Safetyism and alignment problems

Every time I come back to Australia, I notice how damn safe everything is. As someone who has run quite a few events of an anarchic nature, in my time, I’m aware that this is because it’s too damn expensive to do risky things, if you want to pay the insurance premiums.

• Crashing Into Something or Someone, Perhaps Repeatedly and Only for Fun
• jwz: Today in SuperMax Clubbing
• Safetyism is the Water in Which We Swim - Freddie deBoer
• Beyond “Abolish The FDA” - by Scott Alexander

The Story of the COVID-19 Pandemic:

A common theme […] is a willingness to kill hundreds of thousands of people through inaction, before decisionmakers are willing to risk taking any unpopular action.

The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics points to one possible explanation, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that leaders are to a large extent giving the public what they want in all of this — it’s just that the public has pathologically low standards and a bizarre level of change aversion.

Specifically,

The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. In particular, if you interact with a problem and benefit from it, you are a complete monster.