I think you may have in mind the argument that we’re living at the most influential time specifically due toextinctionrisk being high?
I don’t think I only mean extinction risk. We could have say a nuclear war and it not cause us to go extinct, but it be sufficiently harmful as to significantly curtail our future potential. My point is that this could happen very soon and it could be that most broad methods of promoting positive values such as altruism and concern for sentient beings (e.g. through promoting philosophy in schools) are just too slow and indirect to significantly reduce these technology-based existential threats in the short-run.
if we spread moral concern for future generations and something like “the virtue of prudently attending to low-probability, high-stakes risks”, that could lead to more resources going towards extinction risk reduction. (Though if we think the time of perils is quite short and right now, that probably pushes against promoting positive values, as that’s probably a slower-moving intervention than interventions like directly improving AI safety or biosecurity.)
I agree with this. There may be some values spreading we can do now to those who are currently in power to reduce near term threats, but I’m unsure how tractable these efforts would be. Also I guess that such efforts are to some extent entailed in current AI / bio safety research work.
I may have been wrong to lump all values-building work in the same box, but I do see promoting philosophy in schools as something that will only bear fruit after a few decades when today’s children become those in influential positions, and even then it may only be modest effects in the short-run. To quote my post:
values-building would only be ‘finished’ if we had figured out the ‘perfect’ values and successfully embedded them into all influential institutions and people
Overall I guess I don’t see attempts to broadly promote positive values as being effective in countering any existential threat that may happen anytime soon (including value lock-in events). It’s probably only justified by appealing to the fact that we currently spend a lot of resources on near-term existential threats and that we should diversify in recognition of the possibility of there being value lock-in threats in the mid to far future too.
I don’t think I only mean extinction risk. We could have say a nuclear war and it not cause us to go extinct, but it be sufficiently harmful as to significantly curtail our future potential.
Oh, yes, I should’ve had “extinction and unrecoverable collapse” on one side and “value lock-in / unrecoverable dystopia” on the other, rather than having only “extinction” on the first side. My mistake.
I also largely agree with the rest of your comment. I think value promotion will tend to pay off slower than many (though not all) other longtermist interventions, and that this is true of promoting philosophy in schools in particular (which is the key point for this post).
I don’t think I only mean extinction risk. We could have say a nuclear war and it not cause us to go extinct, but it be sufficiently harmful as to significantly curtail our future potential. My point is that this could happen very soon and it could be that most broad methods of promoting positive values such as altruism and concern for sentient beings (e.g. through promoting philosophy in schools) are just too slow and indirect to significantly reduce these technology-based existential threats in the short-run.
I agree with this. There may be some values spreading we can do now to those who are currently in power to reduce near term threats, but I’m unsure how tractable these efforts would be. Also I guess that such efforts are to some extent entailed in current AI / bio safety research work.
I may have been wrong to lump all values-building work in the same box, but I do see promoting philosophy in schools as something that will only bear fruit after a few decades when today’s children become those in influential positions, and even then it may only be modest effects in the short-run. To quote my post:
Overall I guess I don’t see attempts to broadly promote positive values as being effective in countering any existential threat that may happen anytime soon (including value lock-in events). It’s probably only justified by appealing to the fact that we currently spend a lot of resources on near-term existential threats and that we should diversify in recognition of the possibility of there being value lock-in threats in the mid to far future too.
Oh, yes, I should’ve had “extinction and unrecoverable collapse” on one side and “value lock-in / unrecoverable dystopia” on the other, rather than having only “extinction” on the first side. My mistake.
I also largely agree with the rest of your comment. I think value promotion will tend to pay off slower than many (though not all) other longtermist interventions, and that this is true of promoting philosophy in schools in particular (which is the key point for this post).