Is there any way to improve the filter so that we get more ambition from benign people without just saying everyone should try to change the world, even if they're Osama bin Laden?
I think it's hard to think about people like Osama bin Laden because there's a lot of spin around him. It's worth to read Gwern's post about terrorism http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20Effective . Osama Bin Ladin likely spent ten millions of dollars but still only invested 500k into 9/11 and didn't spent another 500k the next year to get a similar attack.
Then it's worth thinking about psychopaths. They don't seem to be motivated by having a long term vision of having something to protect. Eliezer made it Harry's power that the dark lord hasn't. Finding something to care about seems to be part of the CFAR curriculum. It's not something that a psychopaths can simply do. Having social norms of high physical contact likely produces an enviroment in which psychopaths don't feel well and rather want to stay out.
Having social norms of high physical contact likely produces an enviroment in which psychopaths don't feel well
I'd like to have some source on this.
From what I heard about psychopaths, they are uncomfortable with describing their feelings, because their feelings are different from the neurotypical person; and they don't want to be exposed. (Ironically, various group therapy sessions with neurotypical people in the group solve this problems for psychopaths, because they get enough data so they can better fake having the usual feelings.) But I haven't heard anything about physical contact.
30 minute panel
The first question was why isn't everyone trying to change the world, with the underlying assumption that everyone should be. However, it isn't obviously the case that the world would be better if everyone were trying to change it. For one thing, trying to change the world mostly means trying to change other people. If everyone were trying to do it, this would be a huge drain on everyone's attention. In addition, some people are sufficiently mean and/or stupid that their efforts to change the world make things worse.
At the same time, some efforts to change the world are good, or at least plausible. Is there any way to improve the filter so that we get more ambition from benign people without just saying everyone should try to change the world, even if they're Osama bin Laden?
The discussion of why there's too much duplicated effort in science didn't bring up the problem of funding, which is probably another version of the problem of people not doing enough independent thinking.
There was some discussion of people getting too hooked on competition, which is a way of getting a lot of people pointed at the same goal.
Link thanks to Clarity