Do you think people are firmly aware of this in the first place? I would love to hear that the answer is yes.
On solutions—I am not sure yet on universal solution, as it is very dependent on each case. For some problems, some solutions would be around raising awareness and international cooperation on educating human who hurts other human, pushing for law reforms, and alternative sentencing. Solutions aside, I am not sure if I am seeing enough people even care about these. My power alone is not enough, that’s why we need to join force.
I am worried about how people would down vote on this on this platform. I don’t think worrying about long term is bad, or it should not be looked into, but at the same time, it should not be the only thing we care either. This worries me as “we should only work on long term X risks, but nothing about the people now, and any comments that seek to say otherwise is wrong” type of sentiment is what I am seeing more and more.
There is danger in overlooking current risks. Besides obvious reasons on we are ignoring current people, from the future perspective we would be missing the connection between the future and the present, and missing the opportunity to practice applying solutions to reality. And thanks for the link to effective altruism, and I am aware of the initiative/program after attending an introductory program. It feels to me it was merging a couple different directions, and somehow it felt like recent efforts were mostly on long term X risks. For its original goal, I am also not entirely sure if it considers fairness enough, despite an effort to consider scarcity. An EA concept I see some people not understanding enough is the marginal part—marginal dollar, and marginal labor, which should allow people to invest in a portfolio of things. Would welcome any recommended readings further on this.
I think LW users are well aware of the staggering suffering occurring in the world right now. Some other humans manage to not think about it. Utilitarians, or even those who’ve thought much about it, do.
EA forums is the branch of the community that primarily deals with solutions for present-day problems. I focus heavily on x-risk, as per my other comment.
Do you think people are firmly aware of this in the first place?
Well, which people? I wish more people cared, and I wish more people know about effective altruism.
It seems like in general most people don’t give a fuck. When I was younger and active in non-profit kinds of activities, it seemed like wherever you go, you meet the same people. Go to the local Amnesty International meeting, go to the local Greenpeace meeting, go to the local Esperanto speakers meeting, and you will probably find a few people repeatedly in all those places. And then go anywhere else, and you will find that most people have never heard about any of that.
So we have maybe 1% of population that is trying to solve all the world problems, and 99% who are mostly not even aware that any of this is happening (either the problems, or the attempted solutions).
That is okay to some degree. We need to also have people who fully focus on other things, someone who spends their energy trying to be a better heart surgeon, to build a self-driving car, etc. Some people’s attention is fully occupied raising their own kids, or improving their neighborhood. All of that is legit.
But I suspect that most people are doing none of that. They treat the entire world as “someone else’s problem”. The discuss fashion, or talk about how bored they are, or that “someone else” should fix all their first-world problems. If you know a way to change these people, please go ahead and try.
Among the “1% who care”, I think that anything political is going to be 100x more popular than anything not connected to politics. That doesn’t mean that most of them are doing something meaningful. Maybe 1 in 100 is actually reading some statistics and studying policy, and 99 in 100 are just chanting whatever slogan in currently most popular on twitter.
Sorry, there is no optimistic ending to this rant. I believe that people who (1) care and (2) are smart and competent, are in a very short supply. But I still think that among those, there are more who are about the law that those who care about AI alignment. Though both groups would benefit a lot from having more people, sufficiently caring and capable.
some solutions would be around raising awareness and international cooperation on educating human who hurts other human, pushing for law reforms, and alternative sentencing. Solutions aside, I am not sure if I am seeing enough people even care about these. My power alone is not enough, that’s why we need to join force.
I am skeptical about the awareness part. I think most people have some awareness that something bad is going on in Ukraine or Palestine or one of those places I am not thinking about; or that the educational system is fucked up; or that many people are still generally bad towards others.
But being aware is just a starting point. You need to educate yourself about the issue; there is a lot of misinformation out there, so you need to figure out the truth. That it already hard work and requires some intelligence. Then you need to overcome the temptation to join the loudest and most popular people, as opposed to those who actually do the hard work (and maybe therefore don’t have the extra time and energy to promote themselves). Again, most people fail at this filter. Then you need to dedicate some time for this cause, because there are many causes you could choose from, plus maybe you should focus on your own life and career. And only if you focus on the cause… then you meet the resistance of people who profit from the status quo, who sometimes are many, or have more power.
I think you should probably try to find some NGOs in your proximity that already work on the issues you care about. Then you can join an existing group instead of trying to create a new one, and you can learn from their expertise. Maybe try more than one, so that you can compare, and there is a smaller risk of getting involved in some political cult or something. I think that if you knock on some organization’s door and say “hey, I approve of your cause, I don’t have much experience, but tell me if there is anything I could help you with”, that could be a start, especially if you are willing to do some non-fun work. Some organizations have hundreds of online supporters, but when they need someone to bring the printed flyers from one building to another, fold the flyers, and put them in printed envelops, suddenly there are no volunteers, because this part is no fun. So if you volunteer to do that, you are (1) already helping a lot, and (2) this is how you meet other people who are willing to do the non-fun parts, and those are the ones to learn from.
It is a bit sad to see for a lot of humans, even the ones who are already caring about the world generally (which is already a privilege, because many may need to focus on being alive themselves), if something is not relatable, they don’t deeply care. When that is correlated with power, it is the worst.
Do you have a specific proposal how to address those things?
Meanwhile, https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/ https://www.givewell.org/ etc.
