This is plausibly bad if this behavior shows up in future catastrophes that kill eg. billions of people.
It’s bad if this behavior shows up in future catastrophes IFF different behavior was available (knowable and achievable in terms of coordination) that would have reduced or mitigated the disaster. I argue that the world is fragile enough today that different behavior is not achievable far enough in advance of the currently-believable catastrophes to make much of a difference.
If you can’t do anything effective, you may well be better off optimizing happiness experienced both before the disaster occurs and in the potential universes where the disaster doesn’t occur.
It’s bad if this behavior shows up in future catastrophes IFF different behavior was available (knowable and achievable in terms of coordination) that would have reduced or mitigated the disaster.
Are things only bad if we can do things to prevent them? Let’s imagine the following hypothetical situation:
One month ago I identify a meteor on collision course towards Earth and I point out to people that if it hit us (which is not clear, but there is some pretty good evidence) then over a hundred million people will die. People don’t react. Most tell me that it’s nothing to worry about since it hasn’t hit Earth yet and the therefore the deathrate is 0.0%. Today, however, the stock market fell over 3%, following a day in which it fell 3%, and most media outlets are attributing this decline to the fact that the meteor has gotten closer. I go on Lesswrong shortform and say, “Hey guys, this is not good news. I have just learned that the world is so fragile that it looks highly likely we can’t get our shit together to plan for a meteor even we can see it coming more than a month in advance.” Someone tells me that this is only bad IFF different behavior was available that would have reduced or mitigated the disaster. But information was available! I put it in a post and told people about it. And furthermore, I’m just saying that our world is fragile. Things can still be bad even if I don’t point to a specific policy proposal that could have prevented it.
Are things only bad if we can do things to prevent them?
Nope. But we should do things to prevent them only if we can do things to prevent them. That seems tautologically obvious to me.
If you can suggest things that actually will deflect the meteor (or even secure your mine shaft to further your own chances), that don’t require historically-unprecedented authority or coordination, definitely do so!
If the stock market indeed fell due to the coronavirus, and traders at the time misunderstood the severity, I say that I could have given actionable information in the form of “Sell your stock now” or something similar
[ETA: I’m writing this now to cover myself in case people confuse my short form post as financial advice or something.] To be clear, and for the record, I am not saying that I had exceptional foresight, or that I am confident this outbreak will cause a global depression, or that I knew for sure that selling stock was the right thing to do a month ago. All I’m doing is pointing out that if you put together basic facts, then the evidence points to a very serious potential outcome, and I think it would be irrational at this point to place very low probabilities on doomy outcomes like the global population declining this year for the first time in centuries. People seem to be having weird biases that cause them to underestimate the risk. This is worth pointing out, and I pointed it out before.
And how much did you short the market, or otherwise make use of this better-than-median prediction? My whole point is that the prediction isn’t the hard part. The hard part is knowing what actions to take, and to have any confidence that the actions will help.
Is it really necessary that I personally used my knowledge to sell stock? Why is it that important that I actually made money from what I’m saying? I’m simply pointing to a reasonable position given the evidence: you could have seen a potential pandemic coming, and anticipated the stock market falling. Wei Dai says above that he did it. Do I have to be the one who did it?
In any case, I used my foresight to predict that Metaculus’ median estimate would rise, and that seems to have borne out so far.
I’m not sure exactly what I’m saying about how and whether you used knowledge personally. You’re free to value and do what you want. I’m mostly disagreeing with your thesis that “don’t worry about it” is a syndrome or a serious problem to fix. For people that won’t or can’t act on the concern in a way that actually improves the situation, there’s not much value in worrying about it.
Quite. Those with capability to actually prepare or change outcomes definitely SHOULD do so. But not by worrying—by analyzing and acting. Whether bureaucrats and politicians can or will do this is up for debate.
I wish I could believe that politicians and bureaucrats were clever enough to be acting strongly behind the scenes while trying to avoid panic by loudly saying “don’t worry” to the people likely to do more harm than good if they worry. But I suspect not.
