Still feeling a bit disillusioned after pursuing academic research up to Post-Doctoral level, spent some time teaching languages and working at a democracy NGO, I feel that I haven’t found a way to do good for the world and sustain myself and my wife at the same time.
Haris Shekeris
Karma: 29
Dear Miguel,
Many thanks for this, quite thought-provoking. Looking forward to your blog post, I hope I can brag a bit that I played a role in it by giving you some food for thought :)
As for the powerpoint, mind telling me what you mean by flow? As unfortunately I don’t have the video for that one, we may have to go either with focussed questions or just a video session where I walk you through it. I suppose one think you can get started, do you know what ‘wicked problems’ are? You can get a bit of an idea about them by wikipedia, i trust the wisdom of the crowd on that (otherwise i can refer you to the original paper).
Best Wishes,
Haris (not Miguel, see above, hehe)
Dear Miguel,
I think some sort of status recognition, for example more participation in the decisions concering the collective could induce more equality—though to be honest i haven’t given this much thought. Maybe otherwise a redistribution of resources or starting from zero every few generations.
However, I cannot see how capitalism and giving money for solutions can do anything other than create and sustain inequality. I may be missing something from your reasoning.
Best Wishes,
Haris
Dear Miguel,
Greetings, I just checked where the paragraph where you stopped is and it was in page 3 out of the 10 pages, I think you didn’t give poor Helene much of a chance, hehe :)oh dear, can you tell me a little bit more about how EA works? I would try to propose ways of pooling collective wisdom to solve problems, I hope it doesn’t mean that I’m in the wrong place.
By the way, apologies if i delayed in answering this, I totally missed it and scrolled down luckily just now.
Just one question though: If you think that democracy has no value in giving answers to important questions, do you still value it and if so as what? Would you prefer rule by an englightened class of people, the knowledgeable ones? (it’s called epistocracy)
Best Wishes,
Haris
Dear Miguel,
Hi, hope you and yours are all well!
I’m afraid you’ll have to help me a bit on your last post, as two things weren’t clear to me: first, on experts, you first seem to qualify it as unfortunate that we pay for the best solution—and then you qualify capitalism (talk positively of it) in rewarding ‘productive efforts’. In these two sentences, are ‘the best solution’ and ′ productive efforts’ the same thing?
Also, on the second paragraph, I remember from back in the day that Nietzche was regarded as being a perspectivist on truth (truth through one’s own perspective), so I’d ask you to tell me which of the following you are arguing for, the preservation of (one’s) life (ie subjective) or the preservation of life (or even Life) in general? If the latter, then unfortunately my question persists, who decides about what is relevant for the preservation of Life in general? the biologists?
As for the presentation, let me find it, I think it’s this one: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326829642_Scientific_Expert_Committees_Wicked_Problems_and_Procedure
I’d be happy to revisit it and discuss it :)
Best Wishes,
Haris
Dear Stephen,
Maybe I didn’t explain myself well regarding the interconnectedness, I don’t mean bilateral trade (which is what you mention in your linked article) but just the fact that the world we live in is much more brittle in the sense that a black swan event such as a rogue state attacking the internet may have potentially extinction-scale consequences. In other words, before say WWII any war simply couldn’t spread to the level of threatening world extinction as there weren’t enough nuclear weapons or there were enough third parties either too far away for the conflict or otherwise uninterested to commit their populations to the death. Whereas now, with cyberwarfare, biological warfare and nuclear, it is envisageable that at least one of the Great Powers will regard the whole of the Earth as the War theatre. I hope this explains my idea a bit better.
As democratization, again, I guess as callous as it sounds, the situations currently in Iran and Russia may prove to be good case studies.
Best Wishes,
Haris
Dear Miguel,
Greetings! Thanks for your well-thought out answer, don’t worry, you’ve expressed yourself perfectly well (apart from one clarification that i’ll ask below!).
First of all, I’d like to push you a bit on the experts and the best outcome. A problem would be the problem of legitimacy, without which you just won’t get people to do what the experts want them to do (for example on climate change). I have argued in the past (in the 15min video that i told you i could send you or in a powerpoint i can send you of another conference) that scientific expertise (the best of the best as you say agreeing among themselves) may not be sufficient to compel citizens to action, and that this may be achieved better if the deliberating body is seen as a political body (akin to a parliament) rather than as a scientific committee.
