Galaxy brain resistance

One important property for a style of thinking and argumentation to have is what I call galaxy brain resistance : how difficult is it to abuse that style of thinking to argue for pretty much whatever you want - something that you already decided elsewhere for other reasons?

一种思维和论证方式所具有的一个重要特性就是我所说的银河脑阻力：滥用这种思维方式来论证几乎任何你想要的东西——你已经因为其他原因在其他地方决定的东西——有多困难？

The spirit here is similar to falsifiability in science: if your arguments can justify anything, then your arguments imply nothing.

这里的精神类似于科学中的可证伪性：如果你的论点可以证明任何事情，那么你的论点就毫无意义。

It's easiest to motivate the need to think about galaxy brain resistance by looking at what happens in its absence.

最容易激发人们思考星系大脑抵抗的需要是通过观察星系大脑缺失时会发生什么。

You've probably heard many cases of people saying things like this:

你可能听过很多这样的例子：

We are building a new decentralized ____ marketplace that will revolutionize how ____ customers interact with their providers, and will allow creators to turn their audiences into digital nation states.

我们正在建立一个新的去中心化的____市场，它将彻底改变____客户与其提供商的互动方式，并将允许创作者将他们的受众转变为数字国家。

$____ is a governance token that lets you play a direct role in this rapidly growing market.

$____ 是一种治理代币，可让您在这个快速增长的市场中发挥直接作用。

If we capture even 1% of the ___ market share, this will be a $___ billion market, and the governance token will be worth billions.

如果我们占据 ___ 市场份额的 1%，这将是一个 ___ 十亿美元的市场，治理代币将价值数十亿美元。

[ethnic minority] is responsible for a lot of persistent social disruption and drains our resources.

[少数族裔]造成了许多持续的社会混乱并耗尽了我们的资源。

If we were to just completely remove them (and I do mean completely remove, so they don't come back), it would be a grim one-time act, but in the long term, if doing it makes our economy grow even half a percentage point faster, then in 500 years, our country will be twelve times richer than it otherwise would have been.

如果我们要完全消除它们（我的意思是完全消除，这样它们就不会再回来），这将是一次可怕的一次性行为，但从长远来看，如果这样做能让我们的经济增长速度加快半个百分点，那么在 500 年内，我们的国家将比其他情况富裕 12 倍。

That is a huge number of much happier and more fulfilled lives.

这是一大批更加幸福、更加充实的生活。

It would be a grave injustice to condemn our descendants to vastly poorer lives simply out of cowardly fear of paying this one-time cost today.

如果仅仅出于对今天付出这一一次性代价的怯懦恐惧，就让我们的子孙过上极其贫困的生活，那将是一种严重的不公正。

One way to deal with arguments like the above is to deal with them as mathematical objects in a philosophy class, try to identify the specific premises or steps that you disagree with, and come up with refutations.

处理上述论点的一种方法是将它们作为哲学课中的数学对象来处理，尝试找出你不同意的具体前提或步骤，并提出反驳。

But a more realistic approach is to notice that, in the real world, arguments like the above are almost always not reasoning - they are rationalization.

但更现实的方法是注意到，在现实世界中，上述论点几乎总是不是推理——它们是合理化。

The speaker first came to their conclusion, likely for self-interested or emotional reasons (being a bagholder of the token, or really really hating that ethnic group), and then they came up with fancy arguments that supposedly show why they are justified.

演讲者首先得出他们的结论，可能是出于自利或情感原因（作为代币的持有者，或者真的非常讨厌那个种族群体），然后他们提出了一些奇特的论点，据说可以表明为什么他们是合理的。

The purpose of the fancy arguments is (i) to trick the speaker's own higher mind into following the lead of their base instincts, and (ii) to try to grow the movement by getting not just the deluded, but also vErY smArT pEopLe (or worse, actually smart people) on board.

花哨的论点的目的是（i）欺骗演讲者自己的更高思想，让他们跟随他们的基本本能的引导，以及（ii）试图通过不仅让受迷惑的人，而且让非常聪明的人（或更糟糕的是，实际上聪明的人）加入来发展运动。

In this post, I will argue that patterns of reasoning that are very low in galaxy brain resistance are a common phenomenon, some with consequences that are mild and others with consequences that are extreme.

在这篇文章中，我将论证银河系大脑抵抗力非常低的推理模式是一种常见现象，有些后果轻微，而另一些则后果严重。

I will also describe some patterns that are high in galaxy brain resistance, and advocate for their use.

我还将描述一些星系脑电阻较高的模式，并提倡使用它们。

Consider this recent tweet, which is a pretty good archetypal example of a lot of Silicon Valley AI boosterism:

考虑一下最近的这条推文，这是硅谷人工智能支持的一个很好的典型例子：

This is a clear example of the inevitability fallacy .

这是必然性谬误的一个明显例子。

The post starts from a (perhaps reasonable) claim that full automation of the economy is eventually bound to happen, and then skips straight to arguing that this eventuality (and therefore disemployment of all human labor) should therefore be actively hastened .

这篇文章从一个（也许是合理的）主张开始，即经济的完全自动化最终必然会发生，然后直接跳到争论这种可能性（以及因此所有人类劳动力的失业）应该积极加速。

Why should it be actively hastened?

