OK. This doesn’t seem to cut nature at the joints. Why on Earth would the question of whether we’ve invented a really good happy-drug take such primacy over energy, population, travel, communication, computation, cumulative literature, mathematics, material strengths, height, literacy, life expectancy, etc?
When it comes to the question of whether or not human experience has meaningfully changed in thousands of years? Why on Earth wouldn’t it?
This honestly seems to me like one of those situations where we’re sitting here staring at each other and just not understanding one another’s perspective. I’m not sure whether this is a matter of inferential distance, reference class tennis, or what, but I feel like something is definitely missing from this discussion.
I’m saying that the concept you’re using for ‘meaningful change’ is a light shade of grue, looking unusual and gerrymandered to exclude huge past changes while including things like good mood-elevating drugs that are quite natural extrapolations of our expanding biological knowledge.
When we do model combination with the many alternative ways we can slice up the world for outside viewish extrapolation, with penalties for ad hoc complexity, I think the specific view that ignores all past gains in wealth, life expectancy, energy use, population, and technology but responds hugely to mood-elevating drugs carries relatively little weight in prediction for the topics you mentioned.
So I disagree with this:
Reference class forecasting seems to indicate that the business-as-usual future is quite likely.
I’m saying that the concept you’re using for ‘meaningful change’ is a light shade of grue, looking unusual and gerrymandered to exclude huge past changes while including things like good mood-elevating drugs that are quite natural extrapolations of our expanding biological knowledge.
I understand what you are saying, but I don’t understand why you consider those things interesting or relevant. To me, a concept of the human experience that includes computation or material strengths seems unusual and gerrymandered.
At this point it really does seem like we’re just playing reference class tennis, though.
When it comes to the question of whether or not human experience has meaningfully changed in thousands of years? Why on Earth wouldn’t it?
This honestly seems to me like one of those situations where we’re sitting here staring at each other and just not understanding one another’s perspective. I’m not sure whether this is a matter of inferential distance, reference class tennis, or what, but I feel like something is definitely missing from this discussion.
I’m saying that the concept you’re using for ‘meaningful change’ is a light shade of grue, looking unusual and gerrymandered to exclude huge past changes while including things like good mood-elevating drugs that are quite natural extrapolations of our expanding biological knowledge.
When we do model combination with the many alternative ways we can slice up the world for outside viewish extrapolation, with penalties for ad hoc complexity, I think the specific view that ignores all past gains in wealth, life expectancy, energy use, population, and technology but responds hugely to mood-elevating drugs carries relatively little weight in prediction for the topics you mentioned.
So I disagree with this:
I understand what you are saying, but I don’t understand why you consider those things interesting or relevant. To me, a concept of the human experience that includes computation or material strengths seems unusual and gerrymandered.
At this point it really does seem like we’re just playing reference class tennis, though.
Let’s leave it at that then.