This is a classics question, but I wonder if Athenian slaves ever advocated for themselves publicly and opposed the institution of slavery. Like, it seems to me one big difference between Athenian society in whenever BC Socrates was alive and the 2021 English-speaking world is that there's a pretty huge democratization of information and community advocacy. I would at least hope that having, like, a feminist movement would prevent a 2021 version of ancient Greek-style patriarchy from being /unthinkable/ the way it was for the all-male symposiums (even if actually solving 2021 patriarchy is a long and tricky political question). Of course, it's still possible there's a Cause X that either affects beings who can't advocate for themselves on the English-language internet or doesn't directly affect people so they can advocate for themselves
My sense is that this is not a popular position in the EA movement, but it seems to me that the slavery-level why-are-they-being-so-stupid? question our descendants will ask of us is about climate change. Also, I would argue that we're in a hinge of history in that regard.
Quite a lot of people are concerned about climate change and animal rights, whereas I don't know of anybody who questioned slavery in the classical world (plus, climate change is more a matter of fact than of morals; "slavery is wrong" is not a fact about the world in the same sense that "CO2 emits infrared light" is). My best guess for the great sin of 2021 in the eyes of the future is factory farming as well, but our slavery-equivalent, almost by definition, should be something that nobody today even considers an issue.
My third guess would be animal suffering, my second would be children's rights, and my first would be that it's something that none of us have even thought of.
Interesting! Why do you think doing short-term EA is the most effective way to build the skills for long-term EA? There are lots of activities that could be relevant to the "dozens of things" you mention (starting for-profit companies, starting non-EA non-profit orgs, academic research, working in various kinds of jobs), and I expect some of them have tighter feedback loops than short-term EA and/or other positive attributes.
Do you think short-term EA builds the relevant skills better than those because it's more similar to long-term EA? Or that it might build them less well, but has the advantage of doing good in the process? Or just that it's not possible to build them in another way while existing under the EA umbrella/something else I've not thought of?
This is a classics question, but I wonder if Athenian slaves ever advocated for themselves publicly and opposed the institution of slavery. Like, it seems to me one big difference between Athenian society in whenever BC Socrates was alive and the 2021 English-speaking world is that there's a pretty huge democratization of information and community advocacy. I would at least hope that having, like, a feminist movement would prevent a 2021 version of ancient Greek-style patriarchy from being /unthinkable/ the way it was for the all-male symposiums (even if actually solving 2021 patriarchy is a long and tricky political question). Of course, it's still possible there's a Cause X that either affects beings who can't advocate for themselves on the English-language internet or doesn't directly affect people so they can advocate for themselves
My sense is that this is not a popular position in the EA movement, but it seems to me that the slavery-level why-are-they-being-so-stupid? question our descendants will ask of us is about climate change. Also, I would argue that we're in a hinge of history in that regard.
Quite a lot of people are concerned about climate change and animal rights, whereas I don't know of anybody who questioned slavery in the classical world (plus, climate change is more a matter of fact than of morals; "slavery is wrong" is not a fact about the world in the same sense that "CO2 emits infrared light" is). My best guess for the great sin of 2021 in the eyes of the future is factory farming as well, but our slavery-equivalent, almost by definition, should be something that nobody today even considers an issue.
My third guess would be animal suffering, my second would be children's rights, and my first would be that it's something that none of us have even thought of.
Interesting! Why do you think doing short-term EA is the most effective way to build the skills for long-term EA? There are lots of activities that could be relevant to the "dozens of things" you mention (starting for-profit companies, starting non-EA non-profit orgs, academic research, working in various kinds of jobs), and I expect some of them have tighter feedback loops than short-term EA and/or other positive attributes.
Do you think short-term EA builds the relevant skills better than those because it's more similar to long-term EA? Or that it might build them less well, but has the advantage of doing good in the process? Or just that it's not possible to build them in another way while existing under the EA umbrella/something else I've not thought of?
As usual when someone links the Wait But Why post, I recommend, if you read it, also reading https://lukemuehlhauser.com/a-reply-to-wait-but-why-on-machine-superintelligence/, which clarifies a few points that that post doesn't get totally right.