It’s bad if this behavior shows up in future catastrophes IFF different behavior was available (knowable and achievable in terms of coordination) that would have reduced or mitigated the disaster. I argue that the world is fragile enough today that different behavior is not achievable far enough in advance of the currently-believable catastrophes to make much of a difference.
If you can’t do anything effective, you may well be better off optimizing happiness experienced both before the disaster occurs and in the potential universes where the disaster doesn’t occur.
Are things only bad if we can do things to prevent them? Let’s imagine the following hypothetical situation:
One month ago I identify a meteor on collision course towards Earth and I point out to people that if it hit us (which is not clear, but there is some pretty good evidence) then over a hundred million people will die. People don’t react. Most tell me that it’s nothing to worry about since it hasn’t hit Earth yet and the therefore the deathrate is 0.0%. Today, however, the stock market fell over 3%, following a day in which it fell 3%, and most media outlets are attributing this decline to the fact that the meteor has gotten closer. I go on Lesswrong shortform and say, “Hey guys, this is not good news. I have just learned that the world is so fragile that it looks highly likely we can’t get our shit together to plan for a meteor even we can see it coming more than a month in advance.” Someone tells me that this is only bad IFF different behavior was available that would have reduced or mitigated the disaster. But information was available! I put it in a post and told people about it. And furthermore, I’m just saying that our world is fragile. Things can still be bad even if I don’t point to a specific policy proposal that could have prevented it.
Nope. But we should do things to prevent them only if we can do things to prevent them. That seems tautologically obvious to me.
If you can suggest things that actually will deflect the meteor (or even secure your mine shaft to further your own chances), that don’t require historically-unprecedented authority or coordination, definitely do so!
If the stock market indeed fell due to the coronavirus, and traders at the time misunderstood the severity, I say that I could have given actionable information in the form of “Sell your stock now” or something similar
If you knew that then, it was actionable. If you know it now, and other traders also do, it’s not.
[ETA: I’m writing this now to cover myself in case people confuse my short form post as financial advice or something.] To be clear, and for the record, I am not saying that I had exceptional foresight, or that I am confident this outbreak will cause a global depression, or that I knew for sure that selling stock was the right thing to do a month ago. All I’m doing is pointing out that if you put together basic facts, then the evidence points to a very serious potential outcome, and I think it would be irrational at this point to place very low probabilities on doomy outcomes like the global population declining this year for the first time in centuries. People seem to be having weird biases that cause them to underestimate the risk. This is worth pointing out, and I pointed it out before.
As I said, I wrote a post about the risk about a month ago...
And how much did you short the market, or otherwise make use of this better-than-median prediction? My whole point is that the prediction isn’t the hard part. The hard part is knowing what actions to take, and to have any confidence that the actions will help.
Is it really necessary that I personally used my knowledge to sell stock? Why is it that important that I actually made money from what I’m saying? I’m simply pointing to a reasonable position given the evidence: you could have seen a potential pandemic coming, and anticipated the stock market falling. Wei Dai says above that he did it. Do I have to be the one who did it?
In any case, I used my foresight to predict that Metaculus’ median estimate would rise, and that seems to have borne out so far.
I’m not sure exactly what I’m saying about how and whether you used knowledge personally. You’re free to value and do what you want. I’m mostly disagreeing with your thesis that “don’t worry about it” is a syndrome or a serious problem to fix. For people that won’t or can’t act on the concern in a way that actually improves the situation, there’s not much value in worrying about it.
That’s ok for most people. I can hope that bureaucrats, expert advisers, politicians and eg. Trump’s internal staff don’t share the same attitude.
Quite. Those with capability to actually prepare or change outcomes definitely SHOULD do so. But not by worrying—by analyzing and acting. Whether bureaucrats and politicians can or will do this is up for debate.
I wish I could believe that politicians and bureaucrats were clever enough to be acting strongly behind the scenes while trying to avoid panic by loudly saying “don’t worry” to the people likely to do more harm than good if they worry. But I suspect not.