为什么要积极加速？

Well, we know why: because this tweet was written by a company whose entire business is actively hastening it.

好吧，我们知道原因：因为这条推文是由一家整个业务都在积极加速的公司撰写的。

Now, inevitabilism is a philosophical error, and we can refute it philosophically.

现在，必然论是一个哲学错误，我们可以从哲学上反驳它。

If I had to refute it, I would focus on three counterarguments:

如果非要我反驳的话，我会集中反驳三个方面：

But in the real world, inevitabilism cannot be defeated purely as a logical construct because it was not created as a logical construct.

但在现实世界中，不可避免论不能纯粹作为逻辑构造而被击败，因为它不是作为逻辑构造而创建的。

Inevitabilism in our society is most often deployed as a way for people to retroactively justify things that they have already decided to do for other reasons - which often involve chasing political power or dollars.

在我们的社会中，不可避免主义最常被用作人们追溯性地证明他们出于其他原因已经决定做的事情的一种方式——这通常涉及追逐政治权力或金钱。

Simply understanding this fact is often the best mitigation: the moment when people have the strongest incentive to make you give up opposing them is exactly the moment when you have the most leverage.

简单地理解这个事实往往是最好的缓解方法：当人们最有动力让你放弃反对他们的时刻，正是你拥有最大筹码的时刻。

Longtermism is the pattern of thought that emphasizes the very large stakes involved in the long-term future.

长期主义是一种强调长期未来所涉及的巨大利害关系的思维模式。

These days, many people associate the term with effective altruist longtermism, eg.

如今，许多人将这个词与有效的利他主义长期主义联系在一起，例如。

this 80000 hours intro :

80000小时简介：

If we're just asking about what seems possible for the future population of humanity, the numbers are breathtakingly large.

如果我们只是问未来人类的可能性，这个数字是惊人的大。

Assuming for simplicity that there will be 8 billion people for each century of the next 500 million years, 10 our total population would be on the order of forty quadrillion ...

为简单起见，假设未来 5 亿年中每个世纪都会有 80 亿人，那么 10 我们的总人口将达到 40 千万亿的量级……

And once we're no longer planet-bound, the potential number of people worth caring about really starts getting big.

一旦我们不再被地球束缚，值得关心的潜在人数就真正开始变大。

But the general concept of appealing to the long term is much older.

但着眼长远的总体概念由来已久。

Appeals to sacrifice today for much larger benefits in the future have been done for centuries by personal financial planners, economists, philosophers, people talking about the best time to plant trees, and many others.

几个世纪以来，个人理财规划师、经济学家、哲学家、谈论植树最佳时机的人们以及许多其他人都呼吁牺牲今天以换取未来更大的利益。

One reason that I hesitate to criticize longtermism is that, well, the long term is actually really important .

我不愿批评长期主义的原因之一是，长期实际上非常重要。

The reason we don't hard fork a blockchain every time someone loses money to a hacker is that doing so may have a very visible one-time benefit, but it would permanently damage the blockchain's credibility.

每次有人因黑客损失金钱时，我们不会硬分叉区块链，因为这样做可能会带来非常明显的一次性好处，但会永久损害区块链的可信度。

As Tyler Cowen argues in Stubborn Attachments , the reason why economic growth is so important is that it's one of very few things that reliably compounds forever into the future , instead of disappearing or going in cycles.

正如泰勒·考恩（Tyler Cowen）在《顽固的依恋》中所说，经济增长之所以如此重要，是因为它是极少数能够可靠地永远复合到未来的事物之一，而不是消失或循环往复。

Educating your children only has payoffs after over a decade.

教育你的孩子只有十多年后才会有回报。

If you're not longtermist to some extent, you will never build a road.

如果你在某种程度上不是长期主义者，你永远不会修路。

And when you don't value the long term, you run into problems.

当你不重视长期发展时，你就会遇到问题。

A major one I fight against is technical debt: when software developers focus on short-term targets without a coherent view of the long-term picture, the result is that software turns into uglier and uglier junk over time (see: my push to simplify the Ethereum L1 ).

我所反对的一个主要问题是技术债务：当软件开发人员专注于短期目标而没有对长期前景有一个连贯的看法时，结果是软件随着时间的推移变得越来越难看的垃圾（参见：我推动简化以太坊 L1 ）。

But there is a catch: longtermist arguments have very low galaxy brain resistance .

但有一个问题：长期主义者的论点对星系大脑的抵抗力非常低。

After all, the long term is far away, and you can make beautiful stories about how if you do X, just about anything will happen.

毕竟，长期目标还很遥远，你可以编造一些美丽的故事，告诉你如果你做了某事，几乎任何事情都会发生。

We see the downsides of this play out in the real world over and over again, when we look at the behavior of both markets and politics.

当我们观察市场和政治的行为时，我们会在现实世界中一次又一次地看到这种情况的负面影响。

In a market , the variable that chooses between these two modes is the prevailing interest rate.

在市场中，在这两种模式之间进行选择的变量是现行利率。

When interest rates are high, it only makes sense to invest in projects that show a clear near term profit.

当利率高时，只有投资于短期内有明显利润的项目才有意义。

But when interest rates are low, well, at this point the phrase " low-interest rate environment " is a well-understood byword for a situation that involves lots of people creating and chasing narratives that are ultimately unrealistic, leading to a bubble and then a crash.