Glad to see your feedback from my provocation on physics, I’m a bit sceptical even about dark matter and dark energy, even that seems to me a bit ad hoc and made up just to make the back-of-the-envelope calculations add up.
As for your last paragraph though on free speech, that’s where I’d like the clarification and the bit of elaboration: how would one distinguish between noise and something which is to the point? We all believe that what we say is to the point, yet sometimes others decide that it is not and that it is mere noise or even worse, provocation, swearing, libel, and so on.
Best Wishes,
Haris
Dear Miguel,
Would lotteries and random selection (or a mix between random selection and CVs) be a way to secure equality of outcome? I actually agree with you that we can generate at nauseam differences that we’d have to level up or down (for example why not bald people if we accept people with more obvious disabilities or whatever), I am a big fan of lotteries though—you may find some examples how this can be achieved (and some arguments for) in Landemore’s work.
To be honest, I don’t use Twitter and know even less about how it works. However I do remember that even J.S. Mill in his classic work on free speech makes the point that there’s a time and a place where you can say certain things, let’s say you for example it’d be irresponsible to argue that firefighters are against the state in front of a burning building.
As for Dirac and Einstein, one question, are you aware of the state of modern theoretical physics? If you thought that Quantum Mechanics and Einstein’s cat example was crazy, what do you make of parallel universes, dark matter and simulation? for me, these are far beyond fairy tales as regards their nonfalsifiability and fanciness. It’s just fanciness with a few numbers thrown in :)
Best Wishes,
Haris
Dear Miguel,
Good morning!! Ok, this is where I need to wave my hands around! First of all, I’ve listened and watched the video, and my gut reaction was similar to the grimaces of the lady in it, mostly that I wouldn’t want to have a drink at the pub with the main speaker. Why so in terms of arguments, I’m not yet sure (and they may come out slower today than yesterday when I was just throwing out things at you) sure—I think I would attack claims as callous what he says about everybody being free to exploit everybody else, also I’d attack what he says about the studies in Nature, by saying that Nature can also be guilty of (natural) scientizing things that it shouldn’t be scientizing, for example there’s a lot of social construction going on in the concepts involved in the study for Nature to be able to provide a natural angle to them and I think that’s evident in what he talks about (i can be forced to talk a bit more about this if you want me to explain a bit more).
Now, touching on other things briefly: I’ve looked up on wikipedia (another example of the wisdom of the many) the terms equality of opportunity and equality of outcome, I have to say that my gut says equality of outcome is very important and i’m all for. I think I can maybe turn this argument back into something where I may be more convincing, to the question of whether truth is easy or not to achieve and how (this would make us go through expertise and into the outcome-opportunity question, as in do we want the best to run our company/state or is there no such thing as ‘the best’?). Here’s the link to the researcher I mentioned and maybe a key paper, in it you can find the mathematical theorem (if you can’t find it then it won’t be hard for me to find it for you, I mean to go to the relevant footnote in the paper): https://yale.academia.edu/HeleneLandemore (the person) - and i think that’s the paper i’m referring to, the mathematical theorem must be in one of the footnotes if i remember correctly: https://www.academia.edu/31286808/Why_the_Many_Are_Smarter_than_the_Few_and_Why_It_Matters_Published_version_
As for the Constitution not having as its main business the wealth inequality because of the many deaths and suffering in 20th century regimes, I think you put it very elegantly, but I think we need to think about it. I remember once an anecdote that Lenin said sth like ‘but i want everybody to travel first class’ when it was pointed out to him that there were first and second classes in the trains, something like that.
As for Musk, I find his claims on free speech as very irresponsible, I find his move to ask the US government to pay him for the Ukrainians internet after the Ukrainians disagreed with his views callous (if he doesn’t want to intervene, then don’t intervene from the beginning, rather than flip-flopping—let the politics to the politicians, or then acknowledge his huge power). In general, I am very critical of him and Zuckerberg on pretending that their riches do not give them a political role. They are deeply political and they had better a) recognise this and b) behave responsibly with their wealth. Besides, as for Musk specifically, I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve heard that a) the US government or other bodies helped him financially many times when he was in deep debt, despite his projections that he’s the best investor there is and b) one of his daughters changed her name so as not to be associated with him (not a good sign).
