= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
RobinHanson comments on Image vs. Impact: Can public commitment be counterproductive for achievement? - 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 (47)
But how many altruists can there really be, relative to status seekers?
~(status-seeking --> ~altruistic)
Why are we assuming these categories are mutually exclusive? Like Will points out, if we just accept that altruism and status-seeking are inextricable then we can design societies where altruistic behavior has high status returns. I guess I don't get the usefulness of the distinction.
Status seekers probably greatly outnumber true altruists.
But you should tend to keep the status seekers out of positions of great responsibility IMHO even if doing so greatly reduces the total number of volunteers working on existential risks.
My tentative belief that status seekers will not do as good a job BTW stems from (1) first-hand observation and second-hand observation of long-term personal performance as a function of personal motivation in domains such as science-learning, programming, management and politics and (2) a result from social psychology that intrinsic reinforcers provide more reliable motivation than extrinsic reinforcers (for more about which, google "Punished by Rewards").
The last thing the future light cone needs is for existential-risk activism to become the next big thing in how to show prospective friends and prospective lovers how cool you are.
A lot more people talk about existential risks, often in a very animated way, than do anything about them.
I think probably the vast majority of people interested in existential risk want to signify both that they are good caring people, and that they are hard-headed intelligent rationalists and not the sort of muddled peace-and-love types who would go around waving "FUR IS MURDER" signs.
Probably doesn't actually work as far as getting friends and lovers is concerned, but it's a good self-signal.
Someone should document and categorize the most common signaling tropes of this community. Maybe once I get up to 40 or whatever.