This post's purpose is not clear. What are you trying to do with it? If you don't give a fuck about keeping appearances, why have you written this? Is it a protest against current norms? Is it an invitation to others to also disregard norms?
This post is also just rude. Keep your ad hominems to yourself.
I think there is high variance in the growth rate of developing countries. My own country (Iran) certainly does not seem to be converging much. I also think that the areas where most convergence happens are the areas that are more materialistic; The medical textbooks get imported (and somewhat learned), but the institutions and attitudes that produced the textbooks in the first place, not so much.
Which would be more dystopian to you, DNA engineering to ensure the distribution of human behavior will not include unilateral destruction, or super surveillance?
I personally think DNA engineering at least has some positive points, too, while surveillance is purely a necessary evil.
I definitely think the more broad appeal of fiction does make it worthwhile as an outreach effort (though it needs to be explicitly educational. Mother of Learning, for all its good writing, doesn’t teach how to think better.). The concepts touched in the fictional works (that I remember) were all very low-inferential distance from the common culture, so they were confined to beginner concepts without an in-depth overview. For example, the Frozen fanfic by Wales touches on AI safety and effective altruism, and is fun and beautiful, but I did not learn anything from it.
As you say, fiction teaches less concepts and teaches them less well. I do think it might teach more memorably though.
I have heavily updated on you being a bad faith actor. If you seriously believe your argument is not significantly pro-censorship, I suggest studying censorship historically in cases it clashes with your political views. Then compare those historical cases with what you advocate. Political censorship always believes itself to be something else. As the theocracy I live in says on my textbooks, “Freedom is not to do what anyone wants. Freedom is doing what the divine leader says.” Or as famous fiction has it, “war is peace.”
This is a good link-list. It seems undiscoverable here though. I think thinking on how you can make such lists discoverable is useful. Making it a top-level post seems an obvious improvement.
I had written a good answer here, but it got deleted because I accidentally tapped a link. Comments should save drafts ...
The TLDR of it is:
Censorship serves the elite and has historically been used to oppress and not empower.
It does not matter that people are evil [OUTGROUP HERE]. I have personally known people who openly said they were terrorists-if-opportunity-allows, nazis (literal Hitler supporters), thieves, etc. NONE OF THEM did anything out of the ordinary. Their incentives made them act just like others. See this book for a treatise on how mere capitalism mitigated apartheid racism.
Even if censorship worked, it is inherently wrong itself. It is a form of manipulation and oppression. I don’t say its benefits could not trump its costs, but there definitely are costs which are often neglected. Our society generally does not care about people’s intellectual integrity and dignity. That doesn’t mean those don’t matter.
Can you provide some links on the latest IFR estimates? A quick Google search leads me to the same 0.5% ballpark.
This post's purpose is not clear. What are you trying to do with it? If you don't give a fuck about keeping appearances, why have you written this? Is it a protest against current norms? Is it an invitation to others to also disregard norms?
This post is also just rude. Keep your ad hominems to yourself.
I think there is high variance in the growth rate of developing countries. My own country (Iran) certainly does not seem to be converging much. I also think that the areas where most convergence happens are the areas that are more materialistic; The medical textbooks get imported (and somewhat learned), but the institutions and attitudes that produced the textbooks in the first place, not so much.
Which would be more dystopian to you, DNA engineering to ensure the distribution of human behavior will not include unilateral destruction, or super surveillance?
I personally think DNA engineering at least has some positive points, too, while surveillance is purely a necessary evil.
Expected utility as the doer believes? Otherwise the system is too complex for the karma to actually work well. It’s also probably deterministic ...
I definitely think the more broad appeal of fiction does make it worthwhile as an outreach effort (though it needs to be explicitly educational. Mother of Learning, for all its good writing, doesn’t teach how to think better.). The concepts touched in the fictional works (that I remember) were all very low-inferential distance from the common culture, so they were confined to beginner concepts without an in-depth overview. For example, the Frozen fanfic by Wales touches on AI safety and effective altruism, and is fun and beautiful, but I did not learn anything from it.
As you say, fiction teaches less concepts and teaches them less well. I do think it might teach more memorably though.
I have heavily updated on you being a bad faith actor. If you seriously believe your argument is not significantly pro-censorship, I suggest studying censorship historically in cases it clashes with your political views. Then compare those historical cases with what you advocate. Political censorship always believes itself to be something else. As the theocracy I live in says on my textbooks, “Freedom is not to do what anyone wants. Freedom is doing what the divine leader says.” Or as famous fiction has it, “war is peace.”
This is a good link-list. It seems undiscoverable here though. I think thinking on how you can make such lists discoverable is useful. Making it a top-level post seems an obvious improvement.
I don’t know :) I guess the idea itself is definitely sound, but implementing it correctly might be a challenge.
I had written a good answer here, but it got deleted because I accidentally tapped a link. Comments should save drafts ... The TLDR of it is: