You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

ChristianKl comments on Taking Effective Altruism Seriously - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: Salemicus 07 June 2015 06:59AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (122)
Tags: thiel peter paulson john investment finance harvard ea altruism effective

Comments (122)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: ChristianKl 06 June 2015 05:27:57PM 3 points [-]

b) Effective altruists don't want to upset their own System 1 sensibilities, their altruistic efforts would lose some of the fuzzies driving them if they needed to justify "mass sterilisation of third world countries" to themselves.

I think the likely result of any attempt of a mass sterilisation project is increased population because you don't get it to work but Western doctors in the third world lose credibility.

Will we influence that decisions only based on "provide better education, then hope for the best",

We actually have good data that better education decreases birth rates.

Comment author: Kawoomba 06 June 2015 05:56:31PM 1 point [-]

Certainly, within what's Good (tm) and Acceptable (tm), funding better education in the third world is the most effective method.

However, if you go far enough outside the Overton window, you don't need credibility, as long as the power asymmetry is big enough. You want food? It only comes with a chemical agent which sterilizes you, similar to Golden Rice. You don't need to accept it, you're free to starve. The failures of colonialism as well as the most recent forays into the middle east stem from the constraints of also having to placate the court of public opinion.

Regardless of this one example, are you taking the position of "the most effective methods are those within the Overton window"? That would be typical, but the actual question would be: Is it because changing the Overton window to include more radical options is too hard, or is it because those more radical options wouldn't feel good?

Comment author: ChristianKl 07 June 2015 05:53:59AM 2 points [-]

You want food? It only comes with a chemical agent which sterilizes you, similar to Golden Rice. You don't need to accept it, you're free to starve

Again I think the likely result of your project is lost influence because you provide ammunition to various people who don't want to have Western doctors in their country.

You want food? It only comes with a chemical agent which sterilizes you, similar to Golden Rice. You don't need to accept it, you're free to starve

I think you have a bad model of political realities. Even if individual citizens of a third world country would accept that, the power that be in that society don't. Additionally you will be able to distribute less condoms.

Regardless of this one example, are you taking the position of "the most effective methods are those within the Overton window"?

Almost per definition the mere act of discussing ideas outside of the Overton window publically comes with a cost even if you just discuss them and not do anything further.

To the extend that you discuss them you don't do that publically.

However, if you go far enough outside the Overton window, you don't need credibility, as long as the power asymmetry is big enough.

Almost per definition the person who moves outside of the Overton window doesn't have a big amount of power.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 June 2015 01:03:29AM 1 point [-]

If you were really intent on extending the Overton window in general, you would include Communist solutions as well as fascist ones ;-).

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit