Willing to “save the world” (or destroy it, just the same...), megalomaniac delusion.
What is your real business you should care about?
While I would like to hear more rational anti-Singularitarian voices on this site for the sake of diversity, this sounds just like overextending a useful-but-imperfect heuristic—“people who think they can save the world are megalomaniacs”—when more detailed inquiry is warranted. Shouldn’t we all care about saving the world?
Nick_Tarleton, this is just proving that, while you may have processed the fundamentals of correspondance bias, you have not completely processed the concept of false consensus, as you are using an example of this in your post.
You say “Shouldn’t we all care about saving the world?”, this is false consensus; assuming your opinion would be mirrored by a gross overestimate of relevant individuals than the actual statistic of individuals that share your opinion.
While Kavembuangga is demonstrating, with your interpretation of the quote you sampled, extreme cynicism, and you yourself are demonstrating extreme optimism, both are examples of false consensus and correspondance bias. You, I believe, have, unfortunately, fallen into the hole you were warned the location of, told the way to avoid, and given the means to avoid in this article.
In answer to your question, I would say “It depends on the circumstances surrounding, and the opinions constructing that individual.”.
I don’t think it’s a false consensus at all to ask a question like “Shouldn’t we all care about saving the world?”.
Taken literally, there can be no consensus to a question. Both the question asker and answerer can share a consensus about the answer to the question, but the question itself has no definitive truth value and therefore cannot be agreed upon (assuming the question does not presume information).
However, even if you assume that the question was hypothetical it’s still not a case of false consensus. The hypothetical question would translate to the statement “We should all care about saving the world”. This is a statement of Nick_Tarleton’s opinion. Nothing he’s said implies that he believes that everyone or even the majority of people agree with his opinion. He has only stated what that opinion is.
If he had asked the hypothetical question “Doesn’t everyone care about saving the world?” or stated “Everyone cares about saving the world” that would be a different matter completely. Then he would be implying that others shared his view without providing any statistical reasoning to back it up.
While I would like to hear more rational anti-Singularitarian voices on this site for the sake of diversity, this sounds just like overextending a useful-but-imperfect heuristic—“people who think they can save the world are megalomaniacs”—when more detailed inquiry is warranted. Shouldn’t we all care about saving the world?
(Disclaimer: I think Eliezer is largely right.)
Nick_Tarleton, this is just proving that, while you may have processed the fundamentals of correspondance bias, you have not completely processed the concept of false consensus, as you are using an example of this in your post.
You say “Shouldn’t we all care about saving the world?”, this is false consensus; assuming your opinion would be mirrored by a gross overestimate of relevant individuals than the actual statistic of individuals that share your opinion. While Kavembuangga is demonstrating, with your interpretation of the quote you sampled, extreme cynicism, and you yourself are demonstrating extreme optimism, both are examples of false consensus and correspondance bias. You, I believe, have, unfortunately, fallen into the hole you were warned the location of, told the way to avoid, and given the means to avoid in this article.
In answer to your question, I would say “It depends on the circumstances surrounding, and the opinions constructing that individual.”.
I don’t think it’s a false consensus at all to ask a question like “Shouldn’t we all care about saving the world?”.
Taken literally, there can be no consensus to a question. Both the question asker and answerer can share a consensus about the answer to the question, but the question itself has no definitive truth value and therefore cannot be agreed upon (assuming the question does not presume information).
However, even if you assume that the question was hypothetical it’s still not a case of false consensus. The hypothetical question would translate to the statement “We should all care about saving the world”. This is a statement of Nick_Tarleton’s opinion. Nothing he’s said implies that he believes that everyone or even the majority of people agree with his opinion. He has only stated what that opinion is.
If he had asked the hypothetical question “Doesn’t everyone care about saving the world?” or stated “Everyone cares about saving the world” that would be a different matter completely. Then he would be implying that others shared his view without providing any statistical reasoning to back it up.