Here’s a Tweet from somebody named @banteg explaining the appeal of Rationalism/Effective Altruism. (Banteg say it was written by Sol & Astra, two variants of ChatGPT, from conversations with him.)
Effective Altruism is basically a cult based on 2 AM MIT dorm room debate-style philosophizing (not that’s there anything wrong with that!):
>be me
>discover effective altruism
>apparently normal charity is inefficient
>why donate to random sad thing when spreadsheet can tell you optimal sad thing
>fair enough>buy mosquito nets
>save lives
>numbers look good
>feel powerful>couple years later
>someone asks an innocent question
>why only count people alive today>huh
>future people matter too
>obviously
>my grandchildren shouldn’t matter less just because they haven’t spawned yet
>reasonable.jpg
>keep following logic
>what about their grandchildren
>also yes
>what about people in 500 years
>sure
>5000 years
>why not
>500 million years
>starting to get weird but morality is morality
>open calculator
>humanity could survive for an astronomically long time
>could colonize galaxy
>could have trillions upon trillions of descendants
>maybe digital people too
>maybe simulated civilizations
>maybe dyson spheres full of happy uploaded minds
>calculator starts smoking
>realize currently living humans are rounding error
>8 billion people suddenly looking extremely beta
>future contains potentially 10^something people
>can’t even fit beneficiaries in google sheets
>new moral priority unlocked
>protect the long-term future
>stop thinking in units of “people helped”
>start thinking in “fraction of cosmic endowment preserved”
>malaria?
>terrible
>but only kills existing humans
>AI extinction could delete the entire light cone
>nuclear war could permanently derail civilization
>bad institutions could lock in terrible values for ten million years
>someone invents wrong constitution in 2140
>quadrillions suffer
>better fund governance workshop now
>friend says maybe we should improve hospitals
>explain opportunity cost
>friend says hospitals are full of actual sick people
>explain scope sensitivity
>friend stops inviting me to dinner
>need to decide what to fund
>easy
>expected value
>suppose project has one in a million chance of preventing extinction
>sounds tiny
>but extinction destroys 10^50 future lives
>multiply
>mother of god
>$10 million project has expected value of several galaxies
>charity evaluation complete
>someone asks where the one-in-a-million number came from
>expert judgement
>which expert
>us
>how calibrated
>extremely thoughtfully
>reduce estimate to one in ten million to be conservative
>still beats curing cancer by 38 orders of magnitude
>epistemic robustness achieved
>someone says maybe project doesn’t work
>assign 20% chance
>still astronomical
>maybe project makes problem worse
>assign 5% chance
>still astronomical
>why 5
>because 30 felt pessimistic
>publish 46-page report
>contains seventeen sensitivity analyses
>every sensitivity analysis begins after assuming intervention has positive sign
>critic says you’re multiplying enormous hypothetical stakes by extremely uncertain probabilities
>yes
>that’s literally why it’s important
>critic says the uncertainty might be structural rather than numerical
>make probability smaller
>critic says no, I mean maybe your model is wrong
>make probability smaller again
>critic begins rubbing temples
>discover AI safety
>perfect longtermist cause
>AI might kill everyone
>or create utopia
>or seize galaxy
>or tile universe with paperclips
>or create billions of conscious software minds
>finally a problem with numbers big enough for me
>start AI safety nonprofit
>mission: prevent dangerous AI
>hire smartest people available
>smartest people immediately start building better AI to understand dangerous AI
>interesting
>we must understand capabilities to understand safety
>we must scale models to study alignment
>we must race ahead so less responsible actors don’t get there first
>we must deploy systems to learn how deployment can go wrong
>we must build the thing quickly because building the thing quickly is dangerous
>outsider asks why the people most worried about AI apocalypse all work at AI companies
>complicated field
>company releases stronger model
>very concerned
>company begins training even stronger model
>extremely concerned
>company raises $14 billion
>concern reaches unprecedented levels
>need to influence government
>future is at stake
>normal democratic process too slow
>politicians don’t understand exponential curves
>public doesn’t understand x-risk
>experts must guide them
>who counts as expert
>people who understand x-risk
>who understands x-risk
>our friends
>someone objects that this seems politically convenient
>explain we’re representing future generations
>future generations unavailable for comment
>develop concept of value lock-in
>terrifying possibility that one ideology controls civilization forever
>therefore extremely important that civilization adopts correct values before lock-in
>whose values
>let’s circle back
>begin with impartial morality
>end with small group of people deciding what quadrillions of hypothetical beings would want
>beautiful arc
>meanwhile actual humans keep doing annoying things
>voting wrong
>having parochial attachments
>loving family more than strangers
>caring about local community
>getting upset when told their suffering is cosmically negligible
>evolutionary biases everywhere
>explain that moral intuition cannot be trusted
>except intuition that future digital people count
>and intuition that extinction is uniquely bad
>and intuition that our probability estimates are sane
>and intuition that our institutional choices improve the future
>those intuitions survived peer review
>someone donates $5k to local homeless shelter
>inefficient
>could have funded 0.0000000000003% of an AI governance researcher
>think of all the simulated people you just killed
>okay maybe don’t phrase it that way publicly
>PR team says “future generations deserve a voice”
>much better
>journalist asks what longtermism means
>say “future people matter”
>everyone agrees
>great
>journalist asks what follows from that
>well technically we should redirect enormous resources toward low-probability interventions affecting astronomical futures
>journalist raises eyebrow
>return to “future people matter”
>motte has entered the chat
>critic: of course future people matter
>me: glad we agree
>critic: I don’t agree that your institute knows how to help them
>me: why do you hate our grandchildren
>eventually notice uncomfortable implication
>if future value dominates everything
>then helping people today mostly matters through effects on future
>education matters because future institutions
>health matters because future productivity
>democracy matters because future trajectory
>human beings slowly become instrumental variables in their own moral philosophy
>see starving child
>feel compassion
>check spreadsheet
>child’s direct welfare contribution negligible
>but perhaps childhood nutrition improves national institutional quality
>compassion restored
>tell myself this is impartial altruism
>one day assistant asks obvious question
>”how do you know your intervention actually improves the far future?”
