Galaxy brain resistance
12 days ago
- #ethics
- #critical-thinking
- #rationalization
- Galaxy brain resistance refers to the difficulty of abusing a style of thinking to justify any conclusion, similar to falsifiability in science.
- Common patterns of low galaxy brain resistance include inevitabilism, longtermism, bad excuses for banning things, apologia for bad finance, power maximization, and 'I'm-doing-more-from-within-ism'.
- Inevitabilism assumes inevitability and skips to advocating for hastening events, often serving as retroactive justification for self-interest.
- Longtermism emphasizes long-term stakes but can disconnect from reality, enabling arguments that sound correct without being verifiable.
- Bad excuses for banning things often mask personal aesthetic preferences as societal harms, leading to coercive impositions.
- Apologia for bad finance rationalizes high-risk investments as morally righteous, ignoring the zero-sum nature and potential harm.
- Power maximization justifies accumulating power for future altruistic actions, but the means are indistinguishable from self-serving motives.
- 'I'm-doing-more-from-within-ism' rationalizes working within harmful systems to change them, often resulting in complicity.
- To avoid galaxy braining, adopt deontological ethics (principles with high bars for exceptions) and hold the right incentives (avoid bad 'bags').
- Recommendations include not working for frontier AI companies accelerating autonomous capabilities and avoiding living in the San Francisco Bay Area for AI safety contributors.