但当利率较低时，“低利率环境”一词是一个很好理解的代名词，指的是许多人创造和追逐最终不切实际的故事，导致泡沫，然后崩溃。

In politics , there are common complaints about politicians acting in short-term ways to impress voters, hiding problems under the rug so that they only reappear after the next election.

在政治领域，人们普遍抱怨政客为了给选民留下深刻印象而采取短期行动，将问题隐藏起来，以便在下一次选举后问题才会再次出现。

But there is also the idea of a " bridge to nowhere ": an infrastructure project justified by a story about long-term value that never ends up materializing.

但也有一个“通向无处之桥”的想法：一个基础设施项目的合理性是由一个永远不会实现的长期价值的故事所证明的。

Left: a bridge to nowhere in Latvia .

左：拉脱维亚一座通往无处可去的桥。

Right: Dentacoin, "The Blockchain Solution for the Global Dental Industry", used to have a market cap of over $1.8 billion.

右：Dentacoin，“全球牙科行业的区块链解决方案”，曾经的市值超过 18 亿美元。

The core problem in both cases is that thinking about the long term enables disconnection from reality.

这两种情况的核心问题是，考虑长远会导致脱离现实。

In a short-term-favoring environment, sure, you are ignoring the long term, but at least there is a feedback mechanism: if a proposal is justified by a claim of near-future benefits, then in the near future everyone will be able to see if those benefits actually come to pass.

当然，在有利于短期的环境中，你会忽略长期，但至少有一个反馈机制：如果一项提案通过声称近期的好处而得到证实，那么在不久的将来，每个人都将能够看到这些好处是否真正实现。

In a long-term-favoring environment, an argument about benefits in the long term does not have to be correct, it just has to sound correct.

在有利于长期的环境中，有关长期利益的争论不一定是正确的，只需听起来正确即可。

And so even though the game everyone is claiming to play is choosing ideas based on what brings value in the long term, the game they're actually playing is choosing ideas based on what wins in an often dysfunctional and highly adversarial social environment .

因此，尽管每个人都声称自己玩的游戏是根据长期价值带来的想法来选择想法，但他们实际上玩的游戏是根据在经常功能失调和高度敌对的社会环境中获胜的方法来选择想法。

If you can use stories about vague but extremely large positive consequences in the long term to justify anything , then a story about vague but extremely large positive consequences in the long term tells you nothing .

如果你可以用关于模糊但极其巨大的长期积极后果的故事来证明任何事情的合理性，那么一个关于模糊但从长远来看极其巨大的积极后果的故事告诉你什么也没有。

How do we get the benefits of long-term thinking without getting disconnected from reality?

我们如何在不脱离现实的情况下获得长期思考的好处？

First of all, I would say it's a really hard problem.

首先，我想说这是一个非常困难的问题。

But getting beyond that, I do think there are some basic rules of thumb.

但除此之外，我确实认为还有一些基本的经验法则。

The easiest is: does the thing you are doing in the name of long-term benefits actually have a solid long-term track record of achieving those benefits?

最简单的是：您以长期利益为名所做的事情实际上是否具有实现这些利益的可靠的长期记录？

Economic growth is like this.

经济增长就是这样。

Not making species go extinct is also like this.

不让物种灭绝也是如此。

Trying to install a one-world government does not - in fact, it's one of many examples of something that has a solid long-term track record of failing and causing lots of harm in the process.

试图建立一个单一世界政府却并非如此——事实上，这只是长期失败记录并在此过程中造成大量伤害的众多例子之一。

If an action you're considering has speculative long-term benefits but reliable known long-term harms, then...

如果您正在考虑的一项行动具有推测性的长期利益，但具有可靠的已知长期危害，那么......

don't do it .

不要这样做。

This rule doesn't always apply, because sometimes we really are living in unprecedented times.

这条规则并不总是适用，因为有时我们确实生活在前所未有的时代。

But it's also important to keep in mind that "we really are living in unprecedented times" has very low galaxy brain resistance.

但同样重要的是要记住，“我们确实生活在前所未有的时代”的星系脑电阻非常低。

I find uni disgusting.

我觉得大学很恶心。

You're literally eating sexual organs of a sea urchin.

你实际上是在吃海胆的性器官。

Sometimes, at omakases, this stuff even gets shoved in front of my face.

有时，在omakases，这些东西甚至会被推到我面前。

But even still, I oppose banning it, as a matter of principle.

但即便如此，作为原则问题，我还是反对禁止它。

One thing that I despise is people using the coercive power of government to impose what are ultimately personal aesthetic preferences on the personal lives of millions of other people.

我鄙视的一件事是人们利用政府的强制力将最终的个人审美偏好强加于数百万人的个人生活。

Having aesthetics is fine.

有审美就好了。

Keeping aesthetics in mind when designing public environments is good.

在设计公共环境时牢记美观是有好处的。

Imposing your aesthetics on other people's personal lives is not - the cost you're imposing on others is vastly higher than any psychological benefit to yourself, and if everyone tries to do it that inevitably leads to either cultural hegemony or political war of all against all.

