But ultimately, I think you are basically saying you are trying to maximise your counterfactual impact, no? Not the impact that can be traced to you, but the impact that you have, through all channels.
In the context of this post, I read “my contribution to good” to mean “good done that is clearly attributed to me” rather than “my counterfactual impact”.
Though I’d also usually think “my contribution” is my “counterfactual impact”, I still think this reframing (“I am maximizing how much good I do” to “I am maximizing how good the world is”) might be instrumentally very useful for feeling good about more indirect ways of having a counterfactual impact.
yeah; it seems obvious to me that “the good I accomplish” includes my contribution to allowing others to do good. I’m open to seeing evidence but I suspect the reason field-building, movement-building etc. isn’t done as much as OP would like has nothing to do with this kind of confusion. In fact I think it’s questionable how much you can do at the meta level if your direct work doesn’t measure up. People show up when they see cool stuff being done, not so much when they hear you talk about the cool stuff that someone else should do. Sputnik did a great deal more for science and engineering education than running a bunch of commercials about the importance of science would have.
not so much when they hear you talk about the cool stuff that someone else should do.
Maybe that feels a bit unfair non-steelmanny to me? There are other ways of motivating and helping others and the process other than just saying ‘wouldn’t it be great if someone solved the alignment problem’ etc.
Such as:
Encouraging people who are working on the problem
Providing inputs and support to others working on important problems
Offering career advice
Helping communicate and explain the work that is being done, in term helping people coordinate
Yeah, this makes sense. That being said, I’m guessing while some people in theory are trying to maximize the “good” they accomplish, in practice it’s easy to forget about options that aren’t easily traceable. My point was also that it’s worth explicitly putting in effort to look for these kinds of options.
By options, I mean something like giving a research project to a more capable person. I’m guessing some people wouldn’t consider that this is a thing they can do.
But ultimately, I think you are basically saying you are trying to maximise your counterfactual impact, no? Not the impact that can be traced to you, but the impact that you have, through all channels.
In the context of this post, I read “my contribution to good” to mean “good done that is clearly attributed to me” rather than “my counterfactual impact”.
Though I’d also usually think “my contribution” is my “counterfactual impact”, I still think this reframing (“I am maximizing how much good I do” to “I am maximizing how good the world is”) might be instrumentally very useful for feeling good about more indirect ways of having a counterfactual impact.
yeah; it seems obvious to me that “the good I accomplish” includes my contribution to allowing others to do good. I’m open to seeing evidence but I suspect the reason field-building, movement-building etc. isn’t done as much as OP would like has nothing to do with this kind of confusion. In fact I think it’s questionable how much you can do at the meta level if your direct work doesn’t measure up. People show up when they see cool stuff being done, not so much when they hear you talk about the cool stuff that someone else should do. Sputnik did a great deal more for science and engineering education than running a bunch of commercials about the importance of science would have.
Maybe that feels a bit unfair non-steelmanny to me? There are other ways of motivating and helping others and the process other than just saying ‘wouldn’t it be great if someone solved the alignment problem’ etc.
Such as:
Encouraging people who are working on the problem
Providing inputs and support to others working on important problems
Offering career advice
Helping communicate and explain the work that is being done, in term helping people coordinate
Yeah, this makes sense. That being said, I’m guessing while some people in theory are trying to maximize the “good” they accomplish, in practice it’s easy to forget about options that aren’t easily traceable. My point was also that it’s worth explicitly putting in effort to look for these kinds of options.
By options, I mean something like giving a research project to a more capable person. I’m guessing some people wouldn’t consider that this is a thing they can do.