Normal Human Heroes

This post refers to concepts from the LessWrong posts Something To Protect, and The “Intuitions” Behind “Utilitarianism”. If you haven’t read them, I suggest it (and in that order); they’re very good.

There’s more than one reason to work to reduce extinction risk, but probably one of the most powerful is having something to protect. It seems to be a fact of human psychology that we’re willing to work harder and sacrifice more to protect something external to ourselves, such as loved ones, a “great noble truth”, or a nation/ethnic group/religious group, etc. Not only does working for something-we-want-to-protect bring us to do more, but it seems to also make us more satisfied while we do it.

6 billion people is a lot of people, but few if any of us feel an intuitive emotional kick about 6 billion people. It’s doesn’t mean we’re villains, our brains just aren’t built to multiply like that. Back in the EEA, we had no use for getting very emotional about people we didn’t know, because we knew everyone in our group.

One kind of work-around to this gap in our mental hardware is to take your concern for those close to you and multiply. Chances are that most people are cared for just as much as you care for your loved ones, and care for others in turn. Even if you think that only 1 in 4, or 1 in 100, is worth feeling that much for, that’s still 60,000,000 people. And 60,000,000 multiplied by however much you care for those close to you, is a fucking huge amount. Not that we’re capable of honestly multiplying like that, or physically capable of feeling that much concern if we could do the multiplication, but it can still bring you to feel massive amounts, and lead you to put a more coherent weight on certain outcomes when making conscious decisions.

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I actually wrote this post before the one on positive motivation, but I definitely didn’t want this to be taken the wrong way. I am NOT saying that we have a fantastically huge obligation, a duty to save all human lives. I am NOT saying we’ll be bad people if we don’t do all we can to protect the ones we care about. Personally I’m not really concerned about whether or not I’m a “bad person”, and I’m starting to think this is helpful. The fact of the matter is that I just really want my loved ones to survive, I want to save and help as many as I can. That’s not all I want, I have some technically selfish goals as well, and I endorse them. But I also have a very strong desire to preserve human lives and human value in the universe. And if you’re concerned about existential risk, I’m guessing you do as well.

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There’s a danger with this kind of multiplication, one that I didn’t see coming. With that much concern, a person can really get overzealous in protecting the things they care about. A little over a year ago, I explicitly decided to stop hanging out with my friends, unless I ran into them by chance. I did this in order to get more work done. I knew that I would mind that and so would they, but I’d rather them be unhappy for now and alive later. I’m recovering from the pit I fell into, so I’m starting to be able to emotionally understand why I did that, but for a while that level of concern was practically unimaginable. Anyway, I rapidly found that I couldn’t keep working without recreational social contact, but that didn’t completely end the problem.

I now took time for fun social gatherings, but I grew distant from people. I saw my friends now and then, but I was still on the other side of a divide. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, trying to figure out how to describe it. So far my best description was that they weren’t in my group anymore; I was in a group of me. I still cared about them, but I had a job to do. I didn’t want them to rely on me and me not to be there, if they made plans with me in them. I could get by with less hanging out than they’d want if I were close to them. Also, and this might be the larger part, I no longer took the time for many things I used to do, and enjoyed doing with them. I used to play video games, playing and discussing them with my friends. I used to put together role-playing campaigns with them in it. I used to be much more content to just lay around cuddling with my girlfriend. I used to spend several hours watching shows or movies with others.

I got along on my own, with occasional socializing. I still cared about my friends, but that care slowly became more and more abstract. They weren’t close to me anymore, nobody was. I wasn’t actually lonely or sad, but I was fairly alone. I can’t help but recall some lines from a favorite game:

“… I wish someone could have been there for you.”
“I’m used to being on my own.”
“One can be TOO self-sufficient, I’m coming to believe.”

And that’s how it came to be that I couldn’t even imagine or remember the type of dedication that lead me to separate myself in the first place. That’s how it came to be that I didn’t have much to multiply anymore. Y = 6,400,000,000 * X, and Y was so large that in my zeal I cut down X, and Y sunk with it.

I’m recovering from my mistake now, and I don’t know if anyone is even in danger of trying what I tried, but take my advice: keep close the ones you care about. Don’t put that aside. We’re social creatures, and we draw so much of our power from each other. Your friendships are important: for your happiness, for their happiness, and for all the good things your accomplishments will bring.

Beautiful song, from the main menu of the game Civilization IV. (No real relation to the gameplay.)

April 6th, 2010
There are currently about 6,800,000,000 people in the world. There were up to 1,800,000 people at Barack Obama’s inauguration. That’s a pretty big number. The picture below probably contains over half of them.
Take a look. (You can click on the picture for a larger version.) Assuming it contained everyone who attended the event, and assuming population growth utterly and suddenly halted, you’d be looking at about 0.026% of the people who would be affected by an existential disaster.

March 5th, 2010
This is pretty cool, you can find out more at Matt’s website.

For those who don’t follow LessWrong: the human mind suffers terribly from scope insensitivity. I.e. experiments in which people pay much more to save one child, than they do to save 8. The brain just doesn’t multiply well, and the world is a huge place.

February 11th, 2010
When I first conceived of this blog I thought of having recurrent post themes, one of them being “things I want to protect”. Not sure if that will materialize, but this is one of the posts that I imagined in that vein.
When I was a wee lad, I was crazy about a girl for years. Smart, beautiful, baggy clothes and always reading. That didn’t go anywhere, and in time I grew interested in other girls, though not as much. Those didn’t go anywhere either, and I decided to hold off on getting attached until something worked out. Being way too shy and nervous around girls back then, nothing worked out for a long time, and I got a little bitter. Eventually I did find my peace, realizing that I truly didn’t need romantic success – in general or with anyone in particular – to be happy and enjoy my life. Shortly thereafter I found myself in a relationship, which isn’t very surprising.
But I’d been going the hard-hearted route for a long time, and now that I had something good, it was hard to feel like I used to. The girl I was crazy about back in middle school was still a great person by my current standards, and while I didn’t feel that way anymore, I could remember what it was like. It was nice, just to have that feeling. I had this funny perception of my romantic self as some wrinkled old man. That can be taken several ways, so pick your favorite. Funny that at one point I actually had endeavored to lose the ability to feel like I used to; take this as a warning against rash (and sloppy) self-modification.
When I was studying abroad in Japan 2 years ago, I met a girl, another student from the US studying there. You know where it’s going so we’ll cut to the chase: with her it “clicked” again. Cute, funny, cheerful, awesome baggy style, and somehow when she smiled, she just shone. I wish I could better describe how cool she is, and the excitement I feel around her, but I’ll save my poetry for later and assume you know what I’m talking about, guy or girl, straight or gay. I asked her out, and though she declined it was still a great experience.  It really had sunk in deep that I could be very happy “being alone”, so I don’t suffer in situations of unrequited love. We continued to hang out and remain friends, and though I can and have cared about others, I still feel quite powerfully about her.
I’m not here to talk about how powerful love is, or say that love endures, or love makes the world go around, or love is the reason for living, or any of that silliness. But damnit it’s nice, and I care about protecting that in our future.