将你的审美强加于他人的个人生活则不然——你强加给别人的成本远远高于你自己的任何心理利益，如果每个人都试图这样做，则不可避免地导致文化霸权或所有人反对所有人的政治战争。

It's not hard to find obvious slam-dunk cases of politicians pushing to ban things for no better reason than "eww, I find it disgusting".

不难发现政客们推动禁止事物的明显的灌篮案例，除了“呃，我觉得这很恶心”之外没有更好的理由。

An easy goldmine is anti-homosexuality crusades.

反同性恋运动是一个容易的金矿。

Like St. Petersburg Duma deputy Vitaly Mironov :

像圣彼得堡杜马代表维塔利·米罗诺夫一样：

LGBT have no rights.

LGBT 没有权利。

Their rights are not included in the socially significant list of protected values in our country.

他们的权利没有被列入我国具有重要社会意义的受保护价值观清单中。

The so-called perverts have all the rights that they have as people, citizens of our country, but they are not included in some extended top list.

所谓的变态者拥有作为我们国家的人民、公民所拥有的所有权利，但他们不包括在一些扩展的顶级名单中。

We will remove them forever from the list of human rights issues in our country.

我们将把它们从我国的人权问题清单中永远删除。

Or even Vladimir Putin himself, who tried to justify invading Ukraine by complaining about ...

甚至是弗拉基米尔·普京本人，他试图通过抱怨来为入侵乌克兰辩护……

the United States having too much " satanism ".

美国“撒旦教”太多了。

A more recent and somewhat different case is movements in the United States to ban synthetic meat :

最近的一个有点不同的案例是美国禁止合成肉的运动：

Cultured meat is not meat ...

培养肉不是肉...

it is made by man, real meat is made by God Himself ...

它是人做的，真正的肉是上帝自己做的......

If you really want to try the nitrogen-based protein paste, go to California.

如果你真的想尝试含氮蛋白糊，就去加州吧。

But many people are a step more cultured, and try to wrap this in some kind of excuse.

但许多人更有文化，并试图用某种借口来包装这一点。

A common one is "the moral fabric of society", "social stability", and various similar reasons.

常见的就是“社会道德结构”、“社会稳定”以及各种类似的原因。

Arguments like this are also often used to justify censorship.

类似的论点也经常被用来证明审查制度的合理性。

What's the problem?

有什么问题吗？

I'll let Scott Alexander handle this one :

我会让 Scott Alexander 处理这个：

The Loose Principle of Harm says that the government can get angry at complicated indirect harms, things that Weaken The Moral Fabric Of Society ...

伤害的松散原则说，政府可能会对复杂的间接伤害感到愤怒，这些伤害会削弱社会的道德结构......

But allowing the Loose Principle Of Harm restores all of the old wars to control other people that liberalism was supposed to prevent.

但是，允许宽松的伤害原则会恢复所有旧的战争，以控制自由主义本应阻止的其他人。

The one person says "Gay marriage will result in homosexuality becoming more accepted, leading to increased rates of STDs!

一位人士表示：“同性婚姻将导致同性恋变得更容易被接受，从而导致性病发病率上升！

That's a harm!

那是一种伤害！

We must ban gay marriage!" Another says "Allowing people to send their children to non-​public schools could lead to kids at religious schools that preach against gay people, causing those children to commit hate crimes when they grow up!

我们必须禁止同性婚姻！”另一个人说：“允许人们把孩子送到非公立学校可能会导致宗教学校的孩子宣扬反对同性恋者，导致这些孩子长大后犯下仇恨犯罪！

That's a harm!

那是一种伤害！

We must ban non-​public schools!" And so on, forever.

我们必须禁止非公立学校！”等等，直到永远。

The moral fabric of society is a real thing - some societies are much more moral than others in easily observable ways.

社会的道德结构是真实存在的——一些社会以显而易见的方式比其他社会道德得多。

But also, it's vague and undefined, which makes it so incredibly easy to say that just about anything contravenes the moral fabric of society.

而且，它是模糊和不确定的，这使得说任何事情都违反社会道德结构变得非常容易。

This applies also to more direct appeals to the " wisdom of repugnance ", which have already been ruinous to the progress of science and medicine.

这也适用于更直接地诉诸“厌恶智慧”，这已经对科学和医学的进步造成了毁灭性的影响。

And it also appeals to newer catchall "ban it because I don't like it" wrappers, of which a common one is the desire to assert local culture against undefined "global elites".

它还吸引了新的包罗万象的“禁止它，因为我不喜欢它”的包装，其中一个共同点是维护当地文化反对未定义的“全球精英”的愿望。

Some more quotes from the anti synthetic meat crusaders (remember, these people are not trying to explain why they are not going to eat synthetic meat personally, they are explaining why they are coercively imposing their choice on everyone else ):

反合成肉十字军的更多引述（请记住，这些人并不是试图解释为什么他们个人不打算吃合成肉，他们正在解释为什么他们将自己的选择强加给其他人）：

Global elites want to control our behavior and push a diet of petri dish meat and bugs on Americans.

全球精英想要控制我们的行为，并向美国人推行培养皿肉和虫子的饮食。

Florida is saying no .

佛罗里达州说不。

I was proud to sign SB 1084 to keep lab grown meat out of Florida and prioritize our farmers and ranchers over the agenda of elites and the World Economic Forum.

