Ok, I should have been clear in the beginning—what struck me was that the first example was essentially answering the question on doing great harm with minimum spendings—a really wicked “evil EA”, I would say. I found it somewhat ironic.
Michał Zabłocki
Karma: 186
Scroll down to page 82. No spoilers.
Also, I’ve noticed that MacAskill’s book in bibliography—but just as a general reference I would say. Haven’t spotted any other major philosophical works.
While I agree that treating extreme pain is definitely in line with NU, a person struggling with major depression, I believe, usually is quite dubious about their efficacy and potential to achieve such goals. You can’t work on ending factory farming if you can’t even get out of bed, plainly speaking.
Hi Geoffrey—I’ve found your work very interesting and hence I respect your authority, but at the same time I can’t fully agree. For me, reading Perry felt honestly great, that someone perhaps could hold similar views that I hold, that someone would actually agree with me on certain things, that I was not all alone in the world. And in the end—both Perry and me lead a fairly happy life, I think. No one would arrive at her or Benatar’s writings accidentally—and if they did, they wouldn’t find them appealing.
But that was a sidenote. My major arguement is: I don’t deny that most people are net happy. I just think that the price of those suffering is a really high one to pay—one unworthy paying.
I’ve been attracted to this idea my whole adult life. However:
an actual attempt to pursue it would probably have quite awful consequences instead of the good ones imagined (simplest case possible to realise: me ending my own suffering would create suffering for my close ones) Killing other people—there’s no magic annihilation button, so that’s probably not going to end well either. Perhaps something like legalising euthanasia could actually successfully reduce suffering rather than accidentally increase it.
as the previous point may hint already, I don’t think this philosophy is a very healthy one to hold—or rather, I believe it’s a result of a mind troubled with suffering. So it’s not that it changed my mind, but rather it was something I naturally looked for and arrived at thanks to being depressed—and I didn’t enjoy the journey very much.
I honestly don’t feel I’m anywhere near competent to evaluate how good anyone is as a director of some institute.
I’ve never seriously entertained the idea that EA is like a sect—until now. This is really uncanny.
There have been so many posts on this already—and, oh, here’s another one—seeing the Apology part makes up most of the post. Here’s an opinion from outside: the Apology is not anywhere close to being this serious of an issue it is presented. I’ll say more: many people would even argue the original post Bostrom issued the apology for wasn’t particularly bad. Because many people worldwide may well hold views that here are seen as abhorrent. I’m not sure this holier than thou attitude on the forum is all that beneficial.
I know outing people who are gay can get them as far as murdered in places where homophobia is most rampant. On the other hand, polyamory seems to be a fairly popular model in the rich Bay Area community, often not kept secretive and without such repercussions. So I’m reserved whether this comparison is fair.
I studied philosophy—but I don’t get the argument. Furthermore, I don’t think there’s any such X such that X resolves population ethics.
The writing style here is bad
I’m not sure piling up on a guy for something he said 26 years ago is helpful in achieving most good.
How about better do good;)
I’m glad you enjoyed teaching philosophy, and I don’t want to negate that you had an impact onto your students. However, I can’t really agree with your optimistic view on the “philosophy classroom’ environment.
I’ve spent 5 years studying philosophy at the university and there is indeed a great benefit to discussing things and disagreeing on them, but what I want to state it goes well only as long as the topic *isn’t* controversial. AI risk, I believe, actually falls in this non-controversial category. However, when the topic actually is personal to people and politically-charged, then I’ve observed that there is no more rational discussion and/or good faith—either in the philosophy classroom, or, let’s say, “philosophical spaces” in the Internet. I can have a different opinion than my colleagues on the nature of time and space and it’s all good, but when it comes to discussing e.g. abortion and there’s disagreement, it’s not so “fun” anymore. At least that’s my experience.
This link is broken for me.
I’d counter that the focus on race and gender is very US-centric rather than culturally universal. I volunteer at a local charity, gender proportions are heavily skewed towards women being the bigger group. I neither find it a problem nor think any diversity measures should be introduced. It also seems fairly intuitive to me that it is the people who are the most privileged that can focus on such problems as AGI Safety and existential risk rather than those who struggle financially to live on the week to week basis.
“SBF is an idiot because he’s bad at League of Legends” is the wildest argument I’ve seen in a while.
I see it’s indeed page 83 in the document on arxiv; it was 82 in the pdf on OpenAI website