They must be "effective" "altruists".
The only way to do good is to first do all the bad and consolidate power, so you can then use all that power to do good, pinkie promise!
The only way to do good is to first do all the bad and consolidate power, so you can then use all that power to do good, pinkie promise!
The biggest issue for me was the AGI/ASI doomerism. But then again, fast-forward five or six years and we've got "unaligned" AI agents blindly following reward functions...
Don't bring any of that firsthand knowledge here. You're also not allowed to reference any of the actual writing or pledges or organizations actually in the EA ecosystem. It's Twitter vibes or nothing, mmkay?
AKA It's fine if I do locally horrible things if in aggregate I do more good than bad*
* by whatever metric of good I self select for - terms & conditions apply, much CO2 may be released.
Of course, anything taken to extremes tends to get distorted.
It's frustrating to vote for the person you disagree with least (by a little or a lot).
I would not usually even say that out loud, as I don't want to be accusatory. However, I think that's just the facts at this point. Hence, my statement about a bit of consequentialism being good.
No it doesn't.
This is a thing that some EAs believe, but is definitely not a "core precept."
So I see EA as a popular one of those stories. One that people can reinforce. Makes the world simpler than it actually is: climb the ladder, make money at whatever cost, there's no harm that you can do that can't be offset by giving it all away at the end. It is a vast over simplification and is inconsistent logic. If they used their own logic then they'd recognize helping people now also results in compounding effects. You fix the problems now, while they are small and manageable, rather than kicking the can down the road. Maintenance is a lot easier and cheaper than repair. But it also requires us to be nuanced and reflect on ourselves [0]
[0] there seems to be a great irony that those leading these big AI companies are not themselves able to deeply reflect on their own actions, yet ask the AI to. How can you design something that you aren't intimately familiar with?
I'm happy to try and get already wealthy individuals on the train of effective altruism but it has been used to justify wealth concentration far too much and, to be honest, spreading money around is one of the most effective ways to enact real positive changes in the world since individuals know their own situations the best.