Alright, I think it’ll make me a more responsible intellectual citizen if I try to distinguish these items a bit based on how I expect to view them in a decade or two. Let’s do it.
Well overall, I expect that my current attentional foci are substantially influenced by current news, political narratives, and intellectual fads. I look back at what things I was saying and paying attention to in 2010, and I see few major differences and hard reversals, but I do see a lot of noteworthy omissions, changes of emphasis, and different compressions.
I think (34) will be fairly obsolete in 15 years. I dunno how remote learning and telemedicine have impacted things in the wake of covid, but it’s plausible to me that the signaling equilibria will change enough that (34) will at least sound like an outdated opinion.
(29-32) are fairly timeless, but I wouldn’t be surprised if fads in news and politics change enough in 15 years that they seem like a questionable focus.
Gods, I hope (23-25) become less necessary to say in 15 years. How much of this incipient cyberpunk weirdtopia do folks need to experience before they expand their horizons a couple centimeters?
I anticipate (21) being painfully more relevant in only 10 years. Unless we somehow get a lot of lucky breaks in a row.
The toxic status quo around news and (social) media just seems entirely unsustainable to me. I expect (21) to be fully out-of-date in 10 years, for better and/or for worse.
It’s hard to imagine changing my mind about (19) any time soon, but it’s possible. Perhaps I’ll want to change the list to include/exclude different works. Or maybe I’ll update hard against the value of mainstream mindshare. I doubt it though. See my response to niplav’s comment for the generator behind (19).
(To reiterate the disclaimer: items (1-18) were adopted unmodified from John Nerst’s blog post)
I get the feeling that (5-9), (18), and maybe (12) and (16) will feel less relevant in 15 years than they do right now. I think their loading with certain culture-war-related valence makes them feel more relevant right now, which is probably partly why they are on Nerst’s mind (and mine).
Okay, so that’s the pre-hindsight about what I originally wrote. But what about things I omitted?
I could see a world 15 years from now where it looks utterly ignorant to not include a whole paragraph about privacy.
Developments around self-driving cars triggered a gout of Trolley Problem memes. This hasn’t actually been such a big deal, but I could imagine some other technology requiring a deep examination and refactoring of our moral intuitions. I tried to keep it pretty broad, but it’s possible this refactoring will make my current list look a little weird.
Maybe China will be culturally ascendant in the next 20 years and I will feel the need to explicitly say something about individualism vs collectivism or something.
I might eventually be compelled to put more focus on lifestyle stuff. For example, I might dedicate several bullet points to the importance of diet, exercise, contemplative practice, work-life balance, and writing.
Some number of my family and friends will perma-die in the next 20 years, after which I may be compelled to push the cryonics stuff harder.
In the age of automation, I may feel the need to express niche opinions about economics and political philosophy. I do not yet know what these niche opinions might be.
Echo-chamber awareness, bad-faith detection, the principle of charity, asymmetrical weapons, and so on may become even more important as tools in my everyday epistemic toolkit. In contrast to the more eternal, abstract epistemic principles.
I hope not, but the need to resist Dark Side Epistemology may become urgent and take up a few bullet points.
Alright, I think it’ll make me a more responsible intellectual citizen if I try to distinguish these items a bit based on how I expect to view them in a decade or two. Let’s do it.
Well overall, I expect that my current attentional foci are substantially influenced by current news, political narratives, and intellectual fads. I look back at what things I was saying and paying attention to in 2010, and I see few major differences and hard reversals, but I do see a lot of noteworthy omissions, changes of emphasis, and different compressions.
I think (34) will be fairly obsolete in 15 years. I dunno how remote learning and telemedicine have impacted things in the wake of covid, but it’s plausible to me that the signaling equilibria will change enough that (34) will at least sound like an outdated opinion.
(29-32) are fairly timeless, but I wouldn’t be surprised if fads in news and politics change enough in 15 years that they seem like a questionable focus.
Gods, I hope (23-25) become less necessary to say in 15 years. How much of this incipient cyberpunk weirdtopia do folks need to experience before they expand their horizons a couple centimeters?
I anticipate (21) being painfully more relevant in only 10 years. Unless we somehow get a lot of lucky breaks in a row.
The toxic status quo around news and (social) media just seems entirely unsustainable to me. I expect (21) to be fully out-of-date in 10 years, for better and/or for worse.
It’s hard to imagine changing my mind about (19) any time soon, but it’s possible. Perhaps I’ll want to change the list to include/exclude different works. Or maybe I’ll update hard against the value of mainstream mindshare. I doubt it though. See my response to niplav’s comment for the generator behind (19).
(To reiterate the disclaimer: items (1-18) were adopted unmodified from John Nerst’s blog post)
I get the feeling that (5-9), (18), and maybe (12) and (16) will feel less relevant in 15 years than they do right now. I think their loading with certain culture-war-related valence makes them feel more relevant right now, which is probably partly why they are on Nerst’s mind (and mine).
Okay, so that’s the pre-hindsight about what I originally wrote. But what about things I omitted?
I could see a world 15 years from now where it looks utterly ignorant to not include a whole paragraph about privacy.
Developments around self-driving cars triggered a gout of Trolley Problem memes. This hasn’t actually been such a big deal, but I could imagine some other technology requiring a deep examination and refactoring of our moral intuitions. I tried to keep it pretty broad, but it’s possible this refactoring will make my current list look a little weird.
Maybe China will be culturally ascendant in the next 20 years and I will feel the need to explicitly say something about individualism vs collectivism or something.
I might eventually be compelled to put more focus on lifestyle stuff. For example, I might dedicate several bullet points to the importance of diet, exercise, contemplative practice, work-life balance, and writing.
Some number of my family and friends will perma-die in the next 20 years, after which I may be compelled to push the cryonics stuff harder.
In the age of automation, I may feel the need to express niche opinions about economics and political philosophy. I do not yet know what these niche opinions might be.
Echo-chamber awareness, bad-faith detection, the principle of charity, asymmetrical weapons, and so on may become even more important as tools in my everyday epistemic toolkit. In contrast to the more eternal, abstract epistemic principles.
I hope not, but the need to resist Dark Side Epistemology may become urgent and take up a few bullet points.