Thank you ! This was a very good post that pointed out many very important points (and well written too).
I really like this section:
The first and most fundamental lesson of effective altruism is that charity is hard. Clever plans conceived by brilliant researchers often donât actually improve the world. Well-tested programs with large effect sizes in small, randomized, controlled trials often donât work at scale, or even in the next village over.
These questions are not unanswerable. Through the heroic work of teams of researchers, many of them have been answeredââânot with perfect accuracy, but with enough confidence to direct further research and justify further investment. The point isnât that everything is unknowable; the point is just that knowing things is hard.
This is a dose of humility that felt deeply needed. Especially after the FTX debacle, where itâs pretty clear that we are bad at predicting the near-term future (not just EA, about everyone), so predicting the long-term future accurately, and what might affect it, sounds seriously intractable.
FTX would be an extremely high profile example of âEA cannot manage tail risks despite longtermism revolving around managing tail risksâ
So thanks for the reminder that we should keep doing things that are more specific that âchanging valuesâ.
Another worry I have is that longtermism (in its current state) assumes that our current industrial society can last for millenias, despite the fact that it heavily relies on finite materials and energy sources. I wrote a post on energy depletion and limits to growth, and I fear longtermists do not take that into account.
Thank you ! This was a very good post that pointed out many very important points (and well written too).
I really like this section:
This is a dose of humility that felt deeply needed. Especially after the FTX debacle, where itâs pretty clear that we are bad at predicting the near-term future (not just EA, about everyone), so predicting the long-term future accurately, and what might affect it, sounds seriously intractable.
This tweet summarized that for me:
So thanks for the reminder that we should keep doing things that are more specific that âchanging valuesâ.
Another worry I have is that longtermism (in its current state) assumes that our current industrial society can last for millenias, despite the fact that it heavily relies on finite materials and energy sources. I wrote a post on energy depletion and limits to growth, and I fear longtermists do not take that into account.