我很自豪地签署了 SB 1084，将实验室培育的肉类排除在佛罗里达之外，并将我们的农民和牧场主置于精英和世界经济论坛的议程之上。

Some folks probably like to eat bugs with Bill Gates, but not me .

有些人可能喜欢和比尔·盖茨一起吃虫子，但我不喜欢。

This is a big part of my sympathy toward a moderate libertarianism.

这是我对温和自由主义的同情的很大一部分。

I want to live in a society where banning something requires a clear story about harm or risk imposed on clearly identified victims, and if that story is successfully challenged in court then the law is repealed.

我希望生活在这样一个社会：禁止某件事需要有一个明确的故事，说明对明确确定的受害者所造成的伤害或风险，如果这个故事在法庭上成功受到质疑，那么法律就会被废除。

This greatly reduces the potential to capture government and use it to impose one culture's preferences over the personal lives of others, or fight a war of all against all as every team tries to do the same.

这大大降低了控制政府并利用它将一种文化的偏好强加于他人个人生活的可能性，或者在每个团队都试图做同样的事情时与所有人进行一场战争的可能性。

In crypto, you often hear bad arguments for why you should throw your money into various high-risk projects.

在加密货币领域，您经常会听到关于为什么应该将资金投入各种高风险项目的糟糕争论。

Sometimes, they are smart-sounding arguments about how a project is "disrupting" (ie.

有时，它们是关于项目如何“颠覆”的听起来很聪明的论点（即。

participating in) a trillion-dollar industry, and how this particular project is really unique and doing things everyone else is not.

参与）一个价值数万亿美元的行业，以及这个特定项目如何真正独一无二，而做其他人都没有的事情。

Other times, it's just "number go up because celebrity".

其他时候，这只是“数字因为名人而上升”。

I am not opposed to people having fun, including having fun by risking some of their money .

我不反对人们玩得开心，包括拿自己的一些钱冒险来玩。

I am opposed to people being encouraged to put half their net worth into a token that the influencers all say will definitely go up, when the most realistic outcome is that two years later the token is worth nothing.

我反对鼓励人们将一半的净资产投入到有影响力的人都说肯定会上涨的代币上，而最现实的结果是两年后该代币一文不值。

But what I am even more opposed to is people arguing that speculative token games are morally righteous, because poor people need that rapid 10x gain to have a fair chance in the modern economy.

但我更反对的是人们认为投机代币游戏在道德上是正义的，因为穷人需要快速的 10 倍收益才能在现代经济中获得公平的机会。

Like, say, this:

就像这样说：

This is a bad argument.

这是一个糟糕的论点。

One way to see why it's a bad argument is to approach it like any other argument, and deconstruct and refute the claim that this is actually a meaningful or helpful form of "class mobility".

理解为什么这是一个糟糕的论点的一种方法是像对待任何其他论点一样对待它，并解构和反驳这样的说法：这实际上是一种有意义或有益的“阶级流动性”形式。

The core problem with the argument is: casinos are zero-sum games.

该论点的核心问题是：赌场是零和游戏。

As a first approximation, each person who goes up a social class, there's a person who goes down a social class.

作为第一个近似，每个上升到社会阶层的人，都会有一个人下降到社会阶层。

But if you dig deeper into the math, it gets worse.

但如果你更深入地研究数学，情况就会变得更糟。

In any standard welfare economics textbook, one of the first ideas that you will see is that a person's utility function in money is concave .

在任何标准的福利经济学教科书中，您首先看到的想法之一就是一个人的货币效用函数是凹的。

Each dollar is worth less to you the richer you already are.

你越富有，每一美元对你来说就越不值钱。

An example of a utility curve .

效用曲线的一个例子。

Notice how the slope (value per dollar) decreases the more dollars you have.

请注意，您拥有的美元越多，斜率（每美元的价值）就越小。

This model has an important conclusion: random coin flips, especially large ones, are on average bad for you.

这个模型有一个重要的结论：随机抛硬币，尤其是大硬币，平均来说对你不利。

Losing $100,000 is more bad for you than gaining $100,000 is good.

损失 100,000 美元对您来说比获得 100,000 美元的好处更糟糕。

If we take a model where you currently have $200,000, and each 2x change in wealth pushes you up or down a social class, then if you win a $100,000-sized coin flip, you go up about half a social class, but if you lose the coin flip, you go down a full social class.

如果我们采用一个模型，您目前拥有 200,000 美元，财富每增加 2 倍，就会使您的社会阶层上升或下降，那么如果您赢得了 100,000 美元大小的硬币，您的社会阶层就会上升约一半，但如果您输掉硬币，您的社会阶层就会下降一个完整的社会阶层。

Economic models created by people whose motivation is to, well, study human decision making and try to find ways to improve people's lives, pretty much always output conclusions like this.

人们创建的经济模型的动机是研究人类决策并试图找到改善人们生活的方法，几乎​​总是输出这样的结论。

What kind of economic model outputs the opposite conclusion - that it's good to throw in all your money in search of a 10x?

什么样的经济模型会得出相反的结论——投入所有的钱去寻找 10 倍是好的？

Stories told by people whose goal is to feel good about pumping coins .

那些目标是通过抽硬币获得良好感觉的人所讲述的故事。

Here, my goal is not to blame people who actually are poor and desperate and are looking for a way out of their situation.

