Yeah I second this. He argues that many great things have been achieved for civilisation without people trying to optimise for doing the best thing, or spending any time rationally examining what might be best. But then this is just because this is how nearly all human decisions have ever been made. Even if, by random chance, only 0.001% of projects happen to have been the optimal thing for that person to do, we would still be able to point to lots of example of extreme success stories. But this does almost nothing to undermine the case that the world would be a lot better if more people actually tried to do the best thing.
Yeah I second this. He argues that many great things have been achieved for civilisation without people trying to optimise for doing the best thing, or spending any time rationally examining what might be best. But then this is just because this is how nearly all human decisions have ever been made. Even if, by random chance, only 0.001% of projects happen to have been the optimal thing for that person to do, we would still be able to point to lots of example of extreme success stories. But this does almost nothing to undermine the case that the world would be a lot better if more people actually tried to do the best thing.