On the substance I’m skeptical of the more general anti-change sentiment—I think that technological progress has been one of the most important drivers of improving human conditions, and procedurally I value a liberal society where people are free to build and sell technologies as long as they comply with the law.
I’m pretty conflicted but a large part of me wants to bite this bullet, and say that a more deliberate approach to technological change would be good overall, even when applied to both the past and present/future. Because:
Tech progress improving human conditions up to now depended on luck, and could have turned out differently, if for example there was some tech that allowed an individual or small group to destroy the world, or human fertility didn’t decrease and Malthusian dynamics kept applying.
On some moral views (e.g. utilitarianism), it would be worth it to achieve a smaller x-risk even if there’s a cost in terms of more time humanity spends under worse conditions. If you think that there’s 20% x-risk on the current trajectory, for example, why isn’t it worth a general slowdown in tech progress and associated improvements in human conditions to reduce it to 1% or even 10%, if that was the cost? (Not entirely rhetorical. I genuinely don’t know why you’d be against this.)
I’m pretty conflicted but a large part of me wants to bite this bullet, and say that a more deliberate approach to technological change would be good overall, even when applied to both the past and present/future. Because:
Tech progress improving human conditions up to now depended on luck, and could have turned out differently, if for example there was some tech that allowed an individual or small group to destroy the world, or human fertility didn’t decrease and Malthusian dynamics kept applying.
On some moral views (e.g. utilitarianism), it would be worth it to achieve a smaller x-risk even if there’s a cost in terms of more time humanity spends under worse conditions. If you think that there’s 20% x-risk on the current trajectory, for example, why isn’t it worth a general slowdown in tech progress and associated improvements in human conditions to reduce it to 1% or even 10%, if that was the cost? (Not entirely rhetorical. I genuinely don’t know why you’d be against this.)