...looks like it bears very little resemblance to anything I have ever said. I don’t know where you are getting it from.
Looking back I think I read more into your comments than was really there; I apologize.
Such agents should normally be concerned with having more babies than their neighbours do—and should not indulge in much paranoia about THE END OF THE WORLD. That is not sticking with poor quality cognition, it is often the correct thing to do for an agent with those aims.
I agree here. The debate is over whether or not the current situation is normal.
However, often THE END OF THE WORLD can be rationally perceived to be someone else’s problem.
Tentatively agreed. Normally, even if nanotech’s gonna kill everyone, you’re not able to do much about it anyway. But I’m not sure why you bring up “Expending resources fighting DOOM usually just means you get gradually squeezed out of the gene pool.” when most people aren’t at all trying to optimize the amount of copies of their genes in the gene pool.
The DOOM enthusiasts typically base their arguments on utilitarianism. A biologist’s perspective on that is that it is sometimes an attempt to signal unselfishness—albeit usually a rather unbelievable one—and sometimes an attempt to manipulate others into parting withe their cash.
Generally this is true, especially before science was around to make such meme pushing low status. But it’s also very true of global warming paranoia, which is high status even among intellectuals for some reason. (I should probably try to figure out why.) I readily admit that certain values of outside view will jump from that to ‘and so all possible DOOM-pushing groups are just trying to signal altruism or swindle people’—but rationality should help you win, and a sufficiently good rationalist should trust themselves to try and beat the outside view here.
So maybe instead of saying ‘poor epistemology’ I should say ‘odd emphasis on outside view when generally people trust their epistemology better than that beyond a certain point of perceived rationality in themselves’.
Looking back I think I read more into your comments than was really there; I apologize.
I agree here. The debate is over whether or not the current situation is normal.
Tentatively agreed. Normally, even if nanotech’s gonna kill everyone, you’re not able to do much about it anyway. But I’m not sure why you bring up “Expending resources fighting DOOM usually just means you get gradually squeezed out of the gene pool.” when most people aren’t at all trying to optimize the amount of copies of their genes in the gene pool.
Generally this is true, especially before science was around to make such meme pushing low status. But it’s also very true of global warming paranoia, which is high status even among intellectuals for some reason. (I should probably try to figure out why.) I readily admit that certain values of outside view will jump from that to ‘and so all possible DOOM-pushing groups are just trying to signal altruism or swindle people’—but rationality should help you win, and a sufficiently good rationalist should trust themselves to try and beat the outside view here.
So maybe instead of saying ‘poor epistemology’ I should say ‘odd emphasis on outside view when generally people trust their epistemology better than that beyond a certain point of perceived rationality in themselves’.