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▲ Angostura a day ago

What about if it were called 'evidence-based altruism'?

▲BLKNSLVR a day ago | parent | next [-]

The name always ends up being an umbrella for the craziness that groups of like minded rich-beyond-your-wildest-dreams folks will turn it into.

It's practically an axiom.

How do you turn a good idea into an existential threat to humanity? Let a like-minded group of very rich people commandeer it for a short while.

▲mcv 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If they had to show the results of the number of lives they saved, that would certainly get rid of the speculative longtermist bullshit or their focus on AI.

▲makeitdouble a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

”KPI based altruism" could be more accurate ?

▲oulipo 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

But you'd have to believe in the fact that BOTH:

- their evidence is true (eg it's not just a too small sample size, in very particular conditions, etc)

- and MORE IMPORTANTLY that they haven't forgotten OTHER EVIDENCE which points to a much better way to do it

usually when you "see the world through metrics" you start to be very efficient at optimizing them... but then the first minute your metrics start pointing a different direction to the one it's "supposed" to (which happens to 100% of metrics since "all models are wrong but some are useful") and you go with the full speed of your optimization on the WRONG target, you start getting into issues quickly...