Cross-posted from my blog here.
One of the greatest successes of mankind over the last few centuries has been the enormous amount of wealth that has been created. Once upon a time virtually everyone lived in grinding poverty; now, thanks to the forces of science, capitalism and total factor productivity, we produce enough to support a much larger population at a much higher standard of living.
EAs being a highly intellectual lot, our preferred form of ritual celebration is charts. The ordained chart for celebrating this triumph of our people is the Declining Share of People Living in Extreme Poverty Chart.
(Source)
However, as a heretic, I think this chart is a mistake. What is so great about reducing the share? We could achieve that by killing all the poor people, but that would not be a good thing! Life is good, and poverty is not death; it is simply better for it to be rich.
As such, I think this is a much better chart. Here we show the world population. Those in extreme poverty are in purple – not red, for their existence is not bad. Those who the wheels of progress have lifted into wealth unbeknownst to our ancestors, on the other hand, are depicted in blue, rising triumphantly.
Long may their rise continue.
I'm referring to the text, not the graph(s). The two paragraphs between the graphs imply
He does not preface any of it by saying "I think", he just presents it as obvious. Well, I know for a fact that there are many people who self-identify as rationalists to whom this is not obvious at all. It also alienates me that people here, according to the karma distributions, don't seem to get my point.
I sympathize with the feeling of alienation and confusion when something valuable gets downvoted.I try not to learn too much from small karma amounts - there's enough inconsistency in what different groups of readers seem to want that it's easier to post mostly for my own amusement.
I don't agree that it's all that controversial that "copy an overall-positive-value population distribution" is positive. The second half of the repugnant conclusion (that adjusting satisfaction toward the average is non-negative) is somewhat disputed, but wasn't sug... (read more)