Thread by @EpistemicHope

"America keeps a __lot__ of people in badly inhumane prisons, and innocence doesn't reliably protect you from the death penalty."

This gives me pause.

I think I should be more steadfastly moral. I should be more outraged about this kind of thing happening, and the fact that is happening should influence and motivate more of my action.

I used to be more like this.

But in practice there's a sort of two step process by which the moral orientation has leached out of my life.

Step 1: There's the (correct) argument that the cosmic endowment, astronomical waste, and x-risk is vastly more important than any contemporary harms. (Though contemporary harms might have reverberations that impact the vast future in unpredictable-to-simple-models ways.)

Step 2: X-risk is just really hard to take action on, and it is often hard to know what to do to help. There are few things that seem like they robustly help.

I guess there's also a step 3: A piece of philosophy which says that I should execute plans that I anticipate working, and if something "seems good to do", but I don't actually visualize it solving the core problem, I should back up and try to understand the core problem.

Combined, there's an effect where I'm less responsive to the evils of the world.

In retrospect, I think there's probably some kind of mistake in step 3, and I there are times and places when I should execute forward chaining plans that build capability, even if I can't see how it will lead to victory, while, at the same time, there is something correct...

...about the fact that if you can't visualize your plans leading to victory, you have a big problem, and you should have a constant background sense of that, just as if you were trying to build a machine and there was a crucial competent...

...that you didn't know how to get or make, you should be constantly reminding yourself that you need to solve that problem.

https://twitter.com/EpistemicHope/status/1373582164609040388?s=20

Hm. Ok. I think I should probably try to clarify the edge cases of that bit of philosophy for myself. That would probably help me make better decisions.

But in any case, it feels like having my...sensitivity to moral evil and great harms drip out of my life is quite bad.

I'm not sure how it should sit next to the vast importance x-risk, but I think I should more steadfastly attempt to be a member of the conventional moral community.

When I see straightforward evils, I should sit up and take notice, and denounce them.

And also take action?

It seems like if I don't take action then, I'm doing it wrong.

But also, I have limited resources, and I can't take action on all the problems?

Or at least, the EA ideology (correctly, I think), points out that there's only going to be one highest marginal place to invest your energy.

If you're splitting your basket, you're just going to do less good (modulo some considerations about moral and conventional uncertainty, which are not relevant here, I think).

So what should I do? How should I respond to all the billions of Animals being tortured, and the innocent people in cages, and the afghans betrayed by my government?

Maybe I should donate to those causes, even if it is sub-optimal from some cartesian perspective, because donating would force me to expend some cognition on understanding those problems, in order to figure out how to help?

But that seems crazy. I will be so much less effective if I have a shallow understanding of many problems, than if I have a deep understanding of a few, even without considering the vast differences in importance of the problems.

But I feel like I'm doing something wrong.

...I think Eliezer is not, doing this thing wrong somehow? He seems to me to have the right kind of original seeing of moral horror, even if in some sense, he's desensitized to it.

Who else has that property?

How do I be more like them?

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