Thanks for writing this—I largely agree. One thing I have been thinking about a lot in the scandal is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. For those who haven’t heard of it, it is a very popular book in EA circles based on the premise of “what if Harry approached the magical world with a rational spirit of scientific inquiry.” It’s one of my favorite books of all time, and I am in no way blaming Eliezer Yudkowsky (the author) for any of this mess.
However, one of the messages that I at least take away from the book is “you are personally responsible for your failure to improve the world. This includes your failure on account of waiting for permission from authority or approval from society or from feeling like the thing you are failing to do has too many evil-ish vibes even though it’s actually good.” I think the attitude that people should be personally ambitious to improve the world and that they can do it themselves without approval from society (or a board of directors or an IRB or anyone) is maybe a little too strong in EA circles. I am also personally pretty sympathetic to this attitude—sometimes a board of directions and an IRB really are stopping you from making the world a better place and sometimes you really should ask yourself if you really need them from a practical and a moral perspective. But it just seems one should be aware of the virtues of occasionally thinking “yes I could technically do something about this but no, I am not personally responsible for unilaterally changing the circumstances, but golly it just really depends on the situation and I should think long and hard about this and maybe get some other perspectives.”
To be fair, HPMOR also has the message that “you are personally responsible for when you try to improve the world but then fuck everything up because you were so reckless” and also it’s just a work of fiction and this is only my interpretation of it. Also you should read it if you haven’t because it’s really good.
Thanks for writing this—I largely agree. One thing I have been thinking about a lot in the scandal is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. For those who haven’t heard of it, it is a very popular book in EA circles based on the premise of “what if Harry approached the magical world with a rational spirit of scientific inquiry.” It’s one of my favorite books of all time, and I am in no way blaming Eliezer Yudkowsky (the author) for any of this mess.
However, one of the messages that I at least take away from the book is “you are personally responsible for your failure to improve the world. This includes your failure on account of waiting for permission from authority or approval from society or from feeling like the thing you are failing to do has too many evil-ish vibes even though it’s actually good.” I think the attitude that people should be personally ambitious to improve the world and that they can do it themselves without approval from society (or a board of directors or an IRB or anyone) is maybe a little too strong in EA circles. I am also personally pretty sympathetic to this attitude—sometimes a board of directions and an IRB really are stopping you from making the world a better place and sometimes you really should ask yourself if you really need them from a practical and a moral perspective. But it just seems one should be aware of the virtues of occasionally thinking “yes I could technically do something about this but no, I am not personally responsible for unilaterally changing the circumstances, but golly it just really depends on the situation and I should think long and hard about this and maybe get some other perspectives.”
To be fair, HPMOR also has the message that “you are personally responsible for when you try to improve the world but then fuck everything up because you were so reckless” and also it’s just a work of fiction and this is only my interpretation of it. Also you should read it if you haven’t because it’s really good.