A “moonshot idea” I saw brought up is getting Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter fanfiction translated into Chinese (please never ever do this).
Can you expand on this? Why would it be a bad idea? I have interacted with mainland chinese people (outside of china) and I’m not really making the connection.
Let’s just say that weirdness in China is very different from weirdness in the West. AI safety isn’t even a weird concept here. It’s something people talk about, briefly think over, then mostly forget, like Peter Thiel’s new book. People are generally receptive to it. What AI safety needs to get traction in the Chinese idea sphere is to rapidly disassociate with really really weird ideas like EA. EA is like trying to shove a square peg into the round hole of Chinese psychology. It’s a really bad sign that the AI Safety toehold in China is clustered around EA.
Rationality is pretty weird too, and is honestly just extra baggage. Why add it to the conversation?
We don’t need rationality or EA to get Chinese to care about AI safety. Trying to import the Western EA-AI safety-Rationality memeplex wholesale is both unnecessary and detrimental.
Interestingly, Yud is attractive to Russian mindset (similarly to Karl Marx). I heard 12 old children discussing HPMOR on the beach, and their parents were not rationalists.
From my observations, the Chinese mindset is much more different from the American one than the Russian mindset.
In comparison to Chinese, Russians are just slightly unusual Europeans, with mostly the same values, norms, worldviews as Americans.
I attribute it to the 3000+ years of a relatively strong cultural isolation of China, and to the many centuries of Chinese rulers running all kinds of social engineering (including the purposeful modification of the language according to political goals).
We don’t need rationality or EA to get Chinese to care about AI safety. Trying to import the Western EA-AI safety-Rationality memeplex wholesale is both unnecessary and detrimental.
I agree with this, not out of any particular expertise on China, but instead because porting a whole memeplex across a big cultural boundary is always unnecessary and detrimental.
I just want to note that rationality can fit into the Chinese idea sphere, very neatly; it’s just that it’s not effortless to figure out how to make it work.
The current form e.g. the sequences, is wildly inappropriate. Even worse, a large proportion of the core ideas would have to be cut out. But if you focus on things like human intelligence amplification and forecasting and cognitive biases, it will probably fit into the scene very cleanly.
I’m not willing to give any details, until I can talk with some people and get solid estimates on the odds of bad outcomes, like the risk that rationality will spread, but AI safety doesn’t, and then the opportunity is lost. The “baggage” thing you mentioned is worth serious consideration, of course. But I want to clarify that yes, EA won’t fit, but rationality can (if done right, which is not easy but also not hard), please don’t rule it out prematurely.
I just want to note that rationality can fit into the Chinese idea sphere, very neatly
I agree. Some starting points (kudos to GPT-4):
Confucius (551-479 BCE) - taught that people should think critically and rationally about their actions and decisions in order to lead a life of harmony and virtue. One of his famous sayings is, “When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it—this is knowledge.”
Mencius (372-289 BCE) - believed that individuals can cultivate their moral and intellectual capabilities through rational thinking and learning. Mencius emphasized the importance of moral reasoning and introspection in making ethical decisions.
Mozi (470-391 BCE) - advocated for a rational and pragmatic approach to decision-making. He argued that people should evaluate the potential consequences of their actions based on the benefits or harms they would bring to society. Mozi’s philosophy encouraged rational thinking and objective analysis in the pursuit of social harmony and the greater good.
Zhuangzi (369-286 BCE) - believed that individuals should cultivate their understanding of the natural world and develop their innate abilities to think and reason. Zhuangzi encouraged the cultivation of a clear and unbiased mind in order to achieve harmony with the Dao, or the natural order of the universe.
Xunzi (312-230 BCE) - believed that people must be taught to act morally and rationally. Xunzi emphasized the importance of education, self-discipline, and reflection in developing moral character and rational decision-making abilities.
I think the most surprising part about your post (and the best part I guess) is discovering how many people in the West have a very poor understanding of how the CCP (and Chinese politics) work. Do you have good newsletters / sites that people could follow?
Not about the CCP or politics but I’ve found Chinese Doom Scroll tremedously useful as a window into Chinese culture and ways of thinking. It’s a daily translation of popular Weibo posts that the author encouters while doom scrolling.
