This links, in my mind, to the thesis of Iain McGilchrist’s “The Master and his Emissary”. That is, that left-brain-hemisphere skills are relatively over-valued, and that right-brain-hemisphere skills are relatively undervalued/negelected. I (personally) think the same is at least somewhat true in EA. This isn’t to criticise left-hemisphere skills—I think they’re a huge part of what make people effective and my own relative lack of them can be a bit debilitating.
Right-brain (neglected?) skills:
Emotive/inspirational communication, storytelling, humour, public speaking, creativity. Envisaging how a piece of communication will make people feel.
Building strong relationships, supporting others.
Big picture thinking, systems thinking (as opposed to thinking ‘on the margin’)
Intuition and ‘common sense’
Creativity
Dispersed attention generating “outside of the box” thinking
Emotional intelligence
Ability to visualise, and internalise the real experience of others, even hypothetical others. Having this ability/characteristic ramped up to 100 shapes my reaction to thought experiments like the repugnant conclusion/the very repugnant conclusion, and hence my ethical views. I’m not confident in how neglected this attribute is in EA, but I think it varies and isn’t heavily correlated with IQ—I know very clever people who just don’t empathise with the suffering of others, I know EAs who went vegan after hearing strong arguments but not because of initial empathy, I know myself who went vegetarian as soon as I learned where meat came from, and cried viciously when I snapped the head off of a chocolate polar bear.
Left brain (over-valued?) skills:
Efficiency when ‘doing’ and ‘manipulating information’
Logical, linear thinking
Detail-oriented
Language - (i.e. being able to read write and talk well and quickly)
Analytical use of facts and evidence
Abstracting away from real experience (I’m looking at you, repugnant conclusion)
Maybe I’m just biased and bitter because I’m predisposed to the former over the latter, and again, there’s massive value to the latter :)
Nice post, thanks for sharing @Hazo! I think it’s very valuable for animal advocates (or anyone trying to help others) to consdider wether they should adjust their approach given that transformative AI may be on the horizon. This is exactly the type of conversation we’re trying to encourage at AI for Animals (soon to be ‘Sentient Futures’). I’d love to see you join our Slack and contribute to this discussion—I will be sharing your post with our community (provided that’s okay with you!).