Do you think people are firmly aware of this in the first place? I would love to hear that the answer is yes.
On solutions—I am not sure yet on universal solution, as it is very dependent on each case. For some problems, some solutions would be around raising awareness and international cooperation on educating human who hurts other human, pushing for law reforms, and alternative sentencing. Solutions aside, I am not sure if I am seeing enough people even care about these. My power alone is not enough, that’s why we need to join force.
I am worried about how people would down vote on this on this platform. I don’t think worrying about long term is bad, or it should not be looked into, but at the same time, it should not be the only thing we care either. This worries me as “we should only work on long term X risks, but nothing about the people now, and any comments that seek to say otherwise is wrong” type of sentiment is what I am seeing more and more.
There is danger in overlooking current risks. Besides obvious reasons on we are ignoring current people, from the future perspective we would be missing the connection between the future and the present, and missing the opportunity to practice applying solutions to reality. And thanks for the link to effective altruism, and I am aware of the initiative/program after attending an introductory program. It feels to me it was merging a couple different directions, and somehow it felt like recent efforts were mostly on long term X risks. For its original goal, I am also not entirely sure if it considers fairness enough, despite an effort to consider scarcity. An EA concept I see some people not understanding enough is the marginal part—marginal dollar, and marginal labor, which should allow people to invest in a portfolio of things. Would welcome any recommended readings further on this.
I think LW users are well aware of the staggering suffering occurring in the world right now. Some other humans manage to not think about it. Utilitarians, or even those who’ve thought much about it, do.
That’s good to hear. Any posts you have encountered that are good and mention these/solutions on these?
EA forums is the branch of the community that primarily deals with solutions for present-day problems. I focus heavily on x-risk, as per my other comment.
Well, which people? I wish more people cared, and I wish more people know about effective altruism.
It seems like in general most people don’t give a fuck. When I was younger and active in non-profit kinds of activities, it seemed like wherever you go, you meet the same people. Go to the local Amnesty International meeting, go to the local Greenpeace meeting, go to the local Esperanto speakers meeting, and you will probably find a few people repeatedly in all those places. And then go anywhere else, and you will find that most people have never heard about any of that.
So we have maybe 1% of population that is trying to solve all the world problems, and 99% who are mostly not even aware that any of this is happening (either the problems, or the attempted solutions).
That is okay to some degree. We need to also have people who fully focus on other things, someone who spends their energy trying to be a better heart surgeon, to build a self-driving car, etc. Some people’s attention is fully occupied raising their own kids, or improving their neighborhood. All of that is legit.
But I suspect that most people are doing none of that. They treat the entire world as “someone else’s problem”. The discuss fashion, or talk about how bored they are, or that “someone else” should fix all their first-world problems. If you know a way to change these people, please go ahead and try.
Among the “1% who care”, I think that anything political is going to be 100x more popular than anything not connected to politics. That doesn’t mean that most of them are doing something meaningful. Maybe 1 in 100 is actually reading some statistics and studying policy, and 99 in 100 are just chanting whatever slogan in currently most popular on twitter.
Sorry, there is no optimistic ending to this rant. I believe that people who (1) care and (2) are smart and competent, are in a very short supply. But I still think that among those, there are more who are about the law that those who care about AI alignment. Though both groups would benefit a lot from having more people, sufficiently caring and capable.
I am skeptical about the awareness part. I think most people have some awareness that something bad is going on in Ukraine or Palestine or one of those places I am not thinking about; or that the educational system is fucked up; or that many people are still generally bad towards others.
But being aware is just a starting point. You need to educate yourself about the issue; there is a lot of misinformation out there, so you need to figure out the truth. That it already hard work and requires some intelligence. Then you need to overcome the temptation to join the loudest and most popular people, as opposed to those who actually do the hard work (and maybe therefore don’t have the extra time and energy to promote themselves). Again, most people fail at this filter. Then you need to dedicate some time for this cause, because there are many causes you could choose from, plus maybe you should focus on your own life and career. And only if you focus on the cause… then you meet the resistance of people who profit from the status quo, who sometimes are many, or have more power.
I think you should probably try to find some NGOs in your proximity that already work on the issues you care about. Then you can join an existing group instead of trying to create a new one, and you can learn from their expertise. Maybe try more than one, so that you can compare, and there is a smaller risk of getting involved in some political cult or something. I think that if you knock on some organization’s door and say “hey, I approve of your cause, I don’t have much experience, but tell me if there is anything I could help you with”, that could be a start, especially if you are willing to do some non-fun work. Some organizations have hundreds of online supporters, but when they need someone to bring the printed flyers from one building to another, fold the flyers, and put them in printed envelops, suddenly there are no volunteers, because this part is no fun. So if you volunteer to do that, you are (1) already helping a lot, and (2) this is how you meet other people who are willing to do the non-fun parts, and those are the ones to learn from.
I meant people on this platform initially, but also good to reflect people generally, which is also where some of my concerns are.
I agree on attending NGOs, and if by you, you meant me. For awareness—most awareness does not involve detailed stories or images, and those events did leave a strong impression/emotion (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2827459/#:~:text=At%20the%20very%20least%20emotions,thought%20and%20away%20from%20others.).
It is a bit sad to see for a lot of humans, even the ones who are already caring about the world generally (which is already a privilege, because many may need to focus on being alive themselves), if something is not relatable, they don’t deeply care. When that is correlated with power, it is the worst.