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skeptical_lurker comments on Effective altruism and political power - Less Wrong Discussion
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Only if the goals are actually opposed to yours.
Anyway, I think most politicians goals are vaguely similar in certain respects - almost all think that economic growth is good, for instance.
Nope, because for many resources the game is zero-sum.
So, taking a look at the XX century, for example, do you think that the value systems of politicians (or, by extension, political elites) can be safely ignored? 8-0
No, I don't think that the value systems can be ignored, I'm saying that ability to implement might be more important.
For instance, suppose you highly value environmentalism, but the party which puts environmentalism as their #1 option wants to stop nuclear power (as is typical of environmentalists). If you believe that nuclear power is the best clean, reliable option we have the technology for now, then you might vote for a party which has environmentalism lower down the list of priorities (and no-one wants the environment to be polluted) but has greater expertise.
Depends on the degree of mismatch we are talking about, but generally speaking, no, I still think that similar values are MUCH more important than the capability to execute.
Your example, by the way, is not about expertise, it's about the value mismatch (you highly value nuclear power and the Green party highly disvalues it).
I recommend these posts:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/l4/terminal_values_and_instrumental_values/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/le/lost_purposes/
I am aware of these posts. Can you be more direct?
I expect there are particular factual statements that pro-nuclear environmentalists and anti-nuclear environmentalists would disagree with about the world. (E.g. "When all things are said and done, the expected effect of more nuclear power on the environment is (positive|negative).") If this is true, it seems to me that being pro/anti nuclear is probably an instrumental goal not a terminal one.
Could be or could be not -- the original example is quite barebones and we can read different interpretations into it. But in any case that seems irrelevant: we are not talking about the difference between instrumental and terminal goals, we are talking about the choice between two agents/proxies one of which has a closer value system and the other is more effective at achieving his goals.
If the two environmentalists had a debate about this subject, each could start the debate by saying they want to do whatever is best for the environment. And then each could present a series of facts suggesting that nuclear power either is or is not good for the environment--a factual disagreement about what the right instrumental goal is for achieving the terminal goal of helping the environment.
If you think anti-nuclear environmentalists possess lack of nuclear plants as a terminal value, imagine what would happen if one was convinced of the factual belief that nuclear power is actually good for the environment. If your model is correct, we can imagine that they would continue to be anti-nuclear environmentalists because that's their terminal goal (while acknowledging that nuclear power is actually the best option for the environment). But we have counterexamples like Stewart Brand who switched from anti-nuclear to pro-nuclear after doing research & having their beliefs change.
Actual human beings' goals don't divide neatly into instrumental and terminal, and actual humans can be inconsistent. So you can have someone who has instrumental goals (that can be changed with evidence showing that they don't meet a terminal goal), terminal goals (which cannot), and inbetween goals like nuclear power that are harder to change than the former category, but easier to change than the latter.
This is not what this subthread is about. It started with me saying
and skeptical_lurker pointing out that
and me continuing with
I don't see how trying to tease apart terminal and instrumental goals is relevant to this issue. I also think that in practice many theoretically-instrumental goals are, in fact, terminal. Stewart Brand changed his mind, but a great deal more people didn't and I am willing to argue that for at least some and probably many of them the opposition to the nuclear effectively became a terminal goal (along the "when you forget your goal you redouble your efforts" lines).
I agree with hg00 - I meant that environmentalism is a goal and nuclear power is a means to an end, not a value in itself.
In which sense environmentalism is a goal?
I tend to think of it as a religion, but let's be charitable and call it a set of (often inconsistent) preferences. For example, some people prefer not to live near a nuclear plant. How is it a goal?