As for Dirac and Einstein, I would classify them along with great artists or sportsmen and music-people. What do you think about this idea? :)
Best Wishes,
Haris
Ps: i may be a bit slower in answering today, as I have some other things to read too—my heart is here though my head, enslaved by the capitalist logic that I have to put food on my table, says that I should focus on the other things too :)
Dear Miguel,
Hehe, after the compliments comes our first clash :) - i think Elon Musk is really misguided at best, and actively very evil and dangerous at worse, hehe. And I think we really need in our constitution about huge wealth differentials as I think that such differentials would bring along hierarchies and inequalities with them.
For me democracy is for everyone and there’s no better decision-making procedure (especially if the decisions are about living together and about very important topics that affect all citizens current and future, ie about politics and the stuff EA should be concerned with). If you want to see how passionate I am about this point I can refer you to my biggest academic success, a 15min presentation at an academic conference where I defend just this.
As for trying to convince you, there is some stuff in a field labelled political epistemology that talks about the epistemic (knowledge) value of democracy, and a theorist called Helene Landemore who believes (and there’s a theorem in maths that she cites, although you may know better than me that there are theorems proving everything and nothing out there) that a bunch of average thinkers, if diverse enough, would arrive at conclusions on any given topic which wouldn’t be inferior to those of experts.
Mind sending me a link or what to look for for equality of outcomes and equality of opportunity? I think I’ve seen it somewhere in EA but not sure how to find it again.
Best Wishes,
Haris
Dear friends,
This is a fascinating read, however I tend to agree mostly with the end and the conclusions rather than the approach. I think that the question posed somehow cannot be answered by a natural-science based approach, that it’s one to be approached best by the tools of history or maybe IR rather than power distributions, as a eras change, even between WWI, WWII and 2022, and big wars are quite sui generis events. A parameter that I would like to see in such an analysis would be how much more interconnected our world is at present and that it may get in the future. Here’s two examples from the present: a) the energy situation affecting Europe, and the economic effects of the Ukraine war, and b) internet use—imagine if a rogue country had in its tactics to cut internet supply or attack nuclear facilities or hospitals through cyberwarfare. Or, imagine worse, if the AI you mentioned is linked to the internet and some state hackers decide to hack them, without knowing for example how crazy the AI would go if hacked (ok, i’m stretching it a bit here).
I think more useful a more useful lead from your article is the mention of the democratization and the turning of the tide with citizens not willing to fight in really big and protracted wars (i guess the extinction war would have to escalate a bit before it reaches doomsday point, even though I wouldn’t rule out the accidental escalation that would lead to the nuclear winter in like a week or so—I can even see a quick escalation over Taiwan or sth, i hope i’m just naive).
Anyway, this was just a ramble, I apologise for this, the key takeaway from the above that I’d love to discuss with you is that I don’t think that power-laws can say much about a war leading to human extinction. On the contrary, history and perhaps psychology (the decisions of those a) deciding politics b) creating weapons and c) using weapons) could be more useful guides.
Best Wishes,
Haris
Dear Miguel,
Here’s the podcast i mentioned above (it’s a bit long but definitely worth it): https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ian-morris-big-picture-history/
I’ve also got the book they’re discussing, though not sure i can send it to you, it’s called Foragers, Farmers and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve
Right, got to hit the sheets, it’s past midnight here, looking forward to tomorrow!! :)
Best Wishes,
Haris
Dear Miguel,
First of all, many thanks for your kind words, also for me our interactions are brainfood and nourishing in a very vivid sense of the word!!
Now my admission: I never understood the concept of baseline, even though I’ve come across it very often (ok, i know you’ll tell me ‘just google it’, hehe). So i’m a bit confused by your middle sentence there about succeeding rulers. you mean about for example the succession of alexander the great by his generals or i don’t know obama by trump, am i hearing you accurately?
