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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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I don't think going from 1e-6% to 1% is enough to survive casual dismissal.

Pascal's mugging is weak to "meh, we'll probably be fine" because most people don't shut up and multiply. The same holds even if you crank up the numbers. You have to get much closer to--or even past--50% before "meh" starts to look foolish to the layman.

This may just mean putting your best foot forward: don't say 1% chance of nanobot swarms, say 90% chance that AI ends up handed at least one nuclear arsenal.

Then again, I shouldn't forget Nate Silver's lesson from 2016 that the public is pretty likely to interpret "less than 50% chance" as "basically impossible."

Yeah, I have to wonder if OG X-Com was more representative of how percentage chances actually work.

Wasn't the thing with SBF that he claimed he'd keep flipping the coin? Regardless of how one feels about utilitarianism, his approach didn't have an exit strategy. I think you'd get a lot more sympathy for someone who wanted to take that bet once and only once.

Nate Silver

I'd forgotten about that link, but it's pretty much exactly what I had in mind.