Cluelessness

Schubert, Stefan (2022) Against cluelessness: pockets of predictability, Stefan Schubert’s Blog, May 18.

Trammell, Philip (2019) Simplifying Cluelessness,  philiptrammell.com, June 5.

Tarsney, Christian (2022) The epistemic challenge to longtermism, GPI Working Paper No. 3-2022, Global Priorities Institute.

Todd, Benjamin (2017) Longtermism: the moral significance of future generations, 80,000 Hours, October.

Schubert, Stefan (2022) Against cluelessness: pockets of predictability, Stefan Schubert’s Blog, May 18.

This is an example of simple cluelessness, cluelessness, which isn't generally considered problematic. In the above example, Amy has no reason to believe that the many consequences that would follow from pausing would be better than the many consequences that follow from not pausing. Amy has evidential symmetry between the two following claims:

Todd, Benjamin (2017) Longtermism: the moral significance of future generations, 80,000 Hours, October.Further reading

Tarsney, Christian (2020)(2022) The epistemic challenge to longtermism, GPI Working Paper No. 3-2022, Global Priorities Institute.

Todd, Benjamin (2017) Longtermism: the moral significance of future generations, 80,000 Hours, October.

1. ^{^}

   An explanation of what is meant by ‘systematically’ can be found in section 5 of Greaves, Hilary (2016) Cluelessness, Hilary GreavesCluelessness, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 116, pp. 311–339.

2. ^{^}

   Todd, Benjamin (2017) Longtermism: the moral significance of future generations, 80,000 Hours, October.

accidental harm | alternatives to expected value theory | crucial consideration |expected value | forecasting | indirect long-term effects | long-range forecasting | model uncertainty | value of information

Simple versus complex cluelessness

All actions we take have huge effects on the future. One way of seeing this is by considering identity-altering actions. Imagine that Amy passes her friend on the street and they stop to chat. Amy and her friend will now be on a different trajectory than they would have been otherwise. They will interact with different people, at a different time, in a different place, or in a different way than if they hadn’t paused. This will eventually change the circumstances of a conception event such that a different person will now be born because they paused to speak on the street. Now, when the person who is conceived takes actions, Amy will be causally responsible for those actions and their effects. She is also causally responsible for all the effects flowing from those effects.

This is an example of simple cluelessness, which isn't generally considered problematic. In the above example, Amy has no reason to believe that the many consequences that would follow from pausing would be better than the many consequences that follow from not pausing. Amy has evidential symmetry between the two following claims:

• Pausing to chat would have catastrophic effects for humanity
• Not pausing to chat would have catastrophic effects for humanity

And similarly, Amy has evidential symmetry between the two following claims:

• Pausing to chat would have miraculous effects for humanity
• Not pausing to chat would have miraculous effects for humanity

(The example assumes that there is nothing particularly special about this chat — eg. Amy and her friend are not chatting about starting a nuclear war or influencing AI policy.)

By evidential symmetry between two actions it is meant that, though massive value or disvalue could come from a given action, these effects could equally easily, and in precisely analogous ways, result from the relevant alternative actions. In the previous scenario, it was assumed that each of the possible people that will be born are as likely as each other to be the next Norman Borlaug. And each of the possible people are as likely as each other to be the next Joseph Stalin.

So this situation is not problematic; the possible effects, though they are huge, cancel out precisely in an expected value estimate.

Cluelessness is problematic, however, in situations where there is no evidential symmetry. For a pair of actions (act one and act two), complex cluelessness obtains when:

• There are reasons to think that the effects of act one would systematically ^[1] tend to be substantially better than those of act two;
• There are reasons to think that the effects of act two would systematically tend to be substantially better than those of act one;
• It is unclear how to weigh up these reasons against one another.

For example, there are some reasons to...

Tarsney, Christian (2020) The epistemic challenge to longtermism, Global Priorities Institute.

Further reading

Greaves, Hilary (2020) Evidence, cluelessness, and the long term, Effective Altruism Forum, November 1.

Mogensen, Andreas (2020) Maximal cluelessness, The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 71, pp. 141–162.