I think we have some resources from history (i am a great fan of history) about transacting resources: the solution will be something akin to money (insert your favourite actual thing, like shells, gold or crypto). The point is that we need to find a way that will make it unappealing to people to collect too much of this money. I think you must have missed it, but last Sunday there was a discussion on a book by a historian who was linking the development of four key values (attitudes to violence, to gender parity, property and hierarchy, or something like that) to two seminal events, the transition to agriculture and the industrial revolution (i can send you i think a podcast and the title of the book if you’re interested). So his main claim was that you can explain the whole of history based on the big jumps in energy consumption. i found it very interesting, it may be productive for our discussion.
Ok coming back to our discussion, for me the key would be to eliminate killing—not dying out of illnesses, but killing and war and domination. I am a very big believer in democracy and equality (though a bit of a less of a big believer in things like growth and free markets, but that’s negotiable, hehe :) )
Best Wishes,
Haris
Dear Miguel,
Yeah, we can agree that perhaps some common foundation may be required, and focus on the minimum we can agree on—with most of the points you make in the original being points that I agree with (adaptability, innovation, nature, etc) and perhaps some others that we can try to find if you so wish :). I guess for me it’s not that important (it is, but only relatively so, hehe) as to whether these are agreed upon because they are true or because they are agreed upon full stop :). I’m more concerned to think of the content at the moment, rather than the how.
As for decentralisation, maybe i used the wrong word, what i meant was that the idea would be to allow each population to govern themselves and have a very minimal set of common principles, as opposed to a highly organized and perhaps centralised structure which will be required in order to share limited resources for many people in one single planet (whose useful land we’re limiting day by day). I think one of the key goals of a constitution would be to ensure the flourishing of all (another aristotelian theme) and avoid wars and unnecessary killings.
Best Wishes,
Haris
Dear Miguel,
Are you (even a tiny bit, please don’t take this as me showing off) familiar with Aristotle on virtues? The (very broad, perhaps to a criminal extent of me distorting it) idea is that the virtuous person has their interests and the virtuous courses of action aligned, so by default they behave in a virtuous manner and their actions and decisions are virtuous. I think such an approach, in other words an institutional environment which encourages virtuous people to become leaders, would be better than trying to eliminate all self-interest (which I think can’t happen, or at worst may lead us into worshipping very extreme personalities).
As for the truths you mention, just to be a bit pedantic and score some low points, Einstein is inconsistent with quantum mechanics, evolution also continues to evolve (pun intended, hehe) as a theory, if you take the approach of history as your main approach then the natural sciences will (and they already do, hehe) hate you and look down on you, bits, well, there are now qubits (quantum computing ones-and-zeros-at-the-same time) and so on. Stoicism, again, I would applaud, but then, if stoicism, why not christianity or buddhism or cynicism or something else? they also have good elements.
But ok, the above paragraph we don’t have to bicker too much about if you don’t want it either.
Here are some thoughts I had and was dying to share with you: what do you think about decentralisation and use of resources? here’s what i mean: if we consider ten billion living on Earth, then the structure we’ll probably have in order to sustain ourselves and feed ourselves and mind the Earth will be much more different if there are 109 billion of us spread on five or ten different planets. If it’s the latter case, then the way to go would probably have to be a stratification and strict centralisation. if it’s the latter, then maybe respect to each other and decentralisation would be better. What do you think?
Best Wishes,
Haris
Dear Miguel,
Liverpool duly obliged last night (first away win to a difficult opponent!!), so all good!
Sure we can continue chatting and something can come out, if not for others then at least for us.
I think we need to think the following thought-experiment: Do we want to provide something like the american constitution, a text that will survive and people will be meant to follow for many (hundreds, thousands or even millions of ) years? In my view, such a document will just become obsolete as it will either age or as the conditions change due to planetary expansion or whatever. Also, (ok, if you check my work on Researchgate, my phd work is a bit critical of the institution of science), i remember reading somewhere that scientific truths nowadays have a very short half-life. So if we’ll look for truths we’ll need to use sth like Rawls’ veil of ignorance or another mechanism.
In my view, interests are not bad per se nor are they unavoidable. Hence why my stance is put everybody’s cards on the table, have a negotiation, sign it off as a responsible group of deliberators, and then maybe have that revised or re-agreed upon every few generations or years. However, an objection to such a view would be the concept of agonism (the theoretician here would be a lady called Chantal Mouffe) who argues that in politics there’s always a group left out.
