1. We should have a strong prior favoring open source. It’s been a huge success driving tech progress over many decades. We forget how counterintuitive it was originally, and shouldn’t take it for granted.
We should generally have a strong prior favoring technology in general, but, once we’ve said “actually this time it’s different (for [Reasons])”, is there a particular reason to preserve the prior favoring open source?
We should generally have a strong prior favoring technology in general
Should we? I think it’s much more obvious that the increase in human welfare so far has mostly been caused by technology, than that most technologies have net helped humans (much less organisms generally).
I’m quite grateful for agriculture now, but unsure I would have been during the Bronze Age; grateful for nuclear weapons, but unsure how many nearby worlds I’d feel similarly; net bummed about machine guns, etc.
We should generally have a strong prior favoring technology in general, but, once we’ve said “actually this time it’s different (for [Reasons])”, is there a particular reason to preserve the prior favoring open source?
Should we? I think it’s much more obvious that the increase in human welfare so far has mostly been caused by technology, than that most technologies have net helped humans (much less organisms generally).
I’m quite grateful for agriculture now, but unsure I would have been during the Bronze Age; grateful for nuclear weapons, but unsure how many nearby worlds I’d feel similarly; net bummed about machine guns, etc.
Well, the prior should weaken the extent to which we believe any given set of reasons for why it’s different this time.