I wonder if Yud would be willing to write a rat fic aimed at Chinese audiences? He seems to read a bunch of Xinxia, so he’s probably absorbed some of the memes of China’s male youth. Maybe a fanfic of “Oh my god! Earthlings are insane!” would be a good choice, based on my impression of the novel’s themes and what its readership is like.
EDIT: I think the rationality angle is important for making progress on AI safety, but I’m not sure which parts are necessary. Also, what part of HPMOR would make it especially bade for Chinese audiences? The libertarian sympathies? The trans-humanism doesn’t seem like it would be that harmful, given the popularity of novels Embers ad infinatum. Which is another novel that Yud could write a fanfic for.
The most common response I get when I talked to coworkers about AI risk wasn’t denial or an attempt to minimize the problem. It was generally something like “That sounds really interesting. If a company working on the problem was paying a lot, I would consider jumping ship.” And then a shrug before they went back to their tasks. I don’t see how rationality helps with anything. We know what the problem is, and just want to be paid to solve it.
I can’t really explain why HPMOR is insanely cringe in a Chinese context to someone without the cultural background. It’s not something you can argue people out of. Just trust me on this one.
Is it “insanely cringe” for different reasons than it is “insanely cringe” for English audiences? I suspect most Americans, if exposed to it, would describe it as cringe. There is much about it that is cringe, and I say this with some love.
“That sounds really interesting. If a company working on the problem was paying a lot, I would consider jumping ship.”
The Chinese stated preferences here closely track Western revealed preferences. Americans are more likely to dismiss AI risk post-hoc in order to justify making more money, whereas it seems that Chinese people are less likely to sacrifice their epistemic integrity in order to feel like a Good Guy, Hire people, and pay them money!
The most common response I get when I talked to coworkers about AI risk wasn’t denial or an attempt to minimize the problem. It was generally something like “That sounds really interesting. If a company working on the problem was paying a lot, I would consider jumping ship.”
If that’s true I would assume that the people who work on creating the AI guidelines, understand the problem. This would in turn suggests that they take reasonable steps to address it.
Is your model that the people writing the guidelines would be well-intentioned but lack the political power to actually enforce useful guidelines?
The most common response I get when I talked to coworkers about AI risk wasn’t denial or an attempt to minimize the problem. It was generally something like “That sounds really interesting. If a company working on the problem was paying a lot, I would consider jumping ship.” And then a shrug before they went back to their tasks. I don’t see how rationality helps with anything. We know what the problem is, and just want to be paid to solve it.
Yeah, but a lot of people can say that w/o producing good work. There’s been a number of complaints about field building attempts bringing in low quality people who don’t make progress on the core problem. Now, I am NOT sayng you need to read the sequences and be a member of our cult to make progress. But the models in there do seem important to seeing what is hard about alignment. Now, many smart people have these models themselves, drawing from the same sources Yudkowsky did. But many smart people don’t have these models and bounce off of alignment.
I can’t really explain why HPMOR is insanely cringe in a Chinese context to someone without the cultural background. It’s not something you can argue people out of. Just trust me on this one.
I can sort of trust you that HPMOR is insanely cringe. I’m still not sure if a variant wouldn’t work, because I don’t have your model. Maybe I’ll talk to some Chinese friends about this and get their opinion. You may be living in a bubble and not realize it. It happens to everyone at some point, and China must have a lot of bubbles.
I can sort of trust you that HPMOR is insanely cringe.
The private sentiment of folks who read through all of it would probably be some degree of ‘cringe’ too.
I couldn’t even make it halfway, though I am fascinated by imaginative fanfiction, as it becomes too much of a childish power fantasy to ignore and suspend my disbelief while reading.
Yeah, you’ve got a point there. And yet, HPMOR is popular. Lots of people love it, and got into the LW and the rat community that way. You yourself may not have, but that’s evidence in favour of high variance. So I remain unsure if something like HPMOR could work in China too. Why assume there’d be less variance in response there?
It’s about trade-offs. HPMOR/an equally cringey analogue will attract a certain sector of weird people into the community who can then be redirected towards A.I. stuff — but it will repel a majority of novices because it “taints” the A.I. stuff with cringiness by association.
This is a reasonable trade-off if:
the kind of weird people who’ll get into HPMOR are also the kind of weird people who’d be useful to A.I. safety;
the normies were already likely to dismiss the A.I. stuff with or without the added load of cringe.
