Well done on voicing harsh criticism. The general conclusion about lax intellectual standards feels plausible to me.
1 specific point of pushback on Karnofsky’s behalf: You complain: ‘He goes on to say that In the scheme of things, this “conservative” view and my view are the same.’
In context, I think the structure of his argument here is as follows: “people reject my claim that space colonization might well start this century because it means we live in a very unusual time, but even if space colonization starts in the next 100k years, we live in nearly as unusual a time, because the period before colonization is still really short compared to the period after. But the objection seems bad against the latter view, so maybe we shouldn’t trust it against my view either.′ Though if that is what he meant, then yes, it could be spelled out more clearly, and would have to be in an analytic philosophy journal.
He does specifically point out that the conservative view and his view have quite different implications for what we should do now: ’It’s true that the “conservative” view doesn’t have the same urgency for our generation in particular. But it still places us among a tiny proportion of people in an incredibly significant time period. And it still raises questions of whether the things we do to make the world better—even if they only have a https://www.cold-takes.com/all-possible-views-about-humanitys-future-are-wild/ 12 tiny flow-through to the world 100,000 years from now—could be amplified to a galactic-historical-outlier degree.′
Well done on voicing harsh criticism. The general conclusion about lax intellectual standards feels plausible to me.
1 specific point of pushback on Karnofsky’s behalf: You complain: ‘He goes on to say that In the scheme of things, this “conservative” view and my view are the same.’
In context, I think the structure of his argument here is as follows: “people reject my claim that space colonization might well start this century because it means we live in a very unusual time, but even if space colonization starts in the next 100k years, we live in nearly as unusual a time, because the period before colonization is still really short compared to the period after. But the objection seems bad against the latter view, so maybe we shouldn’t trust it against my view either.′ Though if that is what he meant, then yes, it could be spelled out more clearly, and would have to be in an analytic philosophy journal.
He does specifically point out that the conservative view and his view have quite different implications for what we should do now: ’It’s true that the “conservative” view doesn’t have the same urgency for our generation in particular. But it still places us among a tiny proportion of people in an incredibly significant time period. And it still raises questions of whether the things we do to make the world better—even if they only have a https://www.cold-takes.com/all-possible-views-about-humanitys-future-are-wild/ 12 tiny flow-through to the world 100,000 years from now—could be amplified to a galactic-historical-outlier degree.′