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Cameron_Taylor comments on The Craft and the Community - Less Wrong
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"...then there's the idea that rationalists should be able to (a) solve group coordination problems, (b) care a lot about other people and (c) win..."
Why should rationalists necessarily care a lot about other people? If we are to avoid circular altruism and the nefarious effects of other-optimizing, the best amount of caring might be less than "a lot."
Additionally, caring about other people in the sense of seeking emotional gratification primarily in tribe-like social rituals may be truly inimical to dedicating one's life to theoretical physics, math, or any other far-thinking discipline.
Caring about other people may entail involvement in politics, and local politics can be just as mind-killing as national politics.
"With that caveat, this summary and plenty of the posts contained within are damn useful!"
I resoundingly agree.
That said, Eliezer is attempting to leverage the sentiments we now call "altruistic" into efficient other-optimizing. What if all people are really after is warm fuzzies? Mightn't they then shrink from the prospect of optimally helping others?
Hobbes gives us several possible reasons for altruism, none of which seem to be conducive to effective helping:
"When the transferring of right is not mutual, but one of the parties transferreth in hope to gain thereby friendship or service from another, or from his friends; or in hope to gain the reputation of charity, or magnanimity; or to deliver his mind from the pain of compassion [self-haters give more?]; or in hope of reward in heaven; this is not contract, but gift, free gift, grace: which words signify one and the same thing."
There is also the problem of epistemic limitations around other-optimizing. Charity might remove more utilons from the giver than it bestows upon the receiver, if only because it's difficult to know what other people need and easier to know what oneself needs.
"Mightn't" we shrink from optimal helping? "Might" charity be usually an imbalance of utilons?
Yes, we might, it might.
These are important considerations--I don't mean to denigrate clear thinking. But to lie content with hypothetical reasons why something wouldn't work, due to a common hidden laziness of most humans but which we can convince ourselves is due to more noble and reasonable reasons, is to completely miss the most crucial point of this entire Sequence: actually doing something, testing.
I think it's safe to say that the natural inclination of most humans isn't initiating large projects with high but uncertain reward. It's to "just get by", a fact which I must thank you, good sir, for illustrating.... it was intentional, right?