There is a world that needs to be saved. Saving the world is a team sport. All we can do is to contribute our part of the puzzle, whatever that may be and no matter how small, and trust in our companions to handle the rest. There is honor in that, no matter how things turn out in the end.
I have no interest in honor if it’s celebrated on a field of the dead. Virtue ethics is fine, as long as it’s not an excuse to not figure out what needs doing and how it’s going to get done.
Doing ones own part and trusting that the other parts are done by anonymous unknown others is a very silly coordination strategy. We need plans that amount to success, not just everyone doing whatever sounds nice to them.
Edit: I very much agree that saving the world is a team sport. Perhaps it’s relevant that successful teams always do some planning and coordinating.
It’s at times like these that I absolutely love the distinction between “karma” and “agreement” around here. +1 for the former, as per the overall sentiment. −1 for the latter, as per the sheer nonsensical-ity of the scale of the matter.
The “world” doesn’t need “saving”. Never did. Never will. If for no other reason than there is no “one” world, to begin with. What you think about when mentioning the “world” itself will drastically different from what I have in mind, from what Eliezer has in mind, from what anyone else around here has in mind.
Our brains can only ever hold such a tiny amount of information in our short-term storage, that to even hope it ever represents any significant portion of the “world” itself is laughable. Even your long-term storage / episodic + semantic memory only ever came in contact with such a tiny portion of the “world”.
You can’t “save” what you barely “know” to begin with.
Yet there’s a deeper rabbit hole still.
When you say “save the world” you likely mean either “saving our local ecosystem” (as in: all the biological forms of self-organizing matter, as you know it), “saving our species” (Homo Sapiens, first and foremost), or “saving your world” (as in: the part of reality you have personally grown up in, conditioned yourself to, assimilated with, and currently project onto the rest of real world as the likely only world, to begin with—a.k.a. Typical Mind Fallacy).
The “world” doesn’t need “saving”, though. It came before you. It will persist after you. Probably. Physics. Anyhow.
What may need some “help” is society. Not “the” abstract, ephemeral, all-encompassing, thus absolutely void of any and all meaning to begin, “society”. But the society, made out of “people”. As in: “individuals”. Living in their own “world”. Only ever coming in contact with <1% of information you’ve likely come into contact with, so far.
They don’t need your attempts at “saving” them, either. What they need is specific solutions to specific problems within specific domains of specific kind of relationship to the domains, closely/farther adjacent to it.
You will never solve any of them. Unless you stop throwing around phrases like “saving the world”, in the first place. The world came into being via a specific kind of process. It is now maintained by specific kind of feedback loops, recurrent cycles, incentive structures, reward/punishment mechanisms driving mostly unconscious decision making processes, and individual habits of each and every individual operating within their sphere of influence.
You want to help? Figure out what kind of incremental changes you can begin to introduce in any of them, in order to begin extinguishing the sort of problems you’ve now elevated to the rank of “saving-worthy” in your own head. Note that, in all likelihood, by extinguishing one you will merrily introduce a whole bunch of others—something you won’t get to discover until much later one. Yet that is, realistically, what you can actually go on to accomplish.
“Saving the world”? Please. Do you even know what’s exactly going on in the opposite side of the globe today?
Great sentiment. Horrible phrasing. Nothing personal. “Helping people” is a team’s sport.
Side note: are these quick takes turning into a new Twitter/X feed? Gosh, please don’t. Please!
You want to help? Figure out what kind of incremental changes you can begin to introduce in any of them, in order to begin extinguishing the sort of problems you’ve now elevated to the rank of “saving-worthy” in your own head. Note that, in all likelihood, by extinguishing one you will merrily introduce a whole bunch of others—something you won’t get to discover until much later one. Yet that is, realistically, what you can actually go on to accomplish.
I read this paragraph as saying ~the same thing as the original post in a different tone
We know well enough what people mean by “world”—the stuff they care about. The fact that physics keeps on happening if humanity is snuffed out is no comfort at all to me or to most humans.
Arguing epistemology is not going to prevent a nuclear apocalypse or us being wiped out by the new intelligent species we are inventing. The fact that you don’t know what’s happening on the other side of the world has no bearing on existential dangers facing those people. That’s what I mean by saving the world, and I expect what the author meant. This is a different thing than just helping people by your own values and estimates.
