Huh? I think everything mentioned in this post (either by me or by Gregory Lewis) are behaviours that people can consciously choose to engage in or not. I donât think any of them are personality traits.
What do you think is an example of a personality trait mentioned in this post?
EAs (of the longtermism strand) have a trait tendency to take a lot of low-ish effort low-probability bets in the hope that some of them will pay off big.
youâll often see people who think they can outsmart decades of expert study of an issue with a little effort in their spare time
I mean, isnât the idea that they might be able to contribute something meaningful, and doing so is both low-effort and very good if it works, so worth the shot?
EAs (of all strands) have a trait tendency to morally mistrust authorities outside of their group (EA), deferring either to movement leaders they feel morally align with them or their own personal moral judgement
If EA deferred to the moral consensus, it would cease to exist, because the moral consensus is that altruism should be relational and you have no obligation to do anything else. People who have tendencies to defer to the moral consensus donât join up with EA.
-
Again, not that these are optimal, but they basically seem to me to be either pretty stable individual difference things about people or related to a personâs age (young adult, usually). It would be great to have more older adults on-board with the core idea of doing the most good possible being a tool of achieving self-actualisation, as well as more acceptance of this core idea among mainstream society. I hope we will get there.
I donât think any of these are personality traits. These are ideas or strategies that people can discuss and decide whether theyâre wise or unwise. You could, conceivably, have a discussion about one or more of these, become convinced that the way youâve been doing things is unwise, and then change your behaviour subsequently. I wouldnât call that âchanging your personalityâ. I donât see why these would be stable traits, as opposed to things that people can change by thinking about it and deciding to act differently.
I think there might be serious problems with the ideas or strategies that you described, if those were the ideas or strategies at play in EA. But my feeling is you gave a bit of a watered-down, euphemistic retelling of the ideas and strategies than what I tend to see people in EA actually act on, or what they tend to say they believe.
For instance, on covid-19, it seems like some people in EA still think (as evidenced by the comments on this post) that they actually repeatedly outsmarted the expert/âscientific communities on the relevant public health questions â not just by chance or luck, in a âbroken clock is right twice a dayâ or âcalling a coin flipâ way, but by general superior rationality/âepistemology â rather than following a much more epistemically modest, cautious rationale of we âmight be able to contribute something meaningful, and doing so is both low-effort and very good if it works, so worth the shotâ.
I donât buy that thinking this way is a stable personality trait that is beyond your power to change as opposed to something that you can be talked out of.
It seems weird to call any of these things personality traits. Is being an act consequentialist as opposed to a rule consequentialist a personality trait? Obviously not, right? It seems equally obvious to me that what weâre talking about here are not personality traits. It seems equally weird to me to call them personality traits as it would be to call subscribing to rule consequentialism a personality trait.
Huh? I think everything mentioned in this post (either by me or by Gregory Lewis) are behaviours that people can consciously choose to engage in or not. I donât think any of them are personality traits.
What do you think is an example of a personality trait mentioned in this post?
Iâll give a couple of examples:
EAs (of the longtermism strand) have a trait tendency to take a lot of low-ish effort low-probability bets in the hope that some of them will pay off big.
I mean, isnât the idea that they might be able to contribute something meaningful, and doing so is both low-effort and very good if it works, so worth the shot?
EAs (of all strands) have a trait tendency to morally mistrust authorities outside of their group (EA), deferring either to movement leaders they feel morally align with them or their own personal moral judgement
If EA deferred to the moral consensus, it would cease to exist, because the moral consensus is that altruism should be relational and you have no obligation to do anything else. People who have tendencies to defer to the moral consensus donât join up with EA.
-
Again, not that these are optimal, but they basically seem to me to be either pretty stable individual difference things about people or related to a personâs age (young adult, usually). It would be great to have more older adults on-board with the core idea of doing the most good possible being a tool of achieving self-actualisation, as well as more acceptance of this core idea among mainstream society. I hope we will get there.
I donât think any of these are personality traits. These are ideas or strategies that people can discuss and decide whether theyâre wise or unwise. You could, conceivably, have a discussion about one or more of these, become convinced that the way youâve been doing things is unwise, and then change your behaviour subsequently. I wouldnât call that âchanging your personalityâ. I donât see why these would be stable traits, as opposed to things that people can change by thinking about it and deciding to act differently.
I think there might be serious problems with the ideas or strategies that you described, if those were the ideas or strategies at play in EA. But my feeling is you gave a bit of a watered-down, euphemistic retelling of the ideas and strategies than what I tend to see people in EA actually act on, or what they tend to say they believe.
For instance, on covid-19, it seems like some people in EA still think (as evidenced by the comments on this post) that they actually repeatedly outsmarted the expert/âscientific communities on the relevant public health questions â not just by chance or luck, in a âbroken clock is right twice a dayâ or âcalling a coin flipâ way, but by general superior rationality/âepistemology â rather than following a much more epistemically modest, cautious rationale of we âmight be able to contribute something meaningful, and doing so is both low-effort and very good if it works, so worth the shotâ.
I donât buy that thinking this way is a stable personality trait that is beyond your power to change as opposed to something that you can be talked out of.
It seems weird to call any of these things personality traits. Is being an act consequentialist as opposed to a rule consequentialist a personality trait? Obviously not, right? It seems equally obvious to me that what weâre talking about here are not personality traits. It seems equally weird to me to call them personality traits as it would be to call subscribing to rule consequentialism a personality trait.