Executive summary: Fanaticism, the view that a tiny probability of an enormous payoff can be better than a guaranteed modest payoff, is difficult to avoid without accepting other highly counterintuitive implications.
Key points:
Non-fanatical theories must either reject seemingly beneficial trades or accept that a series of beneficial trades can make things worse overall.
Non-fanatical theories lead to inconsistencies between high-stakes and low-stakes decisions, either requiring absurd sensitivity to tiny probability changes or abandoning the principle that consistently choosing the better option makes things better.
Non-fanatical theories make our decisions depend on distant events we cannot affect or require us to act against what we know is best based on our uncertainty.
Accepting fanaticism may be better than the alternatives, which each have highly counterintuitive implications.
This strengthens the case for pursuing high-value low-probability interventions, such as lobbying for nuclear disarmament, over guaranteed modest positive impacts.
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Executive summary: Fanaticism, the view that a tiny probability of an enormous payoff can be better than a guaranteed modest payoff, is difficult to avoid without accepting other highly counterintuitive implications.
Key points:
Non-fanatical theories must either reject seemingly beneficial trades or accept that a series of beneficial trades can make things worse overall.
Non-fanatical theories lead to inconsistencies between high-stakes and low-stakes decisions, either requiring absurd sensitivity to tiny probability changes or abandoning the principle that consistently choosing the better option makes things better.
Non-fanatical theories make our decisions depend on distant events we cannot affect or require us to act against what we know is best based on our uncertainty.
Accepting fanaticism may be better than the alternatives, which each have highly counterintuitive implications.
This strengthens the case for pursuing high-value low-probability interventions, such as lobbying for nuclear disarmament, over guaranteed modest positive impacts.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.