I very much agree that pithy mysterious statements for others to argue over is not a good use of the quick takes here.
There is a world that needs to be saved. Saving the world is a team sport. All we can do is to contribute our part of the puzzle, whatever that may be and no matter how small, and trust in our companions to handle the rest. There is honor in that, no matter how things turn out in the end.
I have no interest in honor if it’s celebrated on a field of the dead. Virtue ethics is fine, as long as it’s not an excuse to not figure out what needs doing and how it’s going to get done.
Doing ones own part and trusting that the other parts are done by anonymous unknown others is a very silly coordination strategy. We need plans that amount to success, not just everyone doing whatever sounds nice to them.
Edit: I very much agree that saving the world is a team sport. Perhaps it’s relevant that successful teams always do some planning and coordinating.
It’s at times like these that I absolutely love the distinction between “karma” and “agreement” around here. +1 for the former, as per the overall sentiment. −1 for the latter, as per the sheer nonsensical-ity of the scale of the matter.
The “world” doesn’t need “saving”. Never did. Never will. If for no other reason than there is no “one” world, to begin with. What you think about when mentioning the “world” itself will drastically different from what I have in mind, from what Eliezer has in mind, from what anyone else around here has in mind.
Our brains can only ever hold such a tiny amount of information in our short-term storage, that to even hope it ever represents any significant portion of the “world” itself is laughable. Even your long-term storage / episodic + semantic memory only ever came in contact with such a tiny portion of the “world”.
You can’t “save” what you barely “know” to begin with.
Yet there’s a deeper rabbit hole still.
When you say “save the world” you likely mean either “saving our local ecosystem” (as in: all the biological forms of self-organizing matter, as you know it), “saving our species” (Homo Sapiens, first and foremost), or “saving your world” (as in: the part of reality you have personally grown up in, conditioned yourself to, assimilated with, and currently project onto the rest of real world as the likely only world, to begin with—a.k.a. Typical Mind Fallacy).
The “world” doesn’t need “saving”, though. It came before you. It will persist after you. Probably. Physics. Anyhow.
What may need some “help” is society. Not “the” abstract, ephemeral, all-encompassing, thus absolutely void of any and all meaning to begin, “society”. But the society, made out of “people”. As in: “individuals”. Living in their own “world”. Only ever coming in contact with <1% of information you’ve likely come into contact with, so far.
They don’t need your attempts at “saving” them, either. What they need is specific solutions to specific problems within specific domains of specific kind of relationship to the domains, closely/farther adjacent to it.
You will never solve any of them. Unless you stop throwing around phrases like “saving the world”, in the first place. The world came into being via a specific kind of process. It is now maintained by specific kind of feedback loops, recurrent cycles, incentive structures, reward/punishment mechanisms driving mostly unconscious decision making processes, and individual habits of each and every individual operating within their sphere of influence.
You want to help? Figure out what kind of incremental changes you can begin to introduce in any of them, in order to begin extinguishing the sort of problems you’ve now elevated to the rank of “saving-worthy” in your own head. Note that, in all likelihood, by extinguishing one you will merrily introduce a whole bunch of others—something you won’t get to discover until much later one. Yet that is, realistically, what you can actually go on to accomplish.
“Saving the world”? Please. Do you even know what’s exactly going on in the opposite side of the globe today?
Great sentiment. Horrible phrasing. Nothing personal. “Helping people” is a team’s sport.
Side note: are these quick takes turning into a new Twitter/X feed? Gosh, please don’t. Please!
I read this paragraph as saying ~the same thing as the original post in a different tone
We know well enough what people mean by “world”—the stuff they care about. The fact that physics keeps on happening if humanity is snuffed out is no comfort at all to me or to most humans.
Arguing epistemology is not going to prevent a nuclear apocalypse or us being wiped out by the new intelligent species we are inventing. The fact that you don’t know what’s happening on the other side of the world has no bearing on existential dangers facing those people. That’s what I mean by saving the world, and I expect what the author meant. This is a different thing than just helping people by your own values and estimates.
I very much agree that pithy mysterious statements for others to argue over is not a good use of the quick takes here.