What is the reason to only consider one question, as opposed to all possible questions?
Asking what forces make the future good is relevant if you expect that your ability to influence an effect depends on the magnitude of that effect. Similarly, if you were interested in increasing economic growth, you might ask “what are the main factors driving economic growth?” so that you could see what to contribute to. If you were interested in making people’s lives better, you might ask “what forces tend to make their lives good, and how can we support those forces?”
You could also ask “what determines what happens in people’s lives?” but hopefully it makes sense to start with “what would make their lives good” if your interest is in making their lives good.
I give some (very vague) reasons why we might care about the difference between pictures 1 and 2.
I see. I guess my experience from the software development world is that developers are nearly always overly optimistic about nearly every project, and risk analysis and mitigation is the part that is lacking the most. So the questions that have the most impact on the success of a project are of the type “what can go wrong?”. Not necessarily x-risk stuff, just your run-of-the-mill terrorism, incompetence, conspiracy, market collapse, resource shortage and such. But I guess there is enough talk of this already.
I don’t understand, what is the reason to only consider why the future might be good, as opposed to all possible alternatives?
What is the reason to only consider one question, as opposed to all possible questions?
Asking what forces make the future good is relevant if you expect that your ability to influence an effect depends on the magnitude of that effect. Similarly, if you were interested in increasing economic growth, you might ask “what are the main factors driving economic growth?” so that you could see what to contribute to. If you were interested in making people’s lives better, you might ask “what forces tend to make their lives good, and how can we support those forces?”
You could also ask “what determines what happens in people’s lives?” but hopefully it makes sense to start with “what would make their lives good” if your interest is in making their lives good.
I give some (very vague) reasons why we might care about the difference between pictures 1 and 2.
I see. I guess my experience from the software development world is that developers are nearly always overly optimistic about nearly every project, and risk analysis and mitigation is the part that is lacking the most. So the questions that have the most impact on the success of a project are of the type “what can go wrong?”. Not necessarily x-risk stuff, just your run-of-the-mill terrorism, incompetence, conspiracy, market collapse, resource shortage and such. But I guess there is enough talk of this already.
Perhaps as a counterpoint to the doom-saying bias of the many paranoid humans out there, who have already had their say on the topic.