#19 - Against Longtermism FAQ
from Increments Hosted by Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani
Back in the ring for round two on longtermism! We (Ben somewhat drunkenly) respond to some of the criticism of episode #17 and our two essays (Ben's, Vaden's) We touch on: Ben's hate mail from his piece on cliodynamics Longtermism as implying altruistic portfolio shuffling What on earth is Bayesian epistemology The Pasadena game Authoritarianism and the danger of seeking perfection Arrow's theorem Alternative decision theories focusing on error correction What's the probability of nuclear war before 2100? When are models reliable What problems to work on You will, dear listener, be either pleased or horrified to learn that this will not be our last foray into longtermism. It's like choose your own adventure ... except we're choosing the adventure, and the adventure is longtermism. Next stop is the Hear this Idea podcast! Send us best longterm prediction at [email protected]
Embed this episode
Chapters
- 0:00 Intro: drunk cold open + music
- 0:17 EA community feedback vs. cliodynamics hate mail
- 6:00 Main segment: longtermism Q&A begins
- 6:51 Longtermism as altruistic portfolio shuffling
- 12:51 What is Bayesian epistemology?
- 19:41 The authoritarian device thought experiment
- 30:50 Error-correcting systems over perfect decisions
- 37:06 Arrow's theorem disproves perfect decision-making
- 43:06 The Pasadena Game and the contagion problem
- 1:00:02 Nuclear war probability and model reliability
- 1:06:00 Falsifiability as a continuous obligation
- 1:19:00 What problems should we work on?
No transcript yet.