“It forces the suffering-concerned agents to make trade-offs between preventing suffering and increasing their ability to create more of what they value. Meanwhile, those who don’t care about suffering don’t face this trade-off and can focus on optimizing for what they value without worrying about the suffering they might (in)directly cause.”
Hi Jim, is it really the case that spending effort preventing suffering harms your ability to spread your values? Take religious people, they spend much effort doing religion stuff which is not exactly for the purpose of optimizing their survival, yet religious people also tend to be happier, healthier, and have more children than non religious people(no citation, seems true though if all else equal).
Could it be the case those whom don’t optimize for reducing suffering, instead of optimizing for spreading their values, optimize or do something else that decreases the likelihood of their values spreading?
Also, why now? Why haven’t we already reached or are close to equilibrium for reducing suffering vs etc since selection pressures have been here long time
Right now, in rich countries, we seem to live in an unusual period Robin Hanson (2009) calls “the Dream Time”. You can survive valuing pretty much whatever you want, which is why there isn’t much selection pressure on values. This likely won’t go on forever, especially if Humanity starts colonizing space.
(Re religion. This is anecdotical but since you brought up this example: in the past, I think religious people would have been much less successful at spreading their values if they were more concerned about the suffering of the people they were trying to convert. The growth of religion was far from being a harm-free process.)
“It forces the suffering-concerned agents to make trade-offs between preventing suffering and increasing their ability to create more of what they value. Meanwhile, those who don’t care about suffering don’t face this trade-off and can focus on optimizing for what they value without worrying about the suffering they might (in)directly cause.”
Hi Jim, is it really the case that spending effort preventing suffering harms your ability to spread your values? Take religious people, they spend much effort doing religion stuff which is not exactly for the purpose of optimizing their survival, yet religious people also tend to be happier, healthier, and have more children than non religious people(no citation, seems true though if all else equal).
Could it be the case those whom don’t optimize for reducing suffering, instead of optimizing for spreading their values, optimize or do something else that decreases the likelihood of their values spreading?
Also, why now? Why haven’t we already reached or are close to equilibrium for reducing suffering vs etc since selection pressures have been here long time
Thanks for the comment!
Right now, in rich countries, we seem to live in an unusual period Robin Hanson (2009) calls “the Dream Time”. You can survive valuing pretty much whatever you want, which is why there isn’t much selection pressure on values. This likely won’t go on forever, especially if Humanity starts colonizing space.
(Re religion. This is anecdotical but since you brought up this example: in the past, I think religious people would have been much less successful at spreading their values if they were more concerned about the suffering of the people they were trying to convert. The growth of religion was far from being a harm-free process.)