This beautiful world should belong to everyone.

Everyone including the next generation, and the next.

Getting AGI right is the odds-on way to help everyone, particularly those who are disadvantaged now.

You can disagree with the logic, but only if you understand the logic.

The utilitarian concern for everyone strongly implies that we should worry about the future. If you believe that AGI presents even a 1% x-risk, of humanity's likely quadrillions of descendants not existing, or being born into an unbreakable dystopia, and that we're near a tipping point, then the cold hard logic says that's what we should all focus on. And most of us believe the risk is much higher than 1% - LWers might average around 50% chance we screw up AGI and all die.

Add to that the fact that the vast majority of humanity focuses much more on the problems you mention, and it makes more sense for those that see and believe in AGI as an immense force for good or bad to focus on making sure it's good.

The possible rewards of empowering every human beyond the privilege of kings, and allowing quadrillions of joyous humans to live far into the future, are as immense as the risk of us being snuffed out in the next few decades.

That's why we seem callous to the suffering of the underprivileged now. I don't think we are.

PS - Shame on whoever downvoted this question. Suppressing dissent instead of explaining your logic to newcomers is not a good look for any community, nor good epistemics. This is a reasonable question to ask, and LW is supposed to be about asking and answering reasonable questions.

Do you have a specific proposal how to address those things?

Meanwhile, https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/ https://www.givewell.org/ etc.

The problems of the present are as old as history, as are attempts to remedy them. Attempts at a comprehensive solution range from conservative attitudes according to which the best that humans can do, is beat down the perennial evils whenever they inevitably re-arise; to various utopianisms that want to establish that beautiful and fair world forever. 

Obviously Less Wrong has a particular focus on AI as something new and enormously consequential, with the potential to transform life itself, and what kind of knowledge and what kind of interventions are needed to get a good outcome. But there was at least one organization that drew upon the rationalist community and its sensibility and intellectual resources, in pursuit of utopian aims in the present. It was called Leverage Research, and from what people say, it didn't get very far before internal problems compelled it to greatly scale back its aims. And that is quite normal for utopian movements. Mostly they will remain small and irrelevant; occasionally they will become larger and corrupt; very rarely, they will bequeath to the world some new idea which has value, becomes general knowledge, and does some good. 

In years past, there were occasional surveys of Less Wrong, on topics that included political opinions. Two strains of thought that were represented, that come to mind, are progressivism and libertarianism. I mention these because these are ideologies which have adherents here, and which, in their different ways, have a kind of universal ideal by means of which they propose to solve problems in general. The progressive ideal is organized activism, the libertarian ideal is individual freedom. 

Effective altruism was mentioned in other comments, as a rationalist-adjacent community which is more focused on problems of the present. There, it's worth reflecting on the case of Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX. That was an audacious attempt to combine a particular moral ethos (effective altruism) with a particular political orientation (his family were influential Democrats) and a business plan worthy of the most ambitious tech tycoons (to move cryptocurrency out of its Wild West phase, and become one of a few regulator-approved crypto exchanges). But crypto turned out to be in a bubble, when it burst it removed the underpinnings of the whole FTX enterprise, and Bankman-Fried has gone from being celebrated as an EA philanthropist, to disowned as a crook who did immense reputational damage to the movement. 

Regularly people come along who, in one way or other, want to found a broader ethos and agenda on top of Less Wrong rationalism. Just this week, @zhukeepa has been arguing for common ground between rationalism and major religious traditions (incidentally, this is far from the first time that someone, inside rationalism or outside, proposed a secular interpretation of the ethical and prophetic elements of religion). But I think most people here, when seeking a better world in ways unrelated to AI, approach that via some philosophy distinct from LW rationalism, such as effective altruism, progressivism, or libertarianism. 

I'm not sure what work "to the best of personal ability" is doing here. If you execute to 95% of the best of personal ability, that seems to come to "no" in the chart and appears to count the same as doing nothing?

Or maybe does executing "to the best of personal ability" include considerations like "I don't want to do that particular good very strongly and have other considerations to address, and that's a fact about me that constrains my decisions, so anything I do about it at all is by definition to the best of my ability"?

The latter seems pretty weird, but it's the only way I can make sense of "na" in the row "had intention, didn't execute to the best of personal ability, did good".

Those are my words; I am the one accused of "low moral standards", for refusing to embrace goals set by the poster.

I was going to say something in defense of myself, but I actually have other, humbler but real responsibilities, and in a moment of distraction just now, I almost made a mistake that would have diabolical consequences for the people depending on me.

Life is hard, it can be the effort of a lifetime just to