Huh, interesting thoughts, have you looked into the actual motivations behind it more? I’d’ve guessed that there was little “big if true” thinking in alchemy and mostly hopes for wealth and power.
Another thought, I suppose alchemy was more technical than something like magical potion brewing and in that way attracted other kinds of people, making it more proto-scientific? Another similar comparison might be sincere altruistic missionaries that work on finding the “true” interpretation of the bible/koran/..., sharing their progress in understanding it and working on convincing others to save them.
Regarding pushing chemnistry being easier than longtermism, I’d have guessed the big reasons why pushing scientific fields is easier are the possibility of repeating experiments and profitability of the knowledge. Are there really longtermists who find it plausible we can only work on x-risk stuff around the hinge? Even patient longtermists seem to want to save resources and I suppose invest in other capacity building. Ah, or do you mean “it’s only possible to *directly* work on x-risk stuff”, vs. indirectly? It just seemed odd to suggest that everything longtermists have done so far has not affected the probability of eventual x-risk, in the very least it has set in motion the longtermism movement earlier and shaping the culture and thinking style and so forth via institutions like FHI.
Huh, interesting thoughts, have you looked into the actual motivations behind it more? I’d’ve guessed that there was little “big if true” thinking in alchemy and mostly hopes for wealth and power.
Another thought, I suppose alchemy was more technical than something like magical potion brewing and in that way attracted other kinds of people, making it more proto-scientific? Another similar comparison might be sincere altruistic missionaries that work on finding the “true” interpretation of the bible/koran/..., sharing their progress in understanding it and working on convincing others to save them.
Regarding pushing chemnistry being easier than longtermism, I’d have guessed the big reasons why pushing scientific fields is easier are the possibility of repeating experiments and profitability of the knowledge. Are there really longtermists who find it plausible we can only work on x-risk stuff around the hinge? Even patient longtermists seem to want to save resources and I suppose invest in other capacity building. Ah, or do you mean “it’s only possible to *directly* work on x-risk stuff”, vs. indirectly? It just seemed odd to suggest that everything longtermists have done so far has not affected the probability of eventual x-risk, in the very least it has set in motion the longtermism movement earlier and shaping the culture and thinking style and so forth via institutions like FHI.