In the West, 1. is true because there’s a strong association between techy people and niche fandom, so even though weird nerds are a minority, they might represent a substantial fraction of the people you want to reach. And 2. is kind of true for a related reason, which is that “nerds” are viewed as generally cringe even if they don’t specifically talk about HP fanfiction; it’s already assumed that someone who thinks about computers all days is probably the kind of cringe who’d be big into a semi-self-insert HP fanfiction.
But in China, from @Lao Mein’s testimony, 1. is definitely not true (a lot of the people we want to reach would be on Team “this sounds weird and cringe, I’m not touching it”) and 2. is possibly not true (if computer experts ≠ fandom nerds in Chinese popular consciousness, it may be easier to get broad audiences to listen to a non-nerdy computer expert talking about A.I.).
All of that makes sense except the inclusion of “EA,” which sounds backwards. I highly doubt Chinese people object to the idea of doing good for the community, so why would they object to helping people do more good, according to our best knowledge?
See, that makes it sound like my initial response to the OP was basically right, and you don’t understand the argument being made here. At least one Western reading of these new guidelines was that, if they meant anything, then the bureaucratic obstacle they posed for AGI would greatly reduce the threat thereof. This wouldn’t matter if people were happy to show initiative—but if everyone involved thinks volunteering is stupid, then whose job is it to make sure the official rules against a competitive AI project won’t stop it from going forward? What does that person reliably get for doing the job?
Volunteering to work extra hard at your job and break things is highly valued (and rewarded). Volunteering at your local charity is childishly naive. If your labor/time/intelligence was truly worth anything, you wouldn’t be giving it away for free.
It’s noteworthy that EA also thinks volunteering at your local charity is naive. EA is often trying to market itself in the west to the sort of people who by default might donate to local charity, but I think many of the ideas could be reworked-in-vibe substantially. (I guess the college student wanting to change the world being thought of as naive is more centrally EA though)
That all said, I basically don’t think EA is necessary to make the case for AI, but I do think you need above average rationality to do real alignment work.
Donating to charity (regardless of effectiveness) is also viewed as naive. There is low empathy for poor people since many of us remember what it was like to have a much lower salary just a few years ago. I had to cut down on eating out and alcohol in order to live on $12,000 a year, but overall it was fine. I could still afford good food and expensive hobbies. There was a time when my entire family lived on a fraction of that, and it was completely fine. So why should I donate my hard-earned money to others who are living better than that?
I am curious to know how Peter Singer is viewed in China (or would be, if he isn’t yet known there). How would this talk go down with a Chinese audience? (The video isn’t playing for me, but there is a transcript.)
The thing is, while I reject his entire framework, I have never seen anyone give an argument against, to argue that supererogation is a thing, moral duty is bounded and is owed first to those nearest to you, having more than someone else does not imply a duty to give the excess away, and so on. These things are said, but never in my reading more than asserted.
When it comes to the accident that Peter Singer refers to, the article talks about it as:
There were a couple of extreme cases where Chinese people refusing to help led to the death of the person in need. Such is the case of Wang Yue, a two year old girl who was wandering alone in a narrow alley, because her mother was busy doing the laundry. She was ran over by two cars, and 18 people who passed around the area didn’t even look at her. Later a public anonymous survey revealed that 71% thought that the people who passed by didn’t stop to help her because they were afraid of getting into trouble.
The article goes on to say:
That’s not the only case in 2011 an 88 year old Chinese man fell in the street and broke his nose, while people passed him by no one helped him and he died suffocating in his own blood. After some anonymous poll the result was the same, the people didn’t blame those who didn’t help, because the recent cases show that if you try to help someone you can get into trouble.
When Peter Singer talks to the TED audience he can assume that everyone will say the would have done something. In Chinese, most people empathize with the people who did nothing.
An example of the dangers of helping in China from the article that ChristianKl talked about.
While individualism in China is a big thing, this situation is more related to the fear of being accused as the responsible of the accident, even when you just tried to help.
The most popular case happened in the city of Nanjing, a city located at the west of Shanghai. The year was 2006 when Xu Shoulan, an old lady trying to get out of a bus, fell and broke her femur. Peng Yu, was passing by and helped her taking her to the hospital and giving her ¥200 (~30 USD) to pay for her treatment. After the first diagnosis Xu needed a femur replacement surgery, but she refused to pay it by herself so she demanded Peng to pay for it, as he was the responsible of the accident according to her. She sued him and after six months she won and Peng needed to cover all the medical expenses of the old lady. The court stated that “no one would, in good conscience, help someone unless they felt guilty”.
