Sorry, I’ll be doing multiple unwholesome things in this comment.
For one, I’m commenting without reading the whole post. I was expecting it to be about something else and was disappointed.
The conception of wholesomeness as “considering a wider perspective for your actions” is not very interesting. Everyone considers a wider perspective to be valuable, and nobody takes that more seriously already than EAs.
The conception of wholesomeness I was hoping you’d write about (let’s call it wholesomeness2 for distinction from your wholesomeness) is a type of prestige. Prestige is high status freely conferred by the beneficiaries of the prestigious. Contrast with dominance, which is demanded with force.
It’s hard to pin down, but I think I’d say that Wholesomeness2 is a reputation for not being evil. Clearly, it would be good for EA’s ability to do good if they had wholesomeness2. On top of that, if actions that are not wholesome2 tend to be bad and actions that are wholesome2 tend to be good, then wholesome2 is a good heuristic. (Although the tails come apart, as they always do. https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/09/25/the-tails-coming-apart-as-metaphor-for-life/ ).
If someone has wholesomeness2, then people will assume mistakes rather than malice, will defend the wholesome2 person from attack, and help the wholesome2 when they are in need.
I was hoping your post would be about how to be wholesome2. Here are my thoughts:
Incapable of plotting: dogs and children are wholesome because they don’t have the capacity to be evil.
Wholesomeness2 chains, so since candy is associated with children who are wholesome2, associating yourself with candy can increase your wholesomeness2.
Generating warm-fuzzies: the Make a Wish Foundation is extremely wholesome2, while deworming is not. When someone (like an EA) “attacks” Make a Wish by saying it doesn’t spend its funds in a way that helps many people much compared to alternatives, everyone will come to Make a Wish‘s defense.
Vibes: “wholesome2 goths” feels like an oxymoron. The goth aesthetic is contrary to the idea of being not evil, even though the goths themselves are usually nice people. If you call one “wholesome”, they might even get upset at you.
Actually being not evil: It doesn’t matter how wholesome2 he was before; Bill Cosby lost all his wholesome2 when the world found out he was evil. Don’t be Bill Cosby.
I’d appreciate comments elaborating and adding to this list.
….
By analyzing the concept like this, I lost some wholesomeness2, because I have shown that I have the capacity and willingness to gain wholesomeness2 independent of whether I’m really plotting something evil. I’d argue that I’m just not very willing to self-censor, so you should trust me more instead of less… but that is exactly what an unwholesome2 individual would do.
EA will have some trouble gaining wholesomeness2 because it tends to seek power and has the intelligence and agency needed to be evil.
I think that there’s something interesting here. One of the people I talked about this with asked me why children seem exceptionally wholesome (it’s certainly not because they’re unusually good at tracking the whole of things), and I thought the answer was about them being a part of the world where it may be especially important to avoid doing accidental harm, so our feelings of harms-to-children have an increased sense of unwholesomeness. But I’m now thinking that something like “robustly not evil” may be an important part of it.
Now we can trace out some of the links between wholesomeness1 and wholesomeness2. If evil is something like “consciously disregarding the impacts of your actions on (certain) others”, then wholesomeness1 should robustly avoid it. And failures of wholesomeness1 which aren’t evil might still be failures of wholesomeness2 -- because they involve a failure to attend to some impacts of actions, while observers may not be able to tell whether that failure to attend was accidental or deliberate.
A couple more notes:
I don’t think that wholesomeness2 is a crisp thing—it’s dependent on the audience, and how much they get to observe. Someone could have wholesomeness2 in a strong way with respect to one audience, and really not with respect to another audience.
I think in expectation / in the long run / as your audiences get smarter (or something), pursuing wholesomeness1 may be a good proxy for wholesomeness2. Basically for the kind of reasons discussed in Integrity for consequentialists
Sorry, I’ll be doing multiple unwholesome things in this comment.
For one, I’m commenting without reading the whole post. I was expecting it to be about something else and was disappointed. The conception of wholesomeness as “considering a wider perspective for your actions” is not very interesting. Everyone considers a wider perspective to be valuable, and nobody takes that more seriously already than EAs.
The conception of wholesomeness I was hoping you’d write about (let’s call it wholesomeness2 for distinction from your wholesomeness) is a type of prestige. Prestige is high status freely conferred by the beneficiaries of the prestigious. Contrast with dominance, which is demanded with force.
It’s hard to pin down, but I think I’d say that Wholesomeness2 is a reputation for not being evil. Clearly, it would be good for EA’s ability to do good if they had wholesomeness2. On top of that, if actions that are not wholesome2 tend to be bad and actions that are wholesome2 tend to be good, then wholesome2 is a good heuristic. (Although the tails come apart, as they always do. https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/09/25/the-tails-coming-apart-as-metaphor-for-life/ ).
If someone has wholesomeness2, then people will assume mistakes rather than malice, will defend the wholesome2 person from attack, and help the wholesome2 when they are in need.
I was hoping your post would be about how to be wholesome2. Here are my thoughts:
Incapable of plotting: dogs and children are wholesome because they don’t have the capacity to be evil.
Wholesomeness2 chains, so since candy is associated with children who are wholesome2, associating yourself with candy can increase your wholesomeness2.
Generating warm-fuzzies: the Make a Wish Foundation is extremely wholesome2, while deworming is not. When someone (like an EA) “attacks” Make a Wish by saying it doesn’t spend its funds in a way that helps many people much compared to alternatives, everyone will come to Make a Wish‘s defense.
Vibes: “wholesome2 goths” feels like an oxymoron. The goth aesthetic is contrary to the idea of being not evil, even though the goths themselves are usually nice people. If you call one “wholesome”, they might even get upset at you.
Actually being not evil: It doesn’t matter how wholesome2 he was before; Bill Cosby lost all his wholesome2 when the world found out he was evil. Don’t be Bill Cosby.
I’d appreciate comments elaborating and adding to this list.
….
By analyzing the concept like this, I lost some wholesomeness2, because I have shown that I have the capacity and willingness to gain wholesomeness2 independent of whether I’m really plotting something evil. I’d argue that I’m just not very willing to self-censor, so you should trust me more instead of less… but that is exactly what an unwholesome2 individual would do.
EA will have some trouble gaining wholesomeness2 because it tends to seek power and has the intelligence and agency needed to be evil.
I think that there’s something interesting here. One of the people I talked about this with asked me why children seem exceptionally wholesome (it’s certainly not because they’re unusually good at tracking the whole of things), and I thought the answer was about them being a part of the world where it may be especially important to avoid doing accidental harm, so our feelings of harms-to-children have an increased sense of unwholesomeness. But I’m now thinking that something like “robustly not evil” may be an important part of it.
Now we can trace out some of the links between wholesomeness1 and wholesomeness2. If evil is something like “consciously disregarding the impacts of your actions on (certain) others”, then wholesomeness1 should robustly avoid it. And failures of wholesomeness1 which aren’t evil might still be failures of wholesomeness2 -- because they involve a failure to attend to some impacts of actions, while observers may not be able to tell whether that failure to attend was accidental or deliberate.
A couple more notes:
I don’t think that wholesomeness2 is a crisp thing—it’s dependent on the audience, and how much they get to observe. Someone could have wholesomeness2 in a strong way with respect to one audience, and really not with respect to another audience.
I think in expectation / in the long run / as your audiences get smarter (or something), pursuing wholesomeness1 may be a good proxy for wholesomeness2. Basically for the kind of reasons discussed in Integrity for consequentialists