There is a well-known technique that works remarkably well when you want to say one thing and do another: compartmentalization.
Compartmentalization means taking a particular belief, detaching it from the rest of one's beliefs and from one's actual way of life, and placing it in a separate mental compartment. By doing so, the belief becomes effectively immunized: it no longer has to confront other beliefs, experience, or the practical consequences of one's own behavior.
Once a belief has been immunized in this way, it becomes much easier to turn it into dogma. It no longer needs to withstand contradiction or pass the test of reality.
There is one further step. Compartmentalized and dogmatized beliefs can eventually generate an industry around themselves—both a political and an economic one. Many people make a living producing speeches, commentary, and narratives of doom and apocalypse. Once such an industry exists, there are powerful incentives to preserve the beliefs and anxieties on which it depends.
The result is something we see remarkably often: people passionately defending causes that bear little relation to the way they conduct the rest of their lives. Their professed beliefs and their actual behavior inhabit separate compartments.
There is an old and rather simpler word for this: hypocrisy.
1. You are entirely right, Dr. Bloom. But I think you undersell incentives. In the attention economy, people have to say more and more absurd / extreme things to get eyeballs. Not a recipe for a useful discussion.
I hesitate to say this, but this is a fun reflection. I had many different reactions along the way. One was, just because all the doom cults of the past and your rabbi back then were clearly wrong (humanity is still here, to the best of my knowledge) doesn't mean the current doomer crop, notwithstanding the misalignment you note, is wrong too. But I hope I'm wrong about that.
99% P(doom) is very rare, at least from what I've seen. And how are you supposed to act if it's 10%? Or 20%? Or even if it's very high, but you feel powerless to do anything about it? Or if your error bars are very wide? Also, even if you are very certain on the percentage, maybe you're a lot fuzzier on the time frame?
I've found it very difficult to navigate the last few years, and so for the most part I've just kept living my life the same way. It's easy to let inertia carry us along. What's changed is a much higher degree of uncertainty about the near future, and that's just not very actionable.
Another great comentary Paul. I think what you say has a lot to to with humans wanting to exert control over a situation. We don't like uncertainty and if we can predict the future then somehow we have control over it.
I think that doomers, and even pessimists in general, are just neurotics who want to enumerate possible doomsday scenarios so that 1) someone other than them will find a solution so that they don’t have to or 2) they won’t be caught off guard when one of these scenarios actually happens. It’s a cynical way to live, but it’s also hopeful in a way.
Maybe it is like learned helplessness. The AI will be so advanced and there are so many ways it can kill us that it's pointless to try and do anything against it.
Surely an element of this is the feeling that most individuals have little power to do anything meaningful. And another element is that even if you think AI is very very risky, it’s unclear how to prepare for its worst case scenarios.
Great argument. I am absolutely a believer in the reality of climate change and I feel validated by the science and the facts! We are having record heat everywhere and forest fires like never before. And the climate modeling science is rational. Yet I bought a bought a house in a Florida beach town that is literally in a flood zone! I’m a climate realist not a doomer! And I feel the same about AI risk: it’s real and clearly we have these tech accelerationists like the head of OpenAI and Anthropic that have obvious financial interests to move fast and break things 😎 I think people like Bill Gates and Gary Marcus have a sensible sense of AIs danger without being doomers..there ideas are very readable and logical 😎
what business is it of yours is the end of the universe? you live in Brooklyn!
Literally LOLed at this.
There is a well-known technique that works remarkably well when you want to say one thing and do another: compartmentalization.
Compartmentalization means taking a particular belief, detaching it from the rest of one's beliefs and from one's actual way of life, and placing it in a separate mental compartment. By doing so, the belief becomes effectively immunized: it no longer has to confront other beliefs, experience, or the practical consequences of one's own behavior.
Once a belief has been immunized in this way, it becomes much easier to turn it into dogma. It no longer needs to withstand contradiction or pass the test of reality.
There is one further step. Compartmentalized and dogmatized beliefs can eventually generate an industry around themselves—both a political and an economic one. Many people make a living producing speeches, commentary, and narratives of doom and apocalypse. Once such an industry exists, there are powerful incentives to preserve the beliefs and anxieties on which it depends.
The result is something we see remarkably often: people passionately defending causes that bear little relation to the way they conduct the rest of their lives. Their professed beliefs and their actual behavior inhabit separate compartments.
There is an old and rather simpler word for this: hypocrisy.
1. You are entirely right, Dr. Bloom. But I think you undersell incentives. In the attention economy, people have to say more and more absurd / extreme things to get eyeballs. Not a recipe for a useful discussion.
2. There have been people who really believed it, all through history. (They always insisted "this time is different!" and they've always been wrong. This is a great book about this topic: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/201730880-everything-must-go
This time IS different ;)
Great piece — easy for a non-academic like me to appreciate.
I hesitate to say this, but this is a fun reflection. I had many different reactions along the way. One was, just because all the doom cults of the past and your rabbi back then were clearly wrong (humanity is still here, to the best of my knowledge) doesn't mean the current doomer crop, notwithstanding the misalignment you note, is wrong too. But I hope I'm wrong about that.
99% P(doom) is very rare, at least from what I've seen. And how are you supposed to act if it's 10%? Or 20%? Or even if it's very high, but you feel powerless to do anything about it? Or if your error bars are very wide? Also, even if you are very certain on the percentage, maybe you're a lot fuzzier on the time frame?
I've found it very difficult to navigate the last few years, and so for the most part I've just kept living my life the same way. It's easy to let inertia carry us along. What's changed is a much higher degree of uncertainty about the near future, and that's just not very actionable.
Another great comentary Paul. I think what you say has a lot to to with humans wanting to exert control over a situation. We don't like uncertainty and if we can predict the future then somehow we have control over it.
I think that doomers, and even pessimists in general, are just neurotics who want to enumerate possible doomsday scenarios so that 1) someone other than them will find a solution so that they don’t have to or 2) they won’t be caught off guard when one of these scenarios actually happens. It’s a cynical way to live, but it’s also hopeful in a way.
How about religious people who think they will go to heaven when they die? Why do they fear death and grieve when loved ones die?
Maybe it is like learned helplessness. The AI will be so advanced and there are so many ways it can kill us that it's pointless to try and do anything against it.
Surely an element of this is the feeling that most individuals have little power to do anything meaningful. And another element is that even if you think AI is very very risky, it’s unclear how to prepare for its worst case scenarios.
A real doomer just lives their life like everyone else. There isn’t any point doing anything else
Great argument. I am absolutely a believer in the reality of climate change and I feel validated by the science and the facts! We are having record heat everywhere and forest fires like never before. And the climate modeling science is rational. Yet I bought a bought a house in a Florida beach town that is literally in a flood zone! I’m a climate realist not a doomer! And I feel the same about AI risk: it’s real and clearly we have these tech accelerationists like the head of OpenAI and Anthropic that have obvious financial interests to move fast and break things 😎 I think people like Bill Gates and Gary Marcus have a sensible sense of AIs danger without being doomers..there ideas are very readable and logical 😎
Regarding fires:
https://substack.com/@needsofthemany98/note/c-325353843