I don’t think Hanson would disagree with this claim (that the future is more likely to be better by current values, given the long reflection, compared to e.g. Age of Em). I think it’s a fundamental values difference.
Robin Hanson is an interesting and original thinker, but not only is he not an effective altruist, he explicitly doesn’t want to make the future go well according to anything like present human values.
The Age of Em, which Hanson clearly doesn’t think is an undesirable future, would contain very little of what we value. Hanson says this, but it’s a feature, not a bug. Scott Alexander:
Hanson deserves credit for positing a future whose values are likely to upset even the sort of people who say they don’t get upset over future value drift. I’m not sure whether or not he deserves credit for not being upset by it. Yes, it’s got low-crime, ample food for everybody, and full employment. But so does Brave New World. The whole point of dystopian fiction is pointing out that we have complicated values beyond material security. Hanson is absolutely right that our traditionalist ancestors would view our own era with as much horror as some of us would view an em era. He’s even right that on utilitarian grounds, it’s hard to argue with an em era where everyone is really happy working eighteen hours a day for their entire lives because we selected for people who feel that way. But at some point, can we make the Lovecraftian argument of “I know my values are provincial and arbitrary, but they’re my provincial arbitrary values and I will make any sacrifice of blood or tears necessary to defend them, even unto the gates of Hell?”
Since Hanson doesn’t have a strong interest in steering the long-term future to be good by current values, it’s obvious why he wouldn’t be a fan of an idea like the long reflection, which has that as its main goal but produces bad side effects in the course of giving us a chance of achieving that goal. It’s just a values difference.
I don’t think Hanson would disagree with this claim (that the future is more likely to be better by current values, given the long reflection, compared to e.g. Age of Em). I think it’s a fundamental values difference.
Robin Hanson is an interesting and original thinker, but not only is he not an effective altruist, he explicitly doesn’t want to make the future go well according to anything like present human values.
The Age of Em, which Hanson clearly doesn’t think is an undesirable future, would contain very little of what we value. Hanson says this, but it’s a feature, not a bug. Scott Alexander:
Since Hanson doesn’t have a strong interest in steering the long-term future to be good by current values, it’s obvious why he wouldn’t be a fan of an idea like the long reflection, which has that as its main goal but produces bad side effects in the course of giving us a chance of achieving that goal. It’s just a values difference.
I have values, and The Age of Em overall contains a great deal that I value, and in fact probably more of what I value than does our world today.