Iâm running off of my own experience here (talking about longtermism with many dozens of people), rather than survey data. In that experience, Iâve seen most people round off âone second saves billions of livesâ to âokay, I acknowledge that given these assumptions itâs important to advance technology and reduce riskâ. But a few people seem to be (mentally) rolling their eyes a bit, or finding that the gigantic number of zeroes to be a bit absurd.
I think discussions of those numbers will eventually come up if people are serious about exploring the topic, but for first-time exposure, my impression is that people care more about getting a general sense of whatâs at stake (âif humanity goes to the stars, there could be trillions of us, living happily for thousands of generationsâ) than getting the exact EV of X-risk work based on the size of the Virgo Supercluster.
Put another way: If the choice is between âyou can enable a flourishing life in expectation for one one-trillionth of a pennyâ and âyou can enable a flourishing life in expectation for a few centsâ, and the latter argument seems less suspicious to enough people that itâs 10% more convincing overall, Iâd favor that argument. Itâs hard for me to picture someone being compelled by the first and not the second.
Though âitâs hard for me to pictureâ definitely doesnât mean those people donât exist. Iâm just not sure Iâve met them.
Emulations actually seem like a good addition under this paradigm â theyâre a neat way of indicating that the future will be good in strange ways the viewer hasnât considered, and they give me a âspace utopiaâ feel that long strings of zeroes donât.
I agree that you want to not be boring, and you want to be personable. My issue is that I think that many people find gigantic numbers to be kind of boring, compared to more vivid explanations of what the future could look like. Scope insensitivity is a real thing.
Of course, this video has some good space utopia imagery and is generally solid on that front. I just found the astronomical waste calculations and âdefinition of expected valueâ to be slower parts of the video, while I think something like Will MacAskillâs charts of the human future might have been more engaging (e.g. his cartoon representation of how many people have lived so far vs. might live in the future, or the timeline passing through âeveryone is well-offâ and âentirely new form of art?â
To sum it up, Iâm critiquing this small section of an (overall quite good) video based on my guess that it wasnât great for engagement (compared to other options*), rather than because I think it was unreasonable. The ânot great for engagementâ is some combination of âpeople sometimes think gigantic numbers are sketchyâ and âpeople sometimes think gigantic numbers are boringâ, alongside âmore conservative numbers make your point just as wellâ.
*Of course, this is easy for me to say as a random critic and not the person who had to write a script about a fairly technical paper!
On (1), all fair questions.
Iâm running off of my own experience here (talking about longtermism with many dozens of people), rather than survey data. In that experience, Iâve seen most people round off âone second saves billions of livesâ to âokay, I acknowledge that given these assumptions itâs important to advance technology and reduce riskâ. But a few people seem to be (mentally) rolling their eyes a bit, or finding that the gigantic number of zeroes to be a bit absurd.
I think discussions of those numbers will eventually come up if people are serious about exploring the topic, but for first-time exposure, my impression is that people care more about getting a general sense of whatâs at stake (âif humanity goes to the stars, there could be trillions of us, living happily for thousands of generationsâ) than getting the exact EV of X-risk work based on the size of the Virgo Supercluster.
Put another way: If the choice is between âyou can enable a flourishing life in expectation for one one-trillionth of a pennyâ and âyou can enable a flourishing life in expectation for a few centsâ, and the latter argument seems less suspicious to enough people that itâs 10% more convincing overall, Iâd favor that argument. Itâs hard for me to picture someone being compelled by the first and not the second.
Though âitâs hard for me to pictureâ definitely doesnât mean those people donât exist. Iâm just not sure Iâve met them.
Emulations actually seem like a good addition under this paradigm â theyâre a neat way of indicating that the future will be good in strange ways the viewer hasnât considered, and they give me a âspace utopiaâ feel that long strings of zeroes donât.
I agree that you want to not be boring, and you want to be personable. My issue is that I think that many people find gigantic numbers to be kind of boring, compared to more vivid explanations of what the future could look like. Scope insensitivity is a real thing.
Of course, this video has some good space utopia imagery and is generally solid on that front. I just found the astronomical waste calculations and âdefinition of expected valueâ to be slower parts of the video, while I think something like Will MacAskillâs charts of the human future might have been more engaging (e.g. his cartoon representation of how many people have lived so far vs. might live in the future, or the timeline passing through âeveryone is well-offâ and âentirely new form of art?â
To sum it up, Iâm critiquing this small section of an (overall quite good) video based on my guess that it wasnât great for engagement (compared to other options*), rather than because I think it was unreasonable. The ânot great for engagementâ is some combination of âpeople sometimes think gigantic numbers are sketchyâ and âpeople sometimes think gigantic numbers are boringâ, alongside âmore conservative numbers make your point just as wellâ.
*Of course, this is easy for me to say as a random critic and not the person who had to write a script about a fairly technical paper!