在这里，我的目标不是责怪那些实际上贫穷、绝望、正在寻找摆脱困境的出路的人。

Rather, my goal is to blame people who are financially doing quite well, who are using "poor and desperate people who really need that 10x" as a meme to justify creating situations that encourage poor and desperate people to get into even deeper trouble.

相反，我的目标是责怪那些经济状况良好的人，他们使用“真正需要这10倍的贫穷和绝望的人”作为模因来证明创造鼓励贫穷和绝望的人陷入更深困境的情况是合理的。

This is a big part of why I have been pushing for the Ethereum ecosystem to focus on low-risk defi .

这也是我一直推动以太坊生态系统专注于低风险defi的一个重要原因。

Escaping your money being zeroed out by a political collapse, and getting first-world interest rates, is an excellent thing for people in the third world to have access to, and can work wonders at pushing people up social classes without pushing people down social calsses.

避免你的钱因政治崩溃而被清零，并获得第一世界的利率，对于第三世界的人们来说是一件极好的事情，并且可以在不降低人们社会阶层的情况下创造奇迹。

Recently, someone asked me: why not say "good defi" instead of "low-risk defi"?

最近有人问我：为什么不说“好的defi”而说“低风险的defi”？

After all, not all high-risk defi is bad, and not all low-risk defi is good.

毕竟，并不是所有高风险的defi都是坏的，也不是所有低风险的defi都是好的。

My response was: if we focus on "good defi", then it's easy for anyone to make a galaxy-brain argument that any particular type of defi is "good".

我的回答是：如果我们专注于“好的 defi”，那么任何人都很容易做出银河大脑的论点，认为任何特定类型的 defi 都是“好的”。

But if you say "low-risk defi", that's a categorization that has teeth - it's actually hard to make a galaxy brain argument that a type of activity that is clearly regularly causing people to go bankrupt in a day is "low-risk".

但如果你说“低风险 defi”，那就是一个有牙齿的分类——实际上很难用银河大脑来论证，一种明显经常导致人们在一天内破产的活动是“低风险”的。

I certainly do not oppose high-risk defi existing - after all, I am a fan of prediction markets.

我当然不反对高风险的defi存在——毕竟我是预测市场的粉丝。

But it's a healthier ecosystem when low-risk defi is the mainstay, and high-risk defi is the side dish - something fun or experimental, and not meant for people to put half of their life savings into.

但当低风险 defi 成为支柱，高风险 defi 成为配菜时，这是一个更健康的生态系统 - 一些有趣或实验性的东西，而不是让人们投入一半的毕生积蓄。

Final question: is the idea that prediction markets are "not just gambling", because they benefit society by improving access to accurate information , itself just a galaxy-brained retroactive rationalization?

最后一个问题：预测市场“不仅仅是赌博”，因为它们通过改善准确信息的获取而造福社会，这种想法本身是否只是一种银河大脑的追溯合理化？

Some people certainly think so:

肯定有人这么认为：

I will offer my defense against this charge.

我将对这一指控进行辩护。

The way that you can tell that this is not retroactive rationalization is there is a thirty-year-old intellectual tradition of appreciating prediction markets and trying to bring them into existence, which long predated any possibility of making a serious profit off of them (either by creating such projects or by participating in them).

你可以看出这不是追溯性合理化，因为存在着三十年的知识传统，即欣赏预测市场并试图使它们存在，而这种传统早在从预测市场中赚取巨额利润的任何可能性之前（无论是通过创建此类项目还是通过参与它们）。

This kind of pre-existing intellectual tradition is not something that exists for memecoins, or even more borderline cases like personal tokens.

这种预先存在的知识传统对于模因币来说并不存在，甚至在个人代币等更边缘的情况下也不存在。

But, once again, prediction markets are not low-risk defi, and so they are a side dish, not something for you to put half your net worth into.

但是，再一次强调，预测市场并不是低风险的去中心化金融，因此它们只是配菜，不适合你投入一半净资产。

In the AI-related corners of the effective altruist community, there are many powerful people who, if you go up to them and ask them, will explicitly tell you that their strategy is to accumulate as much power as possible.

在有效的利他主义社区中与人工智能相关的角落里，有很多有权势的人，如果你去找他们询问他们，他们会明确告诉你，他们的策略是积累尽可能多的权力。

Their goal is to be well-positioned so that, when some kind of "pivotal moment" comes, they can come out with guns blazing and lots of resources under their command and "do the right thing".

他们的目标是占据有利位置，以便在某种“关键时刻”到来时，能够带着枪声和大量资源挺身而出，“做正确的事”。

Power maximization is the ultimate galaxy brain tactic.

力量最大化是银河大脑的终极策略。

" Give me power so I can do X" is as close as it gets to an argument that is equally convincing no matter what the X .

“给我力量，这样我就能做 X”最接近于一个无论 X 是什么都同样令人信服的论点。

All the way up until the critical moment (which, in AI eschatology, is the moment right before we either get utopia or all die and turn into paperclips), the actions that you would take to maximize power for altruistic reasons, and the actions that you would take to maximize power because you're a greedy egomaniac, are exactly the same.