Ok, enough of my blah-blah, back over to you!! :) - what I want you to tell me if you want is to elucidate a bit what you mean by truths as we may not be too far away anyway, on second thought :)
Best Wishes,
haris
Dear Miguel,
Happy mood over here, it was the english premier league, Liverpool FC vs Tottenham Hotspur and I’m a massive Liverpool supporter! There were a couple more big games (greece and cyprus—i’m from cyprus) but we didn’t stick around with my friend.
Mm interesting, I know really like your angle, explicitly the critique of current politics (let’s call them that, for a lack of a better word) and the pressing need to improve and find a way of good governance for the long-term future. To be honest, that’s something i’d really like to work on (my work so far has been on the relationship between democracy and science). However, in my view, the politics that you criticise would (or maybe even should) continue to exist, especially if after expanding into other worlds leads us into radically different worldviews because exactly of teh differences in physics and resources that you mention. Hence why for me, consensus and setting things aside as a product of agreement rather than as a product of truth finding seems more like the way to go.
I hope the above is clear and not too fluffy, as I’m feeling a bit tired right now and my brain is not at its clearest.
Best Wishes,
Haris
Dear Miguel,
Many thanks for this, and for the promptness of your reply, both much appreciated!!!
Do you think we’re making any progress in defining what is truthful (or true even), and how? For example, one possible answer would be that we’re making a lot of progress since 1650 through the institutionalization of (natural) science, and especially in the 20th-21st century with more people working in science.
An other example of an answer would be that all through its written history humanity has been on a search to define what is truthful, and that this is the essence of the meaning and the struggle that you write about in the second paragraph.
Also, I would appreciate your thoughts on how you think policy-making at present differs to what you describe in your second paragraph as policies grounded in the preservation of (i assume) humans.
Best Wishes,
Haris
(ps: I may take a while to get back to you, as in 3-4 hours or a bit more, please don’t be offended, it’s just that I’ll be off to watch football in a bit :) )
Dear friend,
I broadly agree with most of the constitution, though I struggle to see how the section on truth relates to the rest of the document. I would keep the concept of truth out of a political document (a document instructing us how to live together), as it seems a bit a) tyrannical (what do we do with those who are misled or who have radically different worldviews from us) and b) a bit fuzzy (as many philosophers would tell you but also many scientists). Maybe it wasn’t by coincidence that the people who coined the word ‘philosophy’ opted for a word that means love of wisdom rather than for one which means love of truth (you can argue that you can’t have wisdom without truth, but then I’d say that truth may not be sufficient for wisdom, and may not even be necessary, and that opting for wisdom may give you the adaptability that you mention further down in your post).
Best Wishes,
Haris
Dear Emrik,
Many thanks for the feedback and for the encouragement! The examples were a bit speculative, though the fish one is quite well-known, I think it was in the 90s. Also I know that it’s only recently that the effects of long-term studies of small yet steady concentrations of macro-molecules have begun to be conducted, not least because ten years ago we didn’t have the technology to pursue such kinds of studies.
If anybody is interested to ‘research together’ I can do imagine pursuing this further (this is an invitation), at the moment though it’s just an idle thought.
So please, anybody with more knowledge and means, if you’re interested, I’d welcome the chance to conduct a literature review for anything mentioned above, and we can take it from there!
Dear Miguel,
Do you think there are unsolveable problems? Though about the specific one, I think it can be solved by a mix of selection or just by random selection of candidates (in the context of public decision-makers).
Mm to answer your second question first, I struggle to see the connection between fairness and the exchange of goods for money. For example, I could well envisage a gift economy or exchange of time instead of credit and material goods. Though again, not sure all of this would be fairer rather than just alternatives. I’ll have to look into the notion of fairness a bit more. I remember a bit of Rawls and justice as fairness, but I’ll have to spend some time dusting that up in order to have something interesting to say.
As for why I said exchange for money only produces inequality, i guess what i meant was that if one medium of the exchange (money) can be used for anything, whilst the other has specific uses, then I guess the person who ends up with the thing for anything is better off—especially if they start specialising in collecting this use-for-everything good and yardstick. In plain words, I guess if some people end up with more money and others with less, then that for me is inequality enough.
Best Wishes,
Haris