The Christians in this story who lived relatively normal lives ended up looking wiser than the ones who went all-in on the imminent-return-of-Christ idea. But of course, if christianity had been true and Christ had in fact returned, maybe the crazy-seeming, all-in Christians would have had huge amounts of impact.
Here is my attempt at thinking up other historical examples of transformative change that went the other way:
Muhammad’s early followers must have been a bit uncertain whether this guy was really the Final Prophet. Do you quit your day job in Mecca so that you can flee to Medina with a bunch of your fellow cultists? In this case, it probably would’ve been a good idea: seven years later you’d be helping lead an army of 100,000 holy warriors to capture the city of Mecca. And over the next thirty years, you’ll help convert/conquer all the civilizations of the middle east and North Africa.
Less dramatic versions of the above story could probably be told about joining many fast-growing charismatic social movements (like joining a political movement or revolution). Or, more relevantly to AI, about joining a fast-growing bay-area startup whose technology might change the world (like early Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc).
You’re a physics professor in 1940s America. One day, a team of G-men knock on your door and ask you to join a top-secret project to design an impossible superweapon capable of ending the Nazi regime and stopping the war. Do you quit your day job and move to New Mexico?...
You’re a “cypherpunk” hanging out on online forums in the mid-2000s. Despite the demoralizing collapse of the dot-com boom and the failure of many of the most promising projects, some of your forum buddies are still excited about the possibilities of creating an “anonymous, distributed electronic cash system”, such as the proposal called B-money. Do you quit your day job to work on weird libertarian math problems?...
People who bet everything on transformative change will always look silly in retrospect if the change never comes. But the thing about transformative change is that it does sometimes occur.
(Also, fortunately our world today is quite wealthy—AI safety researchers are pretty smart folks and will probably be able to earn a living for themselves to pay for retirement, even if all their predictions come up empty.)
The Christians in this story did not live relatively normal lives. I tried to make that clear under the point about speaking the truth boldly, but it’s been a point of confusion in a couple of the comments, so perhaps I should update the post.
I was specifically pushing back on the “don’t quit your day job” part of the post, since I think that for talented people who are thinking seriously and planning ahead, it’s often not as risky (financially, socially, etc) as it seems to do even pretty crazy-seeming stuff in pursuit of an ambitious goal. I think on the margin we should be encouraging people to dream big and take on more risk. (But also, my personal life feels very normie and risk-averse and I often have to pump myself up to make necessary life changes… maybe we hang around two very different social environments!) I definitely think that people should have prudent financial plans—indeed, I think it’s good to have a very high savings rate, like 50% -- but I think that’s complementary with being willing to make big life pivots when the opportunity arises (since it gives you the financial freedom to bear higher risk).
I think EA and early Christianity are in 100% agreement with the idea that you should “follow common sense morality” even if you are a believer in total hedonic utilitarianism or the ten commandments or whatever, since doing underhanded stuff that goes against common-sense morality would destroy the reputation of the wider movement.
If anything, Christianity goes a lot harder on “speak the truth boldly” than EA which is often concerned with appearing respectable, avoiding politicization, and gaining influence within existing institutions. I’m torn on this because there’s a lot to be said for EA’s nuanced utilitarian approach, but I also think that sometimes the movement can be a bit too timid and focused on working within existing institutions. I think EAs should stick to our guns more often in several areas, but we probably don’t want to be heroic, “early Christian martyrs” levels of outspoken.
The spectrum from “live a totally normal life” to “optimize your life around a very important set of rare/unpopular ideas” is a pretty high-dimensional space, so there are a lot of different factors here. For example, I was trying to push back on “don’t quit your day job” insofar as it means “don’t take big career risks out of idealism”. But one could also translate Paul’s advice as “stop trying to join this growing popular movement by getting meta jobs at EA organizations where you can feel good hanging out with a bunch of like-minded folks—instead, the movement as a whole would benefit if more people tried to spread/apply Christianity independently in their own preexisting careers.” And that advice I might agree with, idk!
