Viliam's Shortform

Viliam

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I propose a term "Pascal's abuser" (analogical to Pascal's mugger) to describe something that seems to happen repeatedly in the rationalist community, to make it easier to notice the same pattern in the future.

Pascal's abuser is a person or an organization who go like: "Yeah, what we are doing here hurts people, but it is okay because there is a tiny chance it might contribute to saving the world."

Examples: Black Lotus, Leverage Research... and maybe also MAPLE. But more importantly, other such people and organizations that I expect to appear in the rationality community in future, so I want us to recognize the pattern faster.

2Viliam1y

Startups typically don't exploit naive altruistic people. They pay their employees with money, or at least with a promise of money (i.e. shares). If they tried to recruit in the rationalist community, most people would know what to expect (expert for the part where the shares predictably turn out to be worthless because of some clever legal trick). FTX is the only potentially relevant example I know, and I think even they paid their employees nicely, i.e. the abuse was proportional to the salary.

Startups quite often pay less than the person might make working elsewhere and justify that with the promise of equity. The founder then tells the employees a story about the likely value of that oversells the chance that the equity is worth a lot.

2Viliam1y

Or what outsiders think when they look at the project and something feels fishy -- but then they decide to ignore that feeling because there is a tiny chance that...

Viliam's Shortform

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Viliam's Shortform

9