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JamesAndrix comments on Intelligence enhancement as existential risk mitigation - Less Wrong
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If you are surrounded by money pumps, is it rational to bet with them, or correct their functioning?
That's not quite what I meant, but I do believe Eliezer has advised anyone not working on 'risks' (or FAI?) to make as much money as they can and contribute to an organization that is.
What I meant was that given a money pump, the straightforward thing to do is to pump it, not fix it in the hope that it will somehow benefit humanity.
It seems to me that on LW, most believe that people are irrational in ways that should make people money pumps, but the reaction to this is to make extreme efforts to persuade people of things.
Improving someone's intelligence or rationality is difficult if they're not already looking, but channeling away some of their funds or political capital will lessen the impact their irrationality can have.
I think that most people are (unconsciously) rational enough to avoid being financially exploited in any but the obvious known ways (lotteries, advertising affecting preferences, etc) for which there's already a competitive market or regulation. Aside from those avenues, most people are too wary of being cheated to make good money pumps.
What's not being covered as much are the ways that people irrationally contribute to the destruction of wealth and utility, by voting for ineffective or detrimental policies or by spreading harmful memes. (People don't typically have an evolved horror of doing these things.) A push towards rationality on those fronts can help everyone.
If you disagree, do you have a particularly effective money-pump in mind? (Of course you might hesitate to share it.)