I asked GPT-3 your question 10 times. Answers: - Hitler 7
- Judas Iscariot 1
- Napolean Bonaparte 1
- Genghis Khan 1
I then tried to exclude Hitler by saying “Aside from Adolf Hitler” and asked this 10 times as well (some answers gave multiple people). Answers:
- Stalin 5
- Mao Zedong 3
- Pol Pot 2
- Christopher Columbus 1
- Bashar al-Assad 1
The answer to the bonus questions is basically always of the form: “The obvious counterfactual to this harm is that Stalin never came to power, or that he was removed from power before he could do any damage. The ideal counterfactual is that Stalin never existed. As for what an ambitious, altruistic, and talented person at the time could have done to mitigate this harm, it is difficult to say. More hypothetically, an EA-like community could have worked to remove Stalin from power, or to prevent him from ever coming to power in the first place.”
Not sure how helpful this is, but perhaps it is interesting to get a sense of what the “typical” answer might be.
I asked GPT-3 your question 10 times. Answers:
- Hitler 7
- Judas Iscariot 1
- Napolean Bonaparte 1
- Genghis Khan 1
I then tried to exclude Hitler by saying “Aside from Adolf Hitler” and asked this 10 times as well (some answers gave multiple people). Answers:
- Stalin 5
- Mao Zedong 3
- Pol Pot 2
- Christopher Columbus 1
- Bashar al-Assad 1
The answer to the bonus questions is basically always of the form: “The obvious counterfactual to this harm is that Stalin never came to power, or that he was removed from power before he could do any damage. The ideal counterfactual is that Stalin never existed. As for what an ambitious, altruistic, and talented person at the time could have done to mitigate this harm, it is difficult to say. More hypothetically, an EA-like community could have worked to remove Stalin from power, or to prevent him from ever coming to power in the first place.”
Not sure how helpful this is, but perhaps it is interesting to get a sense of what the “typical” answer might be.