2 ms·

I think this misses the point. Even being "less" wrong requires an amount of work that even the best/smartest etc... cannot consistently apply. I do believe th

I think this misses the point. Even being "less" wrong requires an amount of work that even the best/smartest etc... cannot consistently apply. I do believe this is zero-sum in that improving on one set of decisions means no applying the same rigor to others. This is often seen in the form of very smart people also believing conspiracy theories or throwing their hands up around other massive issues. As an example, the "Rationalist crowd" has de-emphasized work on climate change mitigation in favor of more abstract work on AI safety.

ret2plt 5y ago
> This is often seen in the form of very smart people also believing conspiracy theories or throwing their hands up around other massive issues. As an example, the "Rationalist crowd" has de-emphasized work on climate change mitigation in favor of more abstract work on AI safety. To be clear, the argument (in rationalist circles) is not that climate change is no big deal, it's that there's already a ton of people worrying about it, so it is better to allocate some extra resources to underfunded problems.