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Aug 18, 2022Liked by Étienne Fortier-Dubois

I have personally been working through my own concerns with EA recently (particularly longtermism and its many repugnant conclusions). With that in mind, I'm intrigued by the idea of aesthetics as a source of epistemic humility, particularly in the cases of repugnant conclusions. The above article touches on this somewhat but I think that could almost be a separate aesthetics-related critique. So 1) EA should develop its own aesthetic/sense of beauty (main focus of the above article); 2) EA should incorporate aesthetic considerations as a guide to its core optimization calculus (almost like a tiebreaker in cases of uncertainty)

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Hmm yeah I tried to cover both of these aspects but it's true that I focused more on the first. I like the idea of aesthetics being something akin to a tiebreaker.

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