You’ve heard “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Corollary “extraordinary risk to others from thinking errors requires extraordinary care in how you think.” Beware the moral hazards of your topic choices.
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This is why I’m fundamentally sympathetic to even (say) the most irrational sounding black activists who might want to object to (say) white men studying IQ. The researchers are safe in their nice university jobs. Any errors leading to social policy meltdowns, guess who suffers?
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There are two ways to bring these nuclear reactor “normal accident” topics into “safe study” zone. First: add more methodological rigor burdens in proportion to risk to others. IRB++. But this won’t be enough to bring more responsibility to say casual speculative tweeting.
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I like the second approach: increase direct risk exposure (or lower moral hazard). You want a million dollar research grant to study race and IQ? Go for it. We just ask that you live in a black inner city school district while doing so, that will be applying your findings.
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You want to speculate about sex markets? Great, do it in a sociology department where you have more female peers than male. Better still: include them in proposal. Get skin in the game in proportion to the accidental harm you might do to others.
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The common response to free-expression absolutism is “freedom of expression is not freedom from consequences”... as in don’t expect people to not yell at you or retaliate. If only it were that simple. The real messy problem is *others may not be free from consequences*
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To bring it back to the opening point, how do you judge a thinker? By topic, not method. How by topic? If a thinker routinely indulges in morally hazardous thinking where others are more likely to be hurt by erroneous conclusions, I do a double take.
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If they aren’t adding extra safety or taking on extra risk to compensate, I flip the bozobit. I’m doing this more quickly these days. There’s no excuse for putting others at risk with your bad thinking from relative safety.
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I’m fine with sloppy speculative spitballing and casual, loud, public thinking. That’s my own modus operandi after all. The trick is to then work on harmless topics and/or ones where you yourself are the one most at risk. If you want to move to meltdown topics, harden you methods
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End of conversation
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Hm - Should existential risk be studied at all? Is it better to walk blindly into it without thinking, or think erratic half-true thoughts about it first?
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A case could be made that it shouldn't be, but it's not straightforward and does not immediately follow from my narrow argument, since x-risks by definition are the ones that would destroy everybody.
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