OpenWorm and differential technological development

John_Maxwell

According to Robin Hanson's arguments in this blog post, we want to promote research in to cell modeling technology (ideally at the expense of research in to faster computer hardware). That would mean funding this kickstarter, which is ending in 11 hours (it may still succeed; there are a few tricks for pushing borderline kickstarters through). I already pledged $250; I'm not sure if I should pledge significantly more on the strength of one Hanson blog post. Thoughts from anyone? (I also encourage other folks to pledge! Maybe we can name neurons after characters in HPMOR or something. EDIT: Or maybe funding OpenWorm is a bad idea; see this link.)

I'm also curious on what people think about the efficiency of trying to pursue differential technological development directly this way vs funding MIRI/FHI. I haven't read the entire conversation referenced here, but this bit from the blog post sounds correct-ish to me:

People doing philosophical work to try to reduce existential risk are largely wasting their time. Tyler doesn’t think it’s a serious effort, though it may be good publicity for something that will pay off later. A serious effort looks more like the parts of the US government that trained people to infiltrate the post-collapse Soviet Union and then locate and neutralize nuclear weapons. There was also a serious effort by the people who set up hotlines between leaders to be used to quickly communicate about nuclear attacks (e.g., to help quickly convince a leader in country A that a fishy object on their radar isn’t an incoming nuclear attack).

Edit: For some reason I forgot about this previous discussion on this topic, which makes the case for funding OpenWorm look less clear-cut.

People doing philosophical work to try to reduce existential risk are largely wasting their time. Tyler doesn’t think it’s a serious effort, though it may be good publicity for something that will pay off later. A serious effort looks more like the parts of the US government that trained people to infiltrate the post-collapse Soviet Union and then locate and neutralize nuclear weapons. There was also a serious effort by the people who set up hotlines between leaders to be used to quickly communicate about nuclear attacks (e.g., to help quickly convince a leader in country A that a fishy object on their radar isn’t an incoming nuclear attack).

Edit: For some reason I forgot about this previous discussion on this topic, which makes the case for funding OpenWorm look less clear-cut.

I'm viewing statements "People should be more reflective" by someone who's clearly more reflective than the average as epistemically suspect.

This looks like an ad hominem argument to me.

That's not difficult. For example, an increase in reflectiveness is generally accompanied by a decrease in decisiveness. Analysis paralysis is a common problem for highly reflective people. For another example, reflectiveness leads your focus inside, to yourself, and it's not hard to come up with situations where you should be thinking about the outside world more and about yourself less. Navel gazing is a highly reflective but rarely productive activity.

Thanks for making concrete arguments. Analysis paralysis is a problem I would like to see more of on a societal level :) But maybe things will get tricky if the least reflective people end up moving first and making society's decisions. So maybe what we want to aim for is increasing the reflectiveness of the least reflective people who hold power.

I think it makes sense to disentangle the self-focus that you mention and treat it as an orthogonal vector. I'm in favor of people reflecting about important stuff but not unimportant stuff... I hope that clarifies my goals. Insofar as there's a tradeoff where getting people to reflect about important stuff also means they will waste time reflecting about unimportant stuff, I'm not sure how best to manage that tradeoff.

I'm not finding this conversation especially productive, so I'll let you have the last word if you want it.

If it's done, it's done.

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OpenWorm and differential technological development

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OpenWorm and differential technological development

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