= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
RomeoStevens comments on Open Thread for February 11 - 17 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (325)
Sometimes I feel like looking into how I can help humanity (e.g. 80000 hours stuff), but other times I feel like humanity is just irredeemable and may as well wipe itself off the planet (via climate change, nuclear war, whatever).
For instance, humans are so facepalmingly bad at making decisions for the long term (viz. climate change, running out of fossil fuels) that it seems clear that genetic or neurological enhancements would be highly beneficial in changing this (and other deficiencies, of course). Yet discourse about such things is overwhelmingly negative, mired in what I think are irrational kneejerk reactions to defend "what it means to be human." So I'm just like, you know what? Fuck it. You can't even help yourselves help yourselves. Forget it.
Thoughts?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifiable_victim_effect
Also, would you still want to save a drowning dog even if it might bite you out of fear and misunderstanding? (let's say it is a small dog and a bite would not be drastically injurious)
True, true. But it's still hard for me (and most people?) to circumvent that effect, even while I'm aware of it. I know Mother Theresa actually had a technique for it (to just think of one child rather than the millions in need). I guess I can try that. Any other suggestions?
I'll pretend it's a cat since I don't really like small dogs. ;-) Yes, of course I'd save it. I think this analogy will help me moving forward. Thank you! ^_^
No problem. I have an intuition that IMing might be more productive than structured posts if you're exploring this space and want to cover a bunch of ground quickly. Feel free to ping me on gtalk if you're interested. romeostevensit is my google.