I disagree but not confident I could write an explanation that’s both legible and not losing lots of info by simplifying into “oppressed people more likely to want to oppose oppression”. When I saw the question I was looking forwards to you writing a good answer to it, actually. To hint at some starting points, why is queer anarchism a thing? How do different minds decide who they are?
Friendly Monkey
Karma: 67
What can we do better the next time?
One lesson that occurs to me a day after reading this shortform is “figure out the lesson and apply it after the first time.” For example, I now see people proposing to check in on one’s Ziz-sympathetic friends and discourage killing humans. The rationalist community already had notice of something similar happening in Feb 2023, though.
P.S.: I suggest linking or copying this shortform to that thread so it’s easier to find.
it would have cut no ice with Ziz. And why should it? An individual must choose whether to pursue peaceful or violent action
But this isn’t me arbitrarily choosing peacefulness, I’m saying that killing ~random people is ineffective, this argument should go through for anyone who cares about effectiveness.
I can see a version of your argument that’s limited to when peaceful actions are over-saturated enough that additional units of effort would be most effective when put into violent actions. I wouldn’t be surprised to see historical examples of this across movements. (Obviously this claim wouldn’t be particular to animal suffering reduction)
due to Taking Seriously things like radical veganism
I take seriously radical animal-suffering-is-bad-ism[1], but we would only save a small portion of animals by trading ourselves off 1-for-1 against animal eaters, and just convincing one of them to go vegan would prevent at least as many torturous animal lives in expectation, while being legal. I think there must be additional causes, like the weird decision theory people have mentioned, although I think even that is insufficiently explanatory, as I explain near the end.
That said, taking animal suffering seriously does change the moral status of killing an average knowing animal-eater to something which is deontologically understandable, even if it’s still strategically very bad.
So while I don’t endorse the actions, I mostly feel empathy for Ophelia and the others and hope that they’ll be okay. Maybe it’s like how I’d feel empathy for an altruist who couldn’t handle living in this world and committed suicide, cause that’s also strategically bad and reckless.. but very understandable to me, as one who knows how alienating it can be.
I haven’t seen others on LW with this sentiment, maybe they’ve felt afraid to express it (as I do). In which they were alienated altruists who couldn’t handle this world and seemingly went a little insane (given the incorrect beliefs about decision theory). Most people struggle to stay dispassionately rational when faced with something which they regard as very morally bad. It is hard to live in a world one believes to contain atrocities.
It was once harder for me to live in this world too, but I adapted myself into a better consequentialist. That is a grueling and non-default thing to do; “There will soon be horror in front of you, young altruist, but you are not allowed to directly intervene, because if you do you will be arrested, and you won’t be able to stop others from doing the same horror. That’s right, there are many, many others doing the same horror, and you will often have to not voice objection to it while you plan how to make it stop in a lasting way.” That is not the kind of situation a standard human is capable of handling well.
Now combine this with the default human bias of ignoring things outside one’s own story (a standard example being suffering in another country); a decision theory that always says ‘escalate conflict’[2] cannot itself support escalating conflicts only with the ones around them in particular (a friend’s abusive parents, a cop stopping your car, a landlord[3]), instead of e.g. animal farming CEOs. Indeed, this kind of scope-sensitivity, when taken sufficiently seriously, generalizes to “do the altruistically best action, whatever it is, whether or not it looks like fighting back.”
I doubt that this is the full explanation. For example, I imagine they were aware of the concept of scope sensitivity and agreed with it. Maybe it plays a part, though, since being aware of biases doesn’t make you fully immune to them. I see no other explanation for this.
Given the purpose of this thread as sense-making, and that courage is listed as a virtue which it did take to post this, I hope this will be welcomed and help with sense-making.
(Disclaimer: I am not associated with the social cluster in question)
- ^
For a valid analogy between how bad this is in my morality and something that would be equally bad in a human-focused morality, you can imagine being born into a world with widespread human factory farms. Or the slaughter and slavery of human-like orcs, in case of this EY fiction.
- ^
Edit: SlimePriestess in the podcast says Ziz didn’t believe this, although she then says something about rebels being supposed to not surrender, I didn’t catch if it was a reductio or not (decision theory does not care what you value; if rebels don’t surrender, they either have plot armor, have chosen their battles smartly, or, alas, are acting recklessly)
- ^
Edit: This tumblr thread linked in a more recent comment says the original attack on the landlord was done in self-defense against a (successful) murder attempt
- ^
If we are going to be destroyed by Zizianism
I don’t understand why rationalism would be destroyed by Zizianism. The murders have not been against rationalists. Do you mean, “If rationalism’s reputation is damaged as a result of association”?
I see. Well, in case one of them reads this: to the extent it might matter to you, as a fellow radical vegan I request you not kill anyone trying to figure out how to make the first takeover-capable AI be benevolent.
(I’m aware that humans are such that it’s not obvious that designer-chosen-alignment → benevolence, and that one does actually have to reason about that instead of just assuming the hopeful option, but after having reasoned about it, I think most would choose benevolence in the end.[1] At least, I do not expect important exceptions to be alignment researchers, as opposed to selected-for power-seekers in high positions.)
It seems to me that actually reflectively endorsing evil (objectively describing what’s happening and then being like “this is good”, instead of euphemizing and coping with arguments that often secretly amount to “if you’re right then the world would be really bad, and that’s scary” like “but nature has it”) is rare, and most people are actually altruistic on some level but conformism overrides that and animal abuse is so normal that they usually don’t notice it, but then when they see basic information like “cows have best friends and get stressed when they are separated” they seemingly get empathetic and reflective (check the comments).