Depending on your intended audience, it might make sense to add more details for some of the proposals. For example, why is scenario planning a good idea compared to other methods of decision making? Is there a compelling story, or strong empirical evidence for its efficacy?
Some small nitpicks:
There seems to be a mistake here:
“Bostrom argues in The Fragile World Hypothesis that continuous technological development will increase systemic fragility, which can be a source of catastrophic or existential risk. In the Precipice, he estimates the chances of existential catastrophe within the next 100 years at one in six.”
I also find this passage a bit odd:
“One example of moral cluelessness is the repugnant conclusion, which assumes that by adding more people to the world, and proportionally staying above a given average in happiness, one can reach a state of minimal happiness for an infinitely large population.”
The repugnant conclusion might motivate someone to think about cluelessness, but it does not really seem to be an example of cluelessness (the question whether we should accept it might or might not be).
First, we certainly agree that a more detailed description could be productive for some of the topics in this piece, including your example on scenario planning and other decision making methods. At more than 6000 words this is already a long piece, so we were aiming to limit the level of detail to what we felt was necessary to explain the proposed framework, without necessarily justifying all nuances. Depending on what the community believes is most useful, we are happy to write follow-up pieces with either a higher level of detail for a selected few topics of particular interest (for a more technical discussion on e.g. decision making methods), or a summary piece covering all topics with a lower level of detail (to explain the same framework to non-experts).
As for your second issue you are completely correct, it has been corrected.
Regarding your last point, we also agree that the repugnant conclusion is not an example of cluelessness in itself. However, the lack of consensus about how to solve the repugnant conclusion is one example of how we still have things to figure out in terms of population ethics (i. e. are morally clueless in this area).
Interesting writeup!
Depending on your intended audience, it might make sense to add more details for some of the proposals. For example, why is scenario planning a good idea compared to other methods of decision making? Is there a compelling story, or strong empirical evidence for its efficacy?
Some small nitpicks:
There seems to be a mistake here:
“Bostrom argues in The Fragile World Hypothesis that continuous technological development will increase systemic fragility, which can be a source of catastrophic or existential risk. In the Precipice, he estimates the chances of existential catastrophe within the next 100 years at one in six.”
I also find this passage a bit odd:
“One example of moral cluelessness is the repugnant conclusion, which assumes that by adding more people to the world, and proportionally staying above a given average in happiness, one can reach a state of minimal happiness for an infinitely large population.”
The repugnant conclusion might motivate someone to think about cluelessness, but it does not really seem to be an example of cluelessness (the question whether we should accept it might or might not be).
Thank you for your feedback, Flodorner!
First, we certainly agree that a more detailed description could be productive for some of the topics in this piece, including your example on scenario planning and other decision making methods. At more than 6000 words this is already a long piece, so we were aiming to limit the level of detail to what we felt was necessary to explain the proposed framework, without necessarily justifying all nuances. Depending on what the community believes is most useful, we are happy to write follow-up pieces with either a higher level of detail for a selected few topics of particular interest (for a more technical discussion on e.g. decision making methods), or a summary piece covering all topics with a lower level of detail (to explain the same framework to non-experts).
As for your second issue you are completely correct, it has been corrected.
Regarding your last point, we also agree that the repugnant conclusion is not an example of cluelessness in itself. However, the lack of consensus about how to solve the repugnant conclusion is one example of how we still have things to figure out in terms of population ethics (i. e. are morally clueless in this area).