In Defence of Moderation
Jacob Barrett (Vanderbilt University)
GPI Working Paper No. 32-2024
A decision theory is fanatical if it says that, for any sure thing of getting some finite amount of value, it would always be better to almost certainly get nothing while having some tiny probability (no matter how small) of getting sufficiently more finite value. Fanaticism is extremely counterintuitive; common sense requires a more moderate view. However, a recent slew of arguments purport to vindicate it, claiming that moderate alternatives to fanaticism are sometimes similarly counterintuitive, face a powerful continuum argument, and violate widely accepted synchronic and diachronic consistency conditions. In this paper, I defend moderation. I show that certain arguments for fanaticism raise trouble for some versions of moderation—but not for more plausible moderate approaches. Other arguments raise more general difficulties for moderates—but fanatics face these problems too. There is therefore little reason to doubt our commonsensical commitment to moderation, and we can rest easy not worrying too much about tiny probabilities of enormous value.
Other working papers
Crying wolf: Warning about societal risks can be reputationally risky – Lucius Caviola (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford) et al.
Society relies on expert warnings about large-scale risks like pandemics and natural disasters. Across ten studies (N = 5,342), we demonstrate people’s reluctance to warn about unlikely but large-scale risks because they are concerned about being blamed for being wrong. In particular, warners anticipate that if the risk doesn’t occur, they will be perceived as overly alarmist and responsible for wasting societal resources. This phenomenon appears in the context of natural, technological, and financial risks…
Will AI Avoid Exploitation? – Adam Bales (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
A simple argument suggests that we can fruitfully model advanced AI systems using expected utility theory. According to this argument, an agent will need to act as if maximising expected utility if they’re to avoid exploitation. Insofar as we should expect advanced AI to avoid exploitation, it follows that we should expected advanced AI to act as if maximising expected utility. I spell out this argument more carefully and demonstrate that it fails, but show that the manner of its failure is instructive…
How much should governments pay to prevent catastrophes? Longtermism’s limited role – Carl Shulman (Advisor, Open Philanthropy) and Elliott Thornley (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
Longtermists have argued that humanity should significantly increase its efforts to prevent catastrophes like nuclear wars, pandemics, and AI disasters. But one prominent longtermist argument overshoots this conclusion: the argument also implies that humanity should reduce the risk of existential catastrophe even at extreme cost to the present generation. This overshoot means that democratic governments cannot use the longtermist argument to guide their catastrophe policy. …