Yep! I think this phenomena of ‘things that are technically all-or-nothing, but it’s most useful to think of them as a continuous thing’ is really common. Eg, if you want to reduce the amount of chickens killed for meat, it helps to stop buying chicken. This lowers demand, which will on average lower chickens killed. But the underlying thing is meat companies noticing and reducing production, which is pretty discrete and chunky and hard to predict well (though not literally all-or-nothing).
Basically any kind of campaign to change minds or achieve social change with some political goal also comes under this. I think AI Safety is about as much a Pascal’s Mugging as any of these other things
You could replace working on climate change with ‘working on or voting in elections’, which are also all or nothing.
(Edit: For some previous arguments in this vein, see this post .)
Yep! I think this phenomena of ‘things that are technically all-or-nothing, but it’s most useful to think of them as a continuous thing’ is really common. Eg, if you want to reduce the amount of chickens killed for meat, it helps to stop buying chicken. This lowers demand, which will on average lower chickens killed. But the underlying thing is meat companies noticing and reducing production, which is pretty discrete and chunky and hard to predict well (though not literally all-or-nothing).
Basically any kind of campaign to change minds or achieve social change with some political goal also comes under this. I think AI Safety is about as much a Pascal’s Mugging as any of these other things