While this incident wasn’t the first, it was very popular and it showed one of the non written rules of China. [I bolded this] If you help someone it’s because you feel guilty of what happened, so in some way you were or are involved in the accident or incident.
I don’t know enough about the situation to guess why this norm exists. Or even if it actually exists. But if so, it seems like a bad equillibrium.
Historically, the problem seems to be that most Communist government initiatives to get people to be more altruistic result in them LARPing and not being more altruistic.
At the moment the Chinese government solution seems to be: “Give everybody social credit scores that measure how altruistic they are and hopefully that will get everyone to be more altruistic”.
I don’t get how larping altruism results in the norm that “if you’re helping, you’re guilty”. Unless people went out of their way to cause problems and act like saviors to seem altruistic? Which might be possible, but also sounds like it would be difficult to execute and isn’t the only way people could goodhart altruism metrics.
Can you expand on this? Why would it be a bad idea? I have interacted with mainland chinese people (outside of china) and I’m not really making the connection.
Let’s just say that weirdness in China is very different from weirdness in the West. AI safety isn’t even a weird concept here. It’s something people talk about, briefly think over, then mostly forget, like Peter Thiel’s new book. People are generally receptive to it. What AI safety needs to get traction in the Chinese idea sphere is to rapidly disassociate with really really weird ideas like EA. EA is like trying to shove a square peg into the round hole of Chinese psychology. It’s a really bad sign that the AI Safety toehold in China is clustered around EA.
Rationality is pretty weird too, and is honestly just extra baggage. Why add it to the conversation?
We don’t need rationality or EA to get Chinese to care about AI safety. Trying to import the Western EA-AI safety-Rationality memeplex wholesale is both unnecessary and detrimental.
Interestingly, Yud is attractive to Russian mindset (similarly to Karl Marx). I heard 12 old children discussing HPMOR on the beach, and their parents were not rationalists.
From my observations, the Chinese mindset is much more different from the American one than the Russian mindset.
In comparison to Chinese, Russians are just slightly unusual Europeans, with mostly the same values, norms, worldviews as Americans.
I attribute it to the 3000+ years of a relatively strong cultural isolation of China, and to the many centuries of Chinese rulers running all kinds of social engineering (including the purposeful modification of the language according to political goals).
I agree with this, not out of any particular expertise on China, but instead because porting a whole memeplex across a big cultural boundary is always unnecessary and detrimental.
I just want to note that rationality can fit into the Chinese idea sphere, very neatly; it’s just that it’s not effortless to figure out how to make it work.
The current form e.g. the sequences, is wildly inappropriate. Even worse, a large proportion of the core ideas would have to be cut out. But if you focus on things like human intelligence amplification and forecasting and cognitive biases, it will probably fit into the scene very cleanly.
I’m not willing to give any details, until I can talk with some people and get solid estimates on the odds of bad outcomes, like the risk that rationality will spread, but AI safety doesn’t, and then the opportunity is lost. The “baggage” thing you mentioned is worth serious consideration, of course. But I want to clarify that yes, EA won’t fit, but rationality can (if done right, which is not easy but also not hard), please don’t rule it out prematurely.
I agree. Some starting points (kudos to GPT-4):
Confucius (551-479 BCE) - taught that people should think critically and rationally about their actions and decisions in order to lead a life of harmony and virtue. One of his famous sayings is, “When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it—this is knowledge.”
Mencius (372-289 BCE) - believed that individuals can cultivate their moral and intellectual capabilities through rational thinking and learning. Mencius emphasized the importance of moral reasoning and introspection in making ethical decisions.
Mozi (470-391 BCE) - advocated for a rational and pragmatic approach to decision-making. He argued that people should evaluate the potential consequences of their actions based on the benefits or harms they would bring to society. Mozi’s philosophy encouraged rational thinking and objective analysis in the pursuit of social harmony and the greater good.
Zhuangzi (369-286 BCE) - believed that individuals should cultivate their understanding of the natural world and develop their innate abilities to think and reason. Zhuangzi encouraged the cultivation of a clear and unbiased mind in order to achieve harmony with the Dao, or the natural order of the universe.
