Short summary:
This is a transcript of a talk Nick Bostrom gave about a framework to think about how to deal with potential major shifts in our reasoning when evaluating risks in a GCR context.
I’d add that it also starts to formalise the phenomenon where one’s best judgement oscillates back and forth with each layer of an argument. It’s not clear what to do when something seems a strong net positive, then a strong negative, then a strong positive again after more consideration. If the value of information is high, but it’s difficult to make any headway, what should we even do?
This is especially common for complex problems like xrisk. It also makes us extremely prone to bias, since we by default question conclusions we don’t like more than ones we do.
Short summary: This is a transcript of a talk Nick Bostrom gave about a framework to think about how to deal with potential major shifts in our reasoning when evaluating risks in a GCR context.
I’d add that it also starts to formalise the phenomenon where one’s best judgement oscillates back and forth with each layer of an argument. It’s not clear what to do when something seems a strong net positive, then a strong negative, then a strong positive again after more consideration. If the value of information is high, but it’s difficult to make any headway, what should we even do?
This is especially common for complex problems like xrisk. It also makes us extremely prone to bias, since we by default question conclusions we don’t like more than ones we do.