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Our Big Oops - by Robin Hanson - Overcoming Bias

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Consider an analogy. Your ability to keep a car on a road while driving depends on key driving parameters staying within acceptable ranges. These parameters include your car speed, how curvy and bumpy is your road, and noise and delay levels in the key processes by which: (a) you look ahead to see the road, (b) you judge how much to move your steering wheel and accelerator controls, (c) you move your arms and legs to adjust those controls, (d) those controls couple to move your car wheels and engine, and (e) your engine-driven car wheels holds traction with the road. If these parameters get overall bad enough, you should expect your car to drift off the road and crash. Humanity’s superpower is just natural selection, applied to our unique abilities to reliably copy each other’s behaviors. For this cultural evolution process to keep humanity on its road of progress, we need its key driving parameters to similarly stay good enough. In this case, we need sufficient variety and selection p

Our Big Oops Robin Hanson Feb 22, 2025 111 85 7 Share Humanity has a huge problem, of which few are aware. Consider an analogy. Your ability to keep a car on a road while driving depends on key driving parameters staying within acceptable ranges. These parameters include your car speed, how curvy and bumpy is your road, and noise and delay levels in the key processes by which: (a) you look ahead to see the road, (b) you judge how much to move your steering wheel and accelerator controls, (c) you move your arms and legs to adjust those controls, (d) those controls couple to move your car wheels

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