Xunzi (312-230 BCE) - believed that people must be taught to act morally and rationally. Xunzi emphasized the importance of education, self-discipline, and reflection in developing moral character and rational decision-making abilities.
I think a similar thing is true in India.
I think the most surprising part about your post (and the best part I guess) is discovering how many people in the West have a very poor understanding of how the CCP (and Chinese politics) work. Do you have good newsletters / sites that people could follow?
Not about the CCP or politics but I’ve found Chinese Doom Scroll tremedously useful as a window into Chinese culture and ways of thinking. It’s a daily translation of popular Weibo posts that the author encouters while doom scrolling.
I wonder if Yud would be willing to write a rat fic aimed at Chinese audiences? He seems to read a bunch of Xinxia, so he’s probably absorbed some of the memes of China’s male youth. Maybe a fanfic of “Oh my god! Earthlings are insane!” would be a good choice, based on my impression of the novel’s themes and what its readership is like.
EDIT: I think the rationality angle is important for making progress on AI safety, but I’m not sure which parts are necessary. Also, what part of HPMOR would make it especially bade for Chinese audiences? The libertarian sympathies? The trans-humanism doesn’t seem like it would be that harmful, given the popularity of novels Embers ad infinatum. Which is another novel that Yud could write a fanfic for.
The most common response I get when I talked to coworkers about AI risk wasn’t denial or an attempt to minimize the problem. It was generally something like “That sounds really interesting. If a company working on the problem was paying a lot, I would consider jumping ship.” And then a shrug before they went back to their tasks. I don’t see how rationality helps with anything. We know what the problem is, and just want to be paid to solve it.
I can’t really explain why HPMOR is insanely cringe in a Chinese context to someone without the cultural background. It’s not something you can argue people out of. Just trust me on this one.
Is it “insanely cringe” for different reasons than it is “insanely cringe” for English audiences? I suspect most Americans, if exposed to it, would describe it as cringe. There is much about it that is cringe, and I say this with some love.
The Chinese stated preferences here closely track Western revealed preferences. Americans are more likely to dismiss AI risk post-hoc in order to justify making more money, whereas it seems that Chinese people are less likely to sacrifice their epistemic integrity in order to feel like a Good Guy, Hire people, and pay them money!
Pay Terry Tao his 10 million dollars!
If that’s true I would assume that the people who work on creating the AI guidelines, understand the problem. This would in turn suggests that they take reasonable steps to address it.
Is your model that the people writing the guidelines would be well-intentioned but lack the political power to actually enforce useful guidelines?
Yeah, but a lot of people can say that w/o producing good work. There’s been a number of complaints about field building attempts bringing in low quality people who don’t make progress on the core problem. Now, I am NOT sayng you need to read the sequences and be a member of our cult to make progress. But the models in there do seem important to seeing what is hard about alignment. Now, many smart people have these models themselves, drawing from the same sources Yudkowsky did. But many smart people don’t have these models and bounce off of alignment.
I can sort of trust you that HPMOR is insanely cringe. I’m still not sure if a variant wouldn’t work, because I don’t have your model. Maybe I’ll talk to some Chinese friends about this and get their opinion. You may be living in a bubble and not realize it. It happens to everyone at some point, and China must have a lot of bubbles.
The private sentiment of folks who read through all of it would probably be some degree of ‘cringe’ too.
I couldn’t even make it halfway, though I am fascinated by imaginative fanfiction, as it becomes too much of a childish power fantasy to ignore and suspend my disbelief while reading.
Yeah, you’ve got a point there. And yet, HPMOR is popular. Lots of people love it, and got into the LW and the rat community that way. You yourself may not have, but that’s evidence in favour of high variance. So I remain unsure if something like HPMOR could work in China too. Why assume there’d be less variance in response there?
It’s about trade-offs. HPMOR/an equally cringey analogue will attract a certain sector of weird people into the community who can then be redirected towards A.I. stuff — but it will repel a majority of novices because it “taints” the A.I. stuff with cringiness by association.
This is a reasonable trade-off if:
the kind of weird people who’ll get into HPMOR are also the kind of weird people who’d be useful to A.I. safety;
the normies were already likely to dismiss the A.I. stuff with or without the added load of cringe.
In the West, 1. is true because there’s a strong association between techy people and niche fandom, so even though weird nerds are a minority, they might represent a substantial fraction of the people you want to reach. And 2. is kind of true for a related reason, which is that “nerds” are viewed as generally cringe even if they don’t specifically talk about HP fanfiction; it’s already assumed that someone who thinks about computers all days is probably the kind of cringe who’d be big into a semi-self-insert HP fanfiction.
