[extropy-chat] Re: SIAI: Donate Today and Tomorrow

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Hal Finney wrote:
> Eliezer writes:
> 
>> I know that if I said something at a talk and twenty people in the
>> audience stood up and shouted "You're absolutely right!", I'd stand
>> around with my mouth open, completely at a loss for words.
> 
> In that specific context it would indeed be unusual for that to happen. 
> But I'll bet you've written essays and gotten a number of congratulatory
> and favorable responses.  Did that unnerve you?

Yes.  The more favorable, the more unnerving.  I can't take a compliment. 
I can sing my own praises all I want, but whenever someone else tries to 
laud me, I feel really, *really* uncomfortable.  I won't be accused of 
humility.  It's just a personality flaw from being raised a rationalist, 
that's all.

> Remember what you wrote yesterday, about how people hesitate to help out
> when they are in groups?  Part of the reason you suggested was that 
> since no one else was panicking, each person figured there was no reason
> to panic.  That's a group-conformist behavior pattern, and you seemed 
> to be saying that reluctance to support SIAI was part of that pattern. 
> Now it's the opposite, that it is our non-conformity which is keeping 
> people from joining the bandwagon of support.

I see no contradiction.  The kind of non-conformity that people take pride 
in is often very conformist, and conformity is a basic human impulse that 
doesn't respect traditions of nonconformity.  People are complex.

> I don't know what the answer is; probably the reasons are complex. But I
> think Damien has a good part of the truth when he says that the reason
> people don't donate is because ultimately they don't think it's money
> well spent.  They don't think that the threat is imminent, or they don't
> think that your group will solve the problem.

*Which people* is the question.  There are people who think that the threat 
is imminent and that we stand a good chance of solving the problem and they 
*still* stand back and cheer us on, hoping that someone else will donate 
first.  I've met them, Hal, I've spoken to them on IRC, on the phone and in 
person.  I addressed my email specifically to them.  And I don't see why 
this is so hard to believe, given that (a) it fits the known pattern of a 
psychological bias and (b) many such people did in fact donate in the last 
two days, saying, oops, you're right, I didn't know about the bystander 
effect and I was hanging back and waiting for someone else to do it.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence