Jesse Ruderman

Marginal utilitarian ,Earth

10 Beliefs discovered | 30 Totals Votes

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MY BELIEFS

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Ancient beliefs are no better suited to guiding our lives than contemporary reasoning. Some ancient beliefs have "survived the test of time", but that only tells us that the beliefs (or the corresponding tribes) were successful at spreading themselves.
We are all travelers on a small, fragile spaceship called Earth. When we divide humanity into in-groups and out-groups, we lose sight of our common humanity.

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We are all cousins: the only question is how many generations back we must trace. Focus on your close relatives only insofar as practical matters bring you together.

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Even if you hate someone so much that you've temporarily forgotten that their happiness has intrinsic value, you should still not want to harm them. Whether it's a disease or just a bad day, it's more likely to also harm innocent people than to resolve your conflict.

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For actions with small effects on large numbers of people, the best heuristic is to "shut up and multiply", regardless of your take on the corner cases of utilitarianism. (If everyone else does the same, the probability of you getting at least 60 minutes back is very high.)
When your capacity for ethical thought is limited, focus it where it can actually make a difference in the world. You have full control of your own actions, some influence on your friends, and statistical influence on your elected leaders.
A choice to forgo research is itself a morally relevant action, with real-world consequences due to its influence on your choice of direct action. When estimating the likelihood that research would surprise you, beware ideological bubbles.
We do not have the time to make every ethical decision from first principles. But if we never consider how our everyday heuristics align with our basic values, we are likely to cause harm while believing we are doing good.
Biases in perception, probability estimation, and ethical decision-making all threaten our ability to make choices consistent with our values. For example, the availability heuristic combines with omission bias to fuel the anti-vaccination movement.
Elections measure popularity, and to some extent collective values, but can't tell us facts about the world. To evaluate specific policies, governments should rely more on local initiative (federalism), controlled experiments (scientocracy), or prediction markets (futarchy).

BELIEFS I VOTED ON