The Cause Candidates tag has these criteria. You’ll note that Cryonics qualifies, as would e.g. each of kbog’s political proposals, even though I vehemently disagree with them. I think that the case for this is similar to the case in Rule Thinkers In, Not Out
Can you spell both of these points out for me? Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place, but I don’t see anything in that tag description that recommends criteria for cause candidates.
As for Scott’s post, I don’t see anything more than a superficial analogy. His argument is something like ‘the weight by which we improve our estimation of someone for their having a great idea should be much greater than the weight by which we downgrade our estimation of them for having a stupid idea’. Whether or not one agrees with this, what does it have to do with including on this list an expensive luxury that seemingly no-one has argued for on (effective) altruistic grounds?
Right, the criteria in the tag are almost maximally inclusive (“posts which specifically suggest, consider or present a cause area, cause, or intervention. This is independent of the quality of the suggestion, the community consensus about it, or the level of specificity”). This is because I want to distinguish between the gathering step and the evaluation step. I happen to agree that cryonics right now doesn’t feel that promising, but I’d still include it because some evaluation processes might judge it to be valuable after all. Incidentally, this has happened before for me, seeing an idea which struck me as really weird and then later coming to appreciate it (fish welfare)
Per Scott Alexander’s post, considering the N least promising cause candidates in my list would be like a box which has a low chance of producing a really good idea. It will fail most of the time, but produce good ideas otherwise.
Also, cryonics has been discussed in the context of EA, one just has to follow the links in the post:
The Cause Candidates tag has these criteria. You’ll note that Cryonics qualifies, as would e.g. each of kbog’s political proposals, even though I vehemently disagree with them. I think that the case for this is similar to the case in Rule Thinkers In, Not Out
Can you spell both of these points out for me? Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place, but I don’t see anything in that tag description that recommends criteria for cause candidates.
As for Scott’s post, I don’t see anything more than a superficial analogy. His argument is something like ‘the weight by which we improve our estimation of someone for their having a great idea should be much greater than the weight by which we downgrade our estimation of them for having a stupid idea’. Whether or not one agrees with this, what does it have to do with including on this list an expensive luxury that seemingly no-one has argued for on (effective) altruistic grounds?
Right, the criteria in the tag are almost maximally inclusive (“posts which specifically suggest, consider or present a cause area, cause, or intervention. This is independent of the quality of the suggestion, the community consensus about it, or the level of specificity”). This is because I want to distinguish between the gathering step and the evaluation step. I happen to agree that cryonics right now doesn’t feel that promising, but I’d still include it because some evaluation processes might judge it to be valuable after all. Incidentally, this has happened before for me, seeing an idea which struck me as really weird and then later coming to appreciate it (fish welfare)
Per Scott Alexander’s post, considering the N least promising cause candidates in my list would be like a box which has a low chance of producing a really good idea. It will fail most of the time, but produce good ideas otherwise.
Also, cryonics has been discussed in the context of EA, one just has to follow the links in the post:
https://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/07/cryonics-as-charity.html
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Q7PFyobNPwqBsma9g/effective-altruism-and-cryonics-contest-results