lukeprog

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Rationality and Philosophy
The Science of Winning at Life
No-Nonsense Metaethics

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no one is currently hard at work drafting concrete legislative or regulatory language

I'd like readers to know that fortunately, this hasn't been true for a while now. But yes, such efforts continue to be undersupplied with talent.

Where is the Arnold Kling quote from?

I haven't read the other comments here and I know this post is >10yrs old, but…

For me, (what I'll now call) effective-altruism-like values are mostly second-order, in the sense that a lot of my revealed behavior shows that a lot of the time I don't want to help strangers, animals, future people, etc. But I think I "want to want to" help strangers, and sometimes the more goal-directed rational side of my brain wins out and I do something to help strangers at personal sacrifice to myself (though I do this less than e.g. Will MacAskill). But I don't really detect in myself a symmetrical second-order want to NOT want to help strangers. So that's one thing that "Shut up and multiply" has over "shut up and divide," at least for me.

That said, I realize now that I'm often guilty of ignoring this second-orderness when e.g. making the case for effective altruism. I will often appeal to my interlocutor's occasional desire to help strangers and suggest they generalize it, but I don't symmetrically appeal to their clearer and more common disinterest in helping strangers and suggest they generalize THAT. To be more honest and accurate while still making the case for EA, I should be appealing to their second-order desires, though of course that's a more complicated conversation.

Some other literature OTOH:

Lots of overlap between this concept and what Open Phil calls reasoning transparency.

The Open Philanthropy and 80,000 Hours links are for the same app, just at different URLs.

On Foretell moving to ARLIS… There's no way you could've known this, but as it happens Foretell is moving from one Open Phil grantee (CSET) to another (UMD ARLIS). TBC I wasn't involved in the decision for Foretell to make that transition, but it seems fine to me, and Foretell is essentially becoming another part of the project I funded at ARLIS.

Someone with a newsletter aimed at people interested in forecasting should let them know. :)

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