I am a cognitive scientist who specialized in rationality under radical uncertainty.
For many years I worked full-time in effective altruism community building, communication, and outreach.
annaleptikon
Karma: 353
I didn’t know that, very valuable!
First of all, thank you for speaking up about this. I know very smart people that are scared to just share their perspective on things and I do think THAT is very dumb.
Secondly, I do think donating some money regularly and cost-effectively is a safe bet, and freaking yourself out about “doing more” or even “the most” can easily be counterproductive. Just e.g. focusing on doing advocacy and explaining why evidence-based and cost-effective donations are good choices is still neglected in basically every country. There are many such relatively easy tasks that are great leverage points and in the end, it is precisely about comparative advantage. By you taking up such tasks you shoulder some burdens that are of relatively lower value to others.
Then for objectively difficult problems to solve it is, of course, reasonable to not try to make it “inclusive”, there is a reason why there is a minimum height to become a soldier because the task environment will not change to accommodate certain people. I understand that you understand this. And by understanding this and e.g. not attempting something grandiose that ends up harmful, you are counterfactually already winning.
Then I also do think that “higher” intellectual ability and related work are not necessarily higher utility. There isn’t one best or optimal thing everyone should be doing. The more one reads about complexity and systems science it is quite clear that there is no one optimal thing to do. It also shows that localism (serving one’s direct community) e.g. is better than often portrayed in EA. Creatively and pragmatically solving problems you perceive directly around you is fantastic and your interest in EA suggests that might be better suited to doing so than others around you.
In general, you can be and become a virtuous person independently of your raw processing powers or academic credentials, and action on all possible levels is needed.
I noticed that I missed Elephant in the Brain, it’s a remarkable book and I agree with including it in the next version.
Hidden Games I had not thought of at all.
Thank you!
Thank you very much!
One insight I got from the list is to simply put Why Nations Fail (and accordingly Guns, Germs, and Steel) into the Global Poverty / Development bracket
Thank you for the kind comment!
Those designs come under many different terms, from information design to data visualizations. Many different semantic pointers point in a similar direction. I love the map of philosophy, too. You might also (already know and) like Domains of Science. Very related to metascience and science of science. Here e.g. Max Noichl does a network analysis of current philosophy [More: 1, 2, 3]. More links here.Yes, good point regarding interpersonal communication, I was also thinking about more “soft skills” to add. I did consider nonviolent communication but wasn’t sure. Btw once talking about (human) communication theory I actually prefer Watzlawick and von Thun in their content. Or at least, the are equally important work if one cares about the topic of interpersonal communication. I don’t know whether to include any of this or not, I’ll wait for more opinions to form mine in this context.
Yes, again, excellent point. I agree that Rosling and Pinker in their argumentation follow e.g. naive empiricism (the world will continue the trends from the past) and have progress as an underlying assumption. The books on Ending Poverty have similar narratives and assumptions. Reading “How the world thinks” by Julian Baggini helped me to understand how much the assumption of progress is in general a fact about Western philosophy in particular. However, I don’t think just skipping these books or this perspective is the right way either. One can’t just read “the right perspective”, one needs to triangulate insights from multiple sides and narratives. As Taleb, who also makes many arguments against Pinker, is included multiple times, I feel like the antithesis is also properly reflected. Thanks for bringing it up!
Came here to say the same. It would also help to actually print and bind it as a book to hand it to beginners. It gives a more “contained” perspective. With sequences online I always have the sense that the link tree never ends and my motivation to read it is reduced.
There is an Effective Altruism Books List on Goodreads, suggest more books and vote on the ones that are already on it.
Came here by searching for Frank Ramsey on the forum. I considered writing a post about the same biography you mentioned for the forum. It’s very humbling to see how much he already thought of, which we now call EA.
A related work I can recommend is “Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science”
Such a good list, have meant to write one myself for a while and am pleased that you did it :)
Hey Linn, I wrote you a private response with thoughts about this :)
With my current research together with John Vervaeke and Johannes Jaeger, I’m continuing the work on the cognitive science of rationality under uncertainty, bringing together the axiomatic approach (on which Stanovich et al. build) and the ecological approach.
Here I talk about Rationality and Cognitive Science on the ClearerThinking Podcast. Here is a YouTube conversation between me and John, explaining our work and the “The paradigm shift in rationality”. Here is the preprint of the same argumentation as “Rationality and Relevance Realization”. John also mentions our research multiple times on the Jim Rutt Show.
I’ve always admired your writings on the topic and you were one of the voices that led me to my current path.