>silence
>open spreadsheet
>increase column width
>add confidence interval
>assistant asks again
>”no, I mean how do you know the sign is positive?”
>stare into cosmic light cone
>10^50 people staring back
>none of them exist
>none of them can tell me
>none of them can falsify my assumptions
>realize I have invented the perfect constituency
>infinitely important
>completely silent
>and always represented by me
>be me
>longtermist
>future people matter just as much as people alive today
>completely agree
>there could be trillions of them
>also agree
>therefore we must decide what they need now
>hang on
>born in 1990
>making plans for people born in 2190
>they will have 164 more years of science
>164 more years of political experience
>164 more years of technological progress
>possibly machine superintelligence
>fortunately they also have me
>guy with a pdf
>explain that future generations may be unimaginably capable
>they could cure diseases
>build space habitats
>engineer new forms of intelligence
>solve problems we cannot even formulate
>incredible
>anyway i’ve worked out their priorities
>friend asks why they can’t decide for themselves
>because by then it may be too late
>too late for what
>for us to tell them what to do
>imagine 5000 BC
>very serious longtermist meeting
>our descendants will face unimaginable dangers
>we must prepare
>manufacture 80 million stone axes
>bury them in strategic caches
>future-proof civilization
>bronze age begins
>lol
>lmao
>committee publishes report blaming insufficient stone-axis funding
>obvious lesson
>don’t just leave descendants tools
>leave them the ability to make better tools
>education
>institutions
>science
>wealth
>optionality
>capacity to change course
>sounds suspiciously like helping people who are alive
>quickly return to asteroid scenarios
>friend says maybe the best thing for 2200 is to help 2050 become competent enough to help 2100
>then 2100 helps 2150
>then 2150 helps 2200
>sounds inefficient
>why use succession when i can personally optimize the year 2200 from my laptop
>explain moral uncertainty
>we should expect future people to know more than us
>possibly be morally wiser than us
>this is why we must be very careful not to lock in today’s values
>friend nods
>asks whether they should be allowed to reject our values
>that’s value drift
>very important distinction
>future people are morally equal to us
>they are not epistemically equal to us
>obviously
>they know less
>friend points out they literally live in the future
>ignore heckler
>write grant proposal
>goal: preserve humanity’s option value
>excellent
>preserve options by building institution dedicated to one worldview
>hire people who agree the worldview should remain influential for centuries
>call this epistemic diversity
>someone proposes spending money on children today
>ridiculous
>their effect on the distant future is impossible to calculate
>someone proposes funding my speculative intervention
>its effect on the distant future is impossible to calculate
>exactly
>that’s why expected value is so large
>imagine ancestor from 1720
>leaves me a letter
>dear descendant
>i have carefully considered your interests
>you must invest in sailmaking
>avoid electricity
>maintain the divine right of kings
>and under no circumstances revise these instructions
>laugh at primitive idiot
>open document titled
>”Recommendations for the Long-Term Future of Humanity”
>begin to understand the actual duty to descendants
>not “solve their problems for them”
>more like “don’t destroy the world and leave them a functioning civilization”
>this seems disappointingly normal
>where are the exponents
>try new framing
>humanity is an intergenerational relay race
>our job is to hand over the baton in good condition
>next runner may be faster
>may choose a better route
>may discover the race is actually swimming
>important thing is not welding the baton to our hand
>colleague objects
>some problems really are irreversible
>asteroids
>nuclear war
>engineered pandemics
>AI
>fair enough
>then show that this problem actually requires action now
>show that delay destroys future options
>show that your intervention helps
>this sounds like a lot of work
>can’t we just say 10^50 people
>realize the funniest part
>entire argument for longtermism depends on future civilization becoming vastly more capable than us
>entire argument for present control depends on future civilization being unable to reconsider our decisions
>Schrödinger’s descendant
>smart enough to colonize the lightcone
>too dumb to edit the roadmap
>future humans convert stars into computronium
>build minds beyond our comprehension
>master matter and energy
>open ancient archive from 2026
>”hello descendants, we anticipated your needs”
>everyone stops
>thank god
>the stone-tool people left instructions
--
this part is inspired by some @visakanv writings
One of the striking elements of the current Artificial Intelligence brouhaha is how it’s all about IQ, a subject that we haven’t been supposed to talk about.
Here’s something that interests me about the current Artificial Intelligence panic, as embodied in Rationalist cult leader Eliezer Yudkowsky’s 2025 bestseller
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All
by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Author), Nate Soares (Author)
After all, why wouldn’t computers use their superior IQs to carry out a genocide of moronic humanity?
As I’ve mentioned before, I stopped paying attention to AI progress just before it started to really progress. So, don’t ask me what AI is going to do.
But, I want to point out an analogy between Yudkowskyism and a similar line of thought that has become the Conventional Wisdom since, approximately, 1969:
Paywall here.
