Do you see cluelessness to be decreasing, steady, or increasing?
As in, are we getting better are predicting longterm outcomes or do you think we are no better than centuries ago?
One vote for decreasing cluelessness: improved epistemic practices such as RCTs, peer review, more advanced statistics, and prediction markets. There used to be many actions which we were deeply unsure about the near-term consequences of (ex. is bleeding this patient a good idea), and now our best predictions seem justifiably more confident. The evidence for improved long-term predictions seems less obvious, but still directionally improving.
I’d guess we’re getting slightly better, yep. I might put less weight on the evidence you mention, than on: “We’re living in a period of really unprecedented AI progress, seems like that puts in a better position to reason about the mechanisms governing the far future than ever before.”
Do you see cluelessness to be decreasing, steady, or increasing?
As in, are we getting better are predicting longterm outcomes or do you think we are no better than centuries ago?
One vote for decreasing cluelessness: improved epistemic practices such as RCTs, peer review, more advanced statistics, and prediction markets. There used to be many actions which we were deeply unsure about the near-term consequences of (ex. is bleeding this patient a good idea), and now our best predictions seem justifiably more confident. The evidence for improved long-term predictions seems less obvious, but still directionally improving.
I’d guess we’re getting slightly better, yep. I might put less weight on the evidence you mention, than on: “We’re living in a period of really unprecedented AI progress, seems like that puts in a better position to reason about the mechanisms governing the far future than ever before.”