Furcas comments on Transparency and Accountability - Less Wrong

16 Post author: multifoliaterose 21 August 2010 01:01PM

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Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 21 August 2010 11:35:06PM 2 points [-]

I have to say that my overall impression here is of someone who manages to talk mostly LW language most of the time, but when his argument requires a step that just completely fails to make sense, like "And this is why if you're trying to minimize existential risk, you should support a charity that tries to stop tuberculosis" or "And this is where we're going to assume the worst possible case instead of the expected case and actually act that way", he'll just blithely keep going.

Are you reading multifoliaterose carefully? He has made neither of these claims.

He said that supporting a tuberculosis charity is better than donating to SIAI, not that supporting a tuberculosis charity is the best way to fight existential risk.

And he hasn't advocated using something other than the expected case when evaluating a non-transparent charity. What you may infer is that he believes that the worst case does not significantly differ from the expected case in the context of the amount of money that he would donate. That belief may not be realistic, but it's not the belief that you impute to him.

Comment deleted 21 August 2010 11:51:05PM [-]
Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 22 August 2010 12:05:40AM 0 points [-]

And he hasn't advocated using something other than the expected case when evaluating a non-transparent charity. What you may infer is that he believes that the worst case does not significantly differ from the expected case

That's not what Multi said. He said we should assume the worst. You only need to assume something when you know that belief would be useful even though you don't believe it. So he clearly doesn't believe the worst (or if he does, he hasn't said so).

I don't use the word "assume" in the way that you describe, and I would be surprised if multi were.

He also said that he "believe[s] that reducing existential risk is ultimately more important than developing world aid." How do you go from there to supporting StopTB over SIAI, unless you believe the worst?

Here I think we more-or-less agree. On my reading, multi is saying that, right now, the probability that SIAI is a money pit is high enough to outweigh the good that SIAI would do if it weren't a money pit, relative to a tuberculosis charity. But multi is also saying that this probability assignment is unstable, so that some reasonable amount of evidence would lead him to radically reassign his probabilities.

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