If we could make people more altruistic by some intervention, and roll out that measure at a public health level that would be a great contribution to altruism.
"Effective Altruism" started out with its heart in the right place. Unfortunately, it cratered due to a bad case of Rationalist's Disease ("Nobody has ever thought about this problem before, or at least, nowhere near as well as we can. With our mighty powers of QALY-ification, Abstract Modeling, Mathematical Calculation, High Decoupling, and never ever studying past failure, we will REVOLUTIONIZE THE WORLD - or at least, this topic"). It's sad (and also somewhat darkly funny) the way it became the justification of an AI doomsday cult and then a crypto-scam.
[Sigh, I know, there are good kind people who still carry the dream - but this is also true of literal Communism.]
"Effective Meta-Altruism" will quickly become "The best thing to do is to give money to tech billionaires and their start-ups, since tech companies are so great for humanity", because that's just the nature of the beast. I think Paul Graham even has an essay arguing roughly that idea.
I'm all for removing lead from water, but the reason that people fail to be altruistic is that they have shitty lives, shitty communities, and shitty childhood influences. They are pitted against each other from the outset by a shallow and competitive education system. They are forced as adults to do jobs of dubious moral worth at barely enough pay to keep their life on track. They live in communities that aren't communities, just groups of strangers that walk past each other wordlessly. Their models of success are illusions created by Hollywood and the PR industry. Their political leaders are hypocrites and fearmongers who will sell them into slavery before facing the prospect of losing reelection. Their religious leaders are shrill sectarians who reassure them that they are right and good, they are God's favorite, everyone else is evil, now please, the collection bag is coming around, remember to tithe. If you want to do the Manhattan Project of Altruism you have to belly up to how serious the problem of Evil actually is.
I whole heartedly agree. A lot of current political discourse tends on convincing strangers on the internet through... uh, not-so-polite and sardonic debates and trying to shift the Overton window their way because they believe their position is correct and it would do the most good, even if their opponents don't believe the same.
In one of his posts Yudkowsky argues against some New Atheist claims that religion is the root of a lot of evil — instead he argues that it is a symptom of lack of rationality in most people. Instead of arguing against the existence of god, if you simply taught them general concepts such as Occam's razor, the error in phlogiston and vitalist theories, basic epistemology etc., you could make atheism look *obvious* instead of the latest culture war brainrot.
I feel more political activism would be better directed at directly at improving the quality of life and thinking of the general population as a whole; a lot of cognitive science literature tells us that debates often do not change minds and the myriad of cognitive biases in our cognitive hardware that make it a lot harder for people to change their mind despite evidence.
I believe that if humanity simply continues to improve their quality of life (and hence be able to devote more time and energy for thinking) society will only naturally tend towards the left. As long as the Flynn effect still stands, democracy is maintained, evil dictators don't literally brainwash everyone in the entire world, nutrition in poorer countries improves, and humanity doesn't destroy itself there is no need to literally "murder all [people who I ideologically disagree with]" (which is something someone I know says a lot in rage...)
> if you simply taught them general concepts such as Occam's razor, the error in phlogiston and vitalist theories, basic epistemology etc., you could make atheism look *obvious*
Once you get past *basic* epistemology though, you might realize the folly in believing what is "obvious", like for example that it is obvious that there "is no" evidence for God (one of my favorite faith based claims).
> democracy is maintained, evil dictators don't literally brainwash everyone in the entire world
Ah yes, propaganda-free Western "democracy", the best system possible.
Your last paragraph is wishful thinking. There are fewer democracies in the world now than there were when I was born (1997). My generation is first in American history to underperform their parents economically. Gen Z swings to the right, not the left, of millennials. You believe a version of Whig history which is not borne out in current conditions or trends.
I admit democracy isn't doing very good... even in my own country the propagandic nature of mass media and the authoritarianism of the ruling party is getting less and less subtle and at this point it's almost comical how the population continues to live in denial and the far right is taking a resurgence among the youth... but I never claimed that all this wasn't happening. I believe that in countries where economic growth and democracy is maintained left-wing thought eventually triumphs. Or, at least I believe, will.
On the claim that Gen Z is more right wing... when googling this claim I did find a lot of articles claiming that GenZ is becoming more right wing... but I also found a lot of articles saying that they were becoming more liberal. Some suggested that there is an ideological divide between male and females so maybe that explains it. so to get a more whole picture I just went to the pew research and wikipedia page and it looks like genz is left wing in... basically every single thing? More favourable view of socialism, less favourable view of Donald Trump, more progressive on sex and gender, more support for BLM and against cops when compared to the average voter, more likely to support Palestine than any other generation, most concerned generation about climate change etc. Unless the Wikipedia page is unreliable in which case crap
Gen Z's politics are difficult to typify but in general they swing right. I am a schoolteacher so I see this in action daily - the problem is that Gen Z really needs to be split in two by ages. My Gen Z (I'm 27, so either the youngest millennial or oldest Gen Z) is very different from 15 year olds today. Technology adoption, COVID, and social media use has created generations within generations.
My lead poisoned child is also my most altruistic.
Any trends would only be on a population level, individuals are moved by so many different factors.