But in China, from @Lao Mein’s testimony, 1. is definitely not true (a lot of the people we want to reach would be on Team “this sounds weird and cringe, I’m not touching it”) and 2. is possibly not true (if computer experts ≠ fandom nerds in Chinese popular consciousness, it may be easier to get broad audiences to listen to a non-nerdy computer expert talking about A.I.).
HPMOR is weird and attracts weird people.
Yudkowsky is not the right person to start this stuff in China.
All of that makes sense except the inclusion of “EA,” which sounds backwards. I highly doubt Chinese people object to the idea of doing good for the community, so why would they object to helping people do more good, according to our best knowledge?
Yes. We hold volunteering in contempt.
See, that makes it sound like my initial response to the OP was basically right, and you don’t understand the argument being made here. At least one Western reading of these new guidelines was that, if they meant anything, then the bureaucratic obstacle they posed for AGI would greatly reduce the threat thereof. This wouldn’t matter if people were happy to show initiative—but if everyone involved thinks volunteering is stupid, then whose job is it to make sure the official rules against a competitive AI project won’t stop it from going forward? What does that person reliably get for doing the job?
Volunteering to work extra hard at your job and break things is highly valued (and rewarded). Volunteering at your local charity is childishly naive. If your labor/time/intelligence was truly worth anything, you wouldn’t be giving it away for free.
Hmm.
It’s noteworthy that EA also thinks volunteering at your local charity is naive. EA is often trying to market itself in the west to the sort of people who by default might donate to local charity, but I think many of the ideas could be reworked-in-vibe substantially. (I guess the college student wanting to change the world being thought of as naive is more centrally EA though)
That all said, I basically don’t think EA is necessary to make the case for AI, but I do think you need above average rationality to do real alignment work.
Donating to charity (regardless of effectiveness) is also viewed as naive. There is low empathy for poor people since many of us remember what it was like to have a much lower salary just a few years ago. I had to cut down on eating out and alcohol in order to live on $12,000 a year, but overall it was fine. I could still afford good food and expensive hobbies. There was a time when my entire family lived on a fraction of that, and it was completely fine. So why should I donate my hard-earned money to others who are living better than that?
I am curious to know how Peter Singer is viewed in China (or would be, if he isn’t yet known there). How would this talk go down with a Chinese audience? (The video isn’t playing for me, but there is a transcript.)
The thing is, while I reject his entire framework, I have never seen anyone give an argument against, to argue that supererogation is a thing, moral duty is bounded and is owed first to those nearest to you, having more than someone else does not imply a duty to give the excess away, and so on. These things are said, but never in my reading more than asserted.
When it comes to helping strangers, the Chinese help strangers a lot less. There are articles like: https://medium.com/shanghai-living/4-31-why-people-would-usually-not-help-you-in-an-accident-in-china-c50972e28a82 about Chinese not helping strangers who have an accident.
When it comes to the accident that Peter Singer refers to, the article talks about it as:
The article goes on to say:
When Peter Singer talks to the TED audience he can assume that everyone will say the would have done something. In Chinese, most people empathize with the people who did nothing.
An example of the dangers of helping in China from the article that ChristianKl talked about.
I don’t know enough about the situation to guess why this norm exists. Or even if it actually exists. But if so, it seems like a bad equillibrium.
Historically, the problem seems to be that most Communist government initiatives to get people to be more altruistic result in them LARPing and not being more altruistic.
At the moment the Chinese government solution seems to be: “Give everybody social credit scores that measure how altruistic they are and hopefully that will get everyone to be more altruistic”.
I don’t get how larping altruism results in the norm that “if you’re helping, you’re guilty”. Unless people went out of their way to cause problems and act like saviors to seem altruistic? Which might be possible, but also sounds like it would be difficult to execute and isn’t the only way people could goodhart altruism metrics.
If most altruism is larping then for someone who does something altruistic, people who do altruistic things become suspect.
If I remember right there are cases where in former communist countries people who always vote cooperate on the ultimatum game get punished for it.
Communism isn’t the only factor here but I would expect that it’s one meaningful factor.
“OK, I guess I’m evil then.”
Fair ’nuff.