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Ezra Newman

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FWIW, I have to correct myself every time I read EV Ops that it’s not Expected Value Ops. (That being said, I don’t know anything about marketing; n=1)

Easy context: 14.) I don't think we pay enough attention to some aspects of EA that could be at cross-purposes

This is a good point, sorry for getting back to it so late.

One idea I cut from the post: I think scope insensitivity means we should be suspicious of our gut intuitions in situations dealing with lots of people, so I think that’s another point in favor of accepting the RC. My main  goal with this point was to suggest this central idea: “sometimes trust your ethical framework in situations where you expect your intuituon to be wrong.”

 

That being said, the rest of your point still stands.

I said this on Twitter, but: this is really great! (Also very glad it’s coming directly to my inbox!)

This is a good point, I guess.

From my (new since you asked this) reply to Kirmani’s comment:

I’m advocating for updating in the general direction of trusting your small-scale intuition when you notice a conflict between your large scale intuition and your small scale intuition.

Honestly, its a pretty specific argument/recommendation so I’m having trouble thinking of another example that adds something. Maybe the difference between how I feel about my dog vs farmed animals, or near vs far people. If you’d like/it would help you or someone else, I can spend some more time thinking of one. 

I’m advocating for updating in the general direction of trusting your small-scale intuition when you notice a conflict between your large scale intuition and your small scale intuition.

Specifically:

  • Have as much sex as you want (with a consenting adult, etc). Have as many children as you can reasonably care for. But even if you disagree with that, I don’t think this is a good counterexample. It’s not a conflict between small scale beliefs and large scale beliefs. 
  • This is new information, not a small-large conflict. 
  • Same as above. 

In response to “Shut Up and Divide:”

I think you should be in favor of caring more (shut up and multiply) over caring less (shut up and divide) because your intuitive sense of caring evolved when your sphere of influence was small. A tribe might have at most a few hundred people, which happens to be ~where your naive intuition stops scaling linearly.

So it seems like your default behavior should be extended to your new circumstances instead of extending your new circumstances to default state.

(Although, I think SUAD might be useful for not getting trapped in caring too much about unimportant news, for example).

(I’m writing this on my phone, please correct typos more than you otherwise would. For the same reason, this is fairly short, please steelman in additional details as necessary to convince yourself)

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