一直到关键时刻（在人工智能末世论中，这是我们要么获得乌托邦，要么全部死亡并变成回形针之前的那一刻），出于利他原因而最大化权力所采取的行动，以及因为你是一个贪婪的自大狂而为了最大化权力而采取的行动，是完全相同的。

Hence, anyone trying to do the latter can, at zero cost, just tell you that they are trying to do the former and convince you that they are a good person.

因此，任何试图做后者的人都可以以零成本告诉你他们正在尝试做前者，并让你相信他们是一个好人。

From the outside view, this kind of argument is clearly crazy: everyone thinks they're more ethical than everyone else, and so it's easy to see how even though each person thinks their power maximization is net-good, actually it's really not.

从局外人看来，这种争论显然是疯狂的：每个人都认为自己比其他人更有道德，因此很容易看出，尽管每个人都认为自己的权力最大化是净利，但实际上并非如此。

But from the inside, if you look at the world, and you see the hate on social media, the political corruption, the invasions, the other AI companies behaving unscrupulously, the idea that you personally are the good guy and you should just ignore the corrupt outside world and go solve things yourself certainly feels compelling.

但从内部来看，如果你观察这个世界，你会看到社交媒体上的仇恨、政治腐败、入侵、其他人工智能公司不择手段的行为，你个人是好人，你应该忽略腐败的外部世界，自己去解决问题，这种想法肯定让人感到很有吸引力。

And this is exactly why it's healthy to take an outside view.

这正是为什么采取外部观点是健康的。

Alternatively, you can take a different and more humble inside view.

或者，你可以采取不同的、更谦逊的内部观点。

Here's a fun argument from the effective altruism forums :

这是来自有效利他主义论坛的一个有趣的论点：

Arguably the largest advantage of investing is that it can exponentially grow financial resources, which can be used for good at a later point.

可以说，投资的最大优势是它可以呈指数级增长财务资源，并可以在以后用于良好的用途。

The S&P 500 has had an inflation-adjusted annualized return of ~7% since its inception in 1926

自 1926 年成立以来，标准普尔 500 指数经通胀调整后的年化回报率约为 7%

The risk of value drift is even harder to estimate, but an important factor.

价值漂移的风险更难以估计，但却是一个重要因素。

For instance, these three sources ( 1 , 2 , 3 ) collectively suggest a yearly value drift rate of ~10% for individuals within the effective altruism community.

例如，这三个来源（1、2、3）共同表明，对于有效利他主义社区内的个人来说，每年的价值漂移率约为 10%。

That is, while it's true that each year your wealth grows by 7%, it's also empirically true that if you believe in a cause today, you're likely to believe in it about 10% less tomorrow.

也就是说，虽然你的财富确实每年增长 7%，但从经验来看，如果你今天相信某个事业，明天你对它的信心可能会减少 10% 左右。

This matches up with an observation by Tanner Greer that public intellectuals tend to have a "shelf life" of about 10-15 years , after which their ideas stop being better than the surrounding background noise (I will let the reader decide the significance of the fact that I started publicly writing in 2011).

这与坦纳·格里尔（Tanner Greer）的观察相吻合，即公共知识分子往往有大约 10-15 年的“保质期”，之后他们的想法就不再比周围的背景噪音更好（我将让读者决定我在 2011 年开始公开写作这一事实的意义）。

Hence, if you grow your wealth to act later, your future self may well do something with that extra wealth that your present self does not even support.

因此，如果你积累财富以供以后采取行动，未来的你很可能会用这些额外的财富来做一些你现在甚至不支持的事情。

One problem that repeatedly happens in AI safety is a sort of hybrid between power maximization and inevitabilism: people deciding that the best way to advance the cause of AI safety is to join companies making superintelligent AI happen even faster, and try to improve them from within.

人工智能安全中反复出现的一个问题是权力最大化和必然性之间的一种混合体：人们认为推进人工智能安全事业的最佳方式是加入让超级智能人工智能更快发生的公司，并尝试从内部改进它们。

Here, you often get rationalizations like, say, this:

在这里，你经常会得到这样的合理化解释：

From the inside view, this seems reasonable.

从内部来看，这似乎是合理的。

From the outside view, however, you basically end up with this:

然而，从外部来看，你基本上会得到这样的结果：

Another good example of this school of thought is the modern Russian political establishment.

这种思想流派的另一个很好的例子是现代俄罗斯的政治体制。

Here, I'll just quote this Financial Times article :

在这里，我直接引用《金融时报》的这篇文章：

The full-scale assault on Ukraine on February 24, three days after Putin recognised the Donbas separatists, exceeded their worst fears.

2 月 24 日，即普京承认顿巴斯分裂分子三天后，对乌克兰的全面袭击超出了他们最担心的范围。

They discovered Putin's true intentions along with the rest of the world: on television.

他们和世界其他地方一样发现了普京的真实意图：在电视上。

Putin's failure to heed the technocrats' warnings devastated them.

普京没有听从技术官僚的警告，这让他们深受打击。

"I'd never seen [Gref] like that.

“我从来没有见过这样的[格列夫]。

He was completely bereft, in a state of total shock," says a former executive who saw Gref in the war's early days.

他完全失去了亲人，处于完全震惊的状态，”一位在战争初期见过格列夫的前高管说道。

"Everyone thinks this is a catastrophe, him more than anyone else."

