such a dominant worldview that it crowds out all competitors/successors and all of its flaws as a movement become permanently embedded into the edifice of civilization. EA is growing fast, certainly. Also, EA philosophy aspires to be / sometimes acts like it is a totalizing and complete system of knowledge offering solutions to all worldly problems… this naturally makes it easy to imagine a future world where EA really does become enthroned as the final philosophy. But I don’t think that EA is really a complete philosophy in that way, and neither I suspect do many of EA’s biggest supporters. (A few glaring examples: It doesn’t have much to offer in terms of helping people find happiness and understand themselves in the way that mindfulness traditions do. It doesn’t offer much of a vision for community / family life. And it doesn’t have enough to say about politics and governance here in the developed world, thus spawning spinoff movements like “progress studies”.) I think even if EA becomes extremely successful in the future, it will still eventually be surpassed or complemented by other movements and philosophies that address its flaws/gaps.
[Unrelated to the above two comments: as a happily married man, I declare that I am personally innocent of wrongdoing in any “poly” crisis that rationalist culture might inadvertently be stirring up.]
Your first paragraph is basically Littlewood’s Law, and since humans have a bias towards more interesting or controversial stories, everything seems like a crisis or miracle. It’s also why the news is useless nowadays.
Article about Littlewood’s Law here: https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood#:~:text=At a global scale%2C anything,networked global media covering
Hi both,
Thanks for the helpful input and bearing with me as I circled back (it’s been a pretty hectic period!).
Re the conceptualisation of polycrsis, I’d agree that this is pretty universal condition of globalised society. I should probably clarify upfront that I’m not claiming this is a new thing, but that focusing on the interconnection of crises nonetheless is a valuable frame for approaching them. I’d probbaly also put the pandemic in the poly rather than mono category, given the knock on economic effects etc but that’s somewhat of a tangental point.
Re EA’s success, I definitely take your point. I think again I should clarify that my claim here is not that EA will itself dominate and lead the world astray, but that its current activity is contributng to/propping up a way of viewing the world which is potentialy harmful. My view, and the argument above, is that this is something to be concerned about even if we think this contribution is in the grand scheme of things relatively minor at this stage, given the potential consequences and moral opportunity costs vs trying to advance aa contray worldview.
Re Littlewood’s Law, thanks for sharing the interestig article! I definitely take your point and think we should discount for thos perceptual biases in our assessments. I would still probably claim, though, that even despite this we are in a particular time of crisis. I know there’s debate about the hingey-ness of the present time (to borrow MacAskill’s term) so perhaps we just diverge around that assessment, which is certainly fair enough.