Haven’t read the full paper, but I’m recording some brief thoughts on cluelessness here for my own records. In a clueless world, the value of having an active EA-style movement that is at least partly longtermist may come from:
Having a group of people watching the world carefully for potential opportunities to reliably improve the long-term future, so that they can alert the wider world when something comes up that might not be seen by people interested in world events for non-longtermist reasons
Having a group of people developing relevant skills (which seems a bit different than “saving resources”) in case such an opportunity appears, so that action can be taken more swiftly
Offering people with a common interest in longtermism a reason to spend time with each other and hang together; perhaps our research isn’t particularly useful in a clueless world, but even people skeptical about their ability to have an impact now might find value in other activities (whether that’s “writing fiction about existential risks” or “spending research effort on short-term causes as a way of having more certain impact, in case we don’t become more clueful within our own lifetimes”)
I’m sure these ideas aren’t original, and (as with anything I write), I’d be glad to see links to places they’ve been expressed in a better way.
Haven’t read the full paper, but I’m recording some brief thoughts on cluelessness here for my own records. In a clueless world, the value of having an active EA-style movement that is at least partly longtermist may come from:
Having a group of people watching the world carefully for potential opportunities to reliably improve the long-term future, so that they can alert the wider world when something comes up that might not be seen by people interested in world events for non-longtermist reasons
Having a group of people developing relevant skills (which seems a bit different than “saving resources”) in case such an opportunity appears, so that action can be taken more swiftly
Offering people with a common interest in longtermism a reason to spend time with each other and hang together; perhaps our research isn’t particularly useful in a clueless world, but even people skeptical about their ability to have an impact now might find value in other activities (whether that’s “writing fiction about existential risks” or “spending research effort on short-term causes as a way of having more certain impact, in case we don’t become more clueful within our own lifetimes”)
I’m sure these ideas aren’t original, and (as with anything I write), I’d be glad to see links to places they’ve been expressed in a better way.