“每个人都认为这是一场灾难，他比其他任何人都更是如此。”

Within the narrow confines of the Russian political elite, technocrats such as Gref and Nabiullina were once thought of as modernisers, a reformist counterbalance to the siloviki, the hardline security services veterans at Putin's other shoulder.

在俄罗斯政治精英的狭小范围内，格列夫和纳比乌林娜等技术官僚一度被认为是现代化主义者，是与西洛维基（普京另一边的强硬安全部门退伍军人）抗衡的改革派。

However, when faced with a historic chance to defend their belief in open markets and speak out against the war, they demurred.

然而，当面临捍卫开放市场信念并公开反对战争的历史性机会时，他们提出了异议。

Instead of breaking with Putin, the technocrats have cemented their role as his enablers, using their expertise and tools to soften the blow of western sanctions and hold Russia's wartime economy together, according to former officials.

据前官员称，技术官僚没有与普京决裂，而是巩固了自己作为普京推动者的角色，利用他们的专业知识和工具来减轻西方制裁的打击，并保持俄罗斯战时经济的团结。

Again, the problem is that "I'm doing more from within" has very low galaxy brain resistance.

同样，问题在于“我从内部做更多事情”的银河脑阻力非常低。

It's easy to say "I'm doing more from within" regardless of what is the actual specific thing that you're doing from within.

很容易说“我正在从内部做更多事情”，无论您从内部正在做的实际具体事情是什么。

And so you end up just being a cog in the machine, with the same effect as the other cogs who are there to help their family live in a beautiful mansion in a premium neighborhood and eat expensive dinners every day feed their family, but with a slightly better justification.

所以你最终只是成为机器上的一个齿轮，与其他齿轮一样，帮助他们的家人住在高级社区的漂亮豪宅里，每天吃昂贵的晚餐养活他们的家人，但有一个稍微更好的理由。

There are lots of different things you can do, but I will focus on two:

您可以做很多不同的事情，但我将重点关注两件事：

Have hard rules of what you're not willing to do - don't kill innocent people, don't steal, don't defraud, respect people's personal freedom - and have a very high bar for considering any exceptions.

对你不愿意做的事情制定严格的规则 - 不杀害无辜的人，不偷窃，不诈骗，尊重人们的个人自由 - 并且对考虑任何例外情况有很高的标准。

Philosophers generally call this deontological ethics .

哲学家一般称其为义务论伦理学。

Deontological ethics confuses many people - surely, if your rules have some underlying reason behind them, you should just go straight to pursuing that underlying reason.

义务论伦理让很多人感到困惑——当然，如果你的规则背后有一些潜在的原因，你应该直接去追求那个潜在的原因。

If "don't steal" is a rule because stealing usually hurts the victim more than it benefits you, then you should just follow the rule of not doing things that hurt the victim more than they benefit you.

如果“不偷窃”是一条规则，因为偷窃通常对受害者的伤害大于对你的好处，那么你应该遵循不做对受害者的伤害大于对你的好处的事情的规则。

If sometimes stealing benefits you more than it hurts the victim - then steal!

如果有时偷窃对你的好处多于对受害者的伤害——那就偷吧！

"The victims are faceless corporations with billionaire shareholders, therefore my shoplifting crusade is righteous"

“受害者是拥有亿万富翁股东的不知名公司，因此我的入店行窃运动是正义的”

The problem with this kind of consequentialist approach is that it has no galaxy brain resistance.

这种结果主义方法的问题在于它没有星系大脑的抵抗力。

Our brains are really good at coming up with arguments why, in this particular case, the thing that you already want for other reasons happens to also be great for humanity.

我们的大脑非常擅长提出论点，为什么在这种特殊情况下，你出于其他原因想要的东西恰好也对人类有好处。

Deontological ethics says: no, you can't do that.

义务论伦理学说：不，你不能那样做。

One form of deontology that many people follow is rule utilitarianism : choose rules based on what leads to the greatest good, but when it comes time to choose individual actions , just follow the rules you've already chosen .

许多人遵循的义务论的一种形式是规则功利主义：根据导致最大利益的因素来选择规则，但是当需要选择个人行为时，只需遵循您已经选择的规则即可。

One other common theme above is that your actions are often set by your incentives - in crypto lingo, what bags you hold.

上面的另一个常见主题是，你的行为通常是由你的动机决定的——用加密术语来说，就是你拿着什么包。

This pressure is very difficult to resist.

这种压力是很难抗拒的。

The easiest way to avoid this is to not give yourself bad incentives.

避免这种情况的最简单方法就是不要给自己不好的激励。

Another corollary is to avoid holding the wrong social bags: what friend cluster you're closely attached to.

另一个推论是避免持有错误的社交包：你与哪个朋友群关系密切。

You should not try to avoid having social bags - doing so is counter to our most basic human instincts.

你不应该试图避免携带社交包——这样做违背了我们最基本的人类本能。

But it is possible to at least diversify them.

但至少可以使它们多样化。

The easiest one-step action you can take to make a big difference here is to choose your physical location well.

您可以采取的最简单的一步操作就是选择好您的物理位置，从而产生巨大的影响。

This brings me to my own contribution to the already-full genre of recommendations for people who want to contribute to AI safety:

这让我对那些想要为人工智能安全做出贡献的人们提出了自己的贡献：