Just figured it would be an interesting
data point :)
You've re-invented social democratic liberalism.
"Effective Altruism" started out with its heart in the right place. Unfortunately, it cratered due to a bad case of Rationalist's Disease ("Nobody has ever thought about this problem before, or at least, nowhere near as well as we can. With our mighty powers of QALY-ification, Abstract Modeling, Mathematical Calculation, High Decoupling, and never ever studying past failure, we will REVOLUTIONIZE THE WORLD - or at least, this topic"). It's sad (and also somewhat darkly funny) the way it became the justification of an AI doomsday cult and then a crypto-scam.
[Sigh, I know, there are good kind people who still carry the dream - but this is also true of literal Communism.]
"Effective Meta-Altruism" will quickly become "The best thing to do is to give money to tech billionaires and their start-ups, since tech companies are so great for humanity", because that's just the nature of the beast. I think Paul Graham even has an essay arguing roughly that idea.
I'm all for removing lead from water, but the reason that people fail to be altruistic is that they have shitty lives, shitty communities, and shitty childhood influences. They are pitted against each other from the outset by a shallow and competitive education system. They are forced as adults to do jobs of dubious moral worth at barely enough pay to keep their life on track. They live in communities that aren't communities, just groups of strangers that walk past each other wordlessly. Their models of success are illusions created by Hollywood and the PR industry. Their political leaders are hypocrites and fearmongers who will sell them into slavery before facing the prospect of losing reelection. Their religious leaders are shrill sectarians who reassure them that they are right and good, they are God's favorite, everyone else is evil, now please, the collection bag is coming around, remember to tithe. If you want to do the Manhattan Project of Altruism you have to belly up to how serious the problem of Evil actually is.
Spaced repetition systems ftw: https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Goodness_of_knowledge
I whole heartedly agree. A lot of current political discourse tends on convincing strangers on the internet through... uh, not-so-polite and sardonic debates and trying to shift the Overton window their way because they believe their position is correct and it would do the most good, even if their opponents don't believe the same.
In one of his posts Yudkowsky argues against some New Atheist claims that religion is the root of a lot of evil — instead he argues that it is a symptom of lack of rationality in most people. Instead of arguing against the existence of god, if you simply taught them general concepts such as Occam's razor, the error in phlogiston and vitalist theories, basic epistemology etc., you could make atheism look *obvious* instead of the latest culture war brainrot.
I feel more political activism would be better directed at directly at improving the quality of life and thinking of the general population as a whole; a lot of cognitive science literature tells us that debates often do not change minds and the myriad of cognitive biases in our cognitive hardware that make it a lot harder for people to change their mind despite evidence.
I believe that if humanity simply continues to improve their quality of life (and hence be able to devote more time and energy for thinking) society will only naturally tend towards the left. As long as the Flynn effect still stands, democracy is maintained, evil dictators don't literally brainwash everyone in the entire world, nutrition in poorer countries improves, and humanity doesn't destroy itself there is no need to literally "murder all [people who I ideologically disagree with]" (which is something someone I know says a lot in rage...)
> if you simply taught them general concepts such as Occam's razor, the error in phlogiston and vitalist theories, basic epistemology etc., you could make atheism look *obvious*
Once you get past *basic* epistemology though, you might realize the folly in believing what is "obvious", like for example that it is obvious that there "is no" evidence for God (one of my favorite faith based claims).
> democracy is maintained, evil dictators don't literally brainwash everyone in the entire world
Ah yes, propaganda-free Western "democracy", the best system possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
>if you simply taught them Occam's razor
Free fedora with this statement
Your last paragraph is wishful thinking. There are fewer democracies in the world now than there were when I was born (1997). My generation is first in American history to underperform their parents economically. Gen Z swings to the right, not the left, of millennials. You believe a version of Whig history which is not borne out in current conditions or trends.
I admit democracy isn't doing very good... even in my own country the propagandic nature of mass media and the authoritarianism of the ruling party is getting less and less subtle and at this point it's almost comical how the population continues to live in denial and the far right is taking a resurgence among the youth... but I never claimed that all this wasn't happening. I believe that in countries where economic growth and democracy is maintained left-wing thought eventually triumphs. Or, at least I believe, will.
On the claim that Gen Z is more right wing... when googling this claim I did find a lot of articles claiming that GenZ is becoming more right wing... but I also found a lot of articles saying that they were becoming more liberal. Some suggested that there is an ideological divide between male and females so maybe that explains it. so to get a more whole picture I just went to the pew research and wikipedia page and it looks like genz is left wing in... basically every single thing? More favourable view of socialism, less favourable view of Donald Trump, more progressive on sex and gender, more support for BLM and against cops when compared to the average voter, more likely to support Palestine than any other generation, most concerned generation about climate change etc. Unless the Wikipedia page is unreliable in which case crap
Gen Z's politics are difficult to typify but in general they swing right. I am a schoolteacher so I see this in action daily - the problem is that Gen Z really needs to be split in two by ages. My Gen Z (I'm 27, so either the youngest millennial or oldest Gen Z) is very different from 15 year olds today. Technology adoption, COVID, and social media use has created generations within generations.