The Christians in this story who lived relatively normal lives ended up looking wiser than the ones who went all-in on the imminent-return-of-Christ idea. But of course, if christianity had been true and Christ had in fact returned, maybe the crazy-seeming, all-in Christians would have had huge amounts of impact.
Here is my attempt at thinking up other historical examples of transformative change that went the other way:
Muhammad’s early followers must have been a bit uncertain whether this guy was really the Final Prophet. Do you quit your day job in Mecca so that you can flee to Medina with a bunch of your fellow cultists? In this case, it probably would’ve been a good idea: seven years later you’d be helping lead an army of 100,000 holy warriors to capture the city of Mecca. And over the next thirty years, you’ll help convert/conquer all the civilizations of the middle east and North Africa.
Less dramatic versions of the above story could probably be told about joining many fast-growing charismatic social movements (like joining a political movement or revolution). Or, more relevantly to AI, about joining a fast-growing bay-area startup whose technology might change the world (like early Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc).
You’re a physics professor in 1940s America. One day, a team of G-men knock on your door and ask you to join a top-secret project to design an impossible superweapon capable of ending the Nazi regime and stopping the war. Do you quit your day job and move to New Mexico?...
You’re a “cypherpunk” hanging out on online forums in the mid-2000s. Despite the demoralizing collapse of the dot-com boom and the failure of many of the most promising projects, some of your forum buddies are still excited about the possibilities of creating an “anonymous, distributed electronic cash system”, such as the proposal called B-money. Do you quit your day job to work on weird libertarian math problems?...
People who bet everything on transformative change will always look silly in retrospect if the change never comes. But the thing about transformative change is that it does sometimes occur.
(Also, fortunately our world today is quite wealthy—AI safety researchers are pretty smart folks and will probably be able to earn a living for themselves to pay for retirement, even if all their predictions come up empty.)
The Christians in this story did not live relatively normal lives. I tried to make that clear under the point about speaking the truth boldly, but it’s been a point of confusion in a couple of the comments, so perhaps I should update the post.
I was specifically pushing back on the “don’t quit your day job” part of the post, since I think that for talented people who are thinking seriously and planning ahead, it’s often not as risky (financially, socially, etc) as it seems to do even pretty crazy-seeming stuff in pursuit of an ambitious goal. I think on the margin we should be encouraging people to dream big and take on more risk. (But also, my personal life feels very normie and risk-averse and I often have to pump myself up to make necessary life changes… maybe we hang around two very different social environments!) I definitely think that people should have prudent financial plans—indeed, I think it’s good to have a very high savings rate, like 50% -- but I think that’s complementary with being willing to make big life pivots when the opportunity arises (since it gives you the financial freedom to bear higher risk).
I think EA and early Christianity are in 100% agreement with the idea that you should “follow common sense morality” even if you are a believer in total hedonic utilitarianism or the ten commandments or whatever, since doing underhanded stuff that goes against common-sense morality would destroy the reputation of the wider movement.
If anything, Christianity goes a lot harder on “speak the truth boldly” than EA which is often concerned with appearing respectable, avoiding politicization, and gaining influence within existing institutions. I’m torn on this because there’s a lot to be said for EA’s nuanced utilitarian approach, but I also think that sometimes the movement can be a bit too timid and focused on working within existing institutions. I think EAs should stick to our guns more often in several areas, but we probably don’t want to be heroic, “early Christian martyrs” levels of outspoken.
The spectrum from “live a totally normal life” to “optimize your life around a very important set of rare/unpopular ideas” is a pretty high-dimensional space, so there are a lot of different factors here. For example, I was trying to push back on “don’t quit your day job” insofar as it means “don’t take big career risks out of idealism”. But one could also translate Paul’s advice as “stop trying to join this growing popular movement by getting meta jobs at EA organizations where you can feel good hanging out with a bunch of like-minded folks—instead, the movement as a whole would benefit if more people tried to spread/apply Christianity independently in their own preexisting careers.” And that advice I might agree with, idk!