(I assume you meant your quote unspoilered? Since it is clearly visible.)
In general, this is a very good heuristic, I agree. If you think there is a low-hanging fruit, everyone is passing on, it is good to check or inquire, usually privately and quietly, whether anyone else noticed it, before going for it. Sometimes saying out loud that the king has no clothes is equivalent to shouting in the Dark Forest. Once in a while though there is indeed low-hanging fruit. Telling the two situations apart is the tricky part.
To be clear I think it’s generally actually fine to ask out loud “hey why isn’t this happening?” (rather than quietly/privately). At least, this seems fine for all the examples in the OP.
The thing I’m cautioning against is forming the strong belief “this isn’t happening, people must be crazy/blind to what needs-to-be-done” and then boldly charging ahead.
Ah. I had been wondering what the actionable implications of this model were supposed to be. After all, it does not seem useful for truth-seeking to adopt a strategy of assuming that in every blank spot in your territory, there’s actually an invisible dragon. With this comment, things make more sense to me.
That said, if shouting is fine, then the Dark Forest analogy seems misleading, and another metaphor (like DirectedEvolution’s Faerie Forest) might be more apt.
(I assume you meant your quote unspoilered? Since it is clearly visible.)
In general, this is a very good heuristic, I agree. If you think there is a low-hanging fruit, everyone is passing on, it is good to check or inquire, usually privately and quietly, whether anyone else noticed it, before going for it. Sometimes saying out loud that the king has no clothes is equivalent to shouting in the Dark Forest. Once in a while though there is indeed low-hanging fruit. Telling the two situations apart is the tricky part.
Yeah I think in isolation the quote is not a spoiler.
To be clear I think it’s generally actually fine to ask out loud “hey why isn’t this happening?” (rather than quietly/privately). At least, this seems fine for all the examples in the OP.
The thing I’m cautioning against is forming the strong belief “this isn’t happening, people must be crazy/blind to what needs-to-be-done” and then boldly charging ahead.
I definitely agree with that, and there is a clear pattern of this happening on LW among the newbie AI Doomers
Ah. I had been wondering what the actionable implications of this model were supposed to be. After all, it does not seem useful for truth-seeking to adopt a strategy of assuming that in every blank spot in your territory, there’s actually an invisible dragon. With this comment, things make more sense to me.
That said, if shouting is fine, then the Dark Forest analogy seems misleading, and another metaphor (like DirectedEvolution’s Faerie Forest) might be more apt.