My impression is that the early English utilitarians had pretty decent lives for moral advocates, and the Mohists were in situations old and poorly documented enough that make them hard for me to learn much of.
I would say that many moral advocates in the last few thousand years have had exceedingly difficult challenges. Many have literally faced:
Lifetimes of slavery or imprisonment
Exile and ostracism by their communities
Routine surveillance, hostility, and abuse by their governments
Dramatic social ridicule/abuse/lynching
I personally get a lot of inspiration by civil rights heroes.
Promoting civil rights in the United States before 1960, or promoting atheism or religious tolerance in Europe pre-Enlightenment, both were often incredibly dangerous.
Nelson Mandela served 27 years in prison. Frederick Douglass was enslaved for twenty years. Abraham Lincoln faced some of the US’s worst years, during which most of his children died, and just after he won the civil war, was assassinated.
Many historic moral figures seem to have access to incredibly few resources in incredibly hard and antagonistic times. I imagine many key moral figures were unpopular or unsuccessful enough to not be anywhere on Wikipedia today.
In contrast, while things have definitely gotten harder for utilitarians/EA, I feel like we kind of went down from two billionaires and very little political/social pushback, to one billionaire and very little political/social pushback.
I don’t mean to downplay the challenges at hand, but just want to flag that historical figures were able to do great things in what seem like clearly worse situations.[1]
[1] One potential exception to this is if you think that managing AGI risk is genuinely harder than any previous civilizational challenge.
My impression is that the early English utilitarians had pretty decent lives for moral advocates, and the Mohists were in situations old and poorly documented enough that make them hard for me to learn much of.
I would say that many moral advocates in the last few thousand years have had exceedingly difficult challenges. Many have literally faced:
Lifetimes of slavery or imprisonment
Exile and ostracism by their communities
Routine surveillance, hostility, and abuse by their governments
Dramatic social ridicule/abuse/lynching
I personally get a lot of inspiration by civil rights heroes.
Promoting civil rights in the United States before 1960, or promoting atheism or religious tolerance in Europe pre-Enlightenment, both were often incredibly dangerous.
Nelson Mandela served 27 years in prison. Frederick Douglass was enslaved for twenty years. Abraham Lincoln faced some of the US’s worst years, during which most of his children died, and just after he won the civil war, was assassinated.
Many historic moral figures seem to have access to incredibly few resources in incredibly hard and antagonistic times. I imagine many key moral figures were unpopular or unsuccessful enough to not be anywhere on Wikipedia today.
In contrast, while things have definitely gotten harder for utilitarians/EA, I feel like we kind of went down from two billionaires and very little political/social pushback, to one billionaire and very little political/social pushback.
I don’t mean to downplay the challenges at hand, but just want to flag that historical figures were able to do great things in what seem like clearly worse situations.[1]
[1] One potential exception to this is if you think that managing AGI risk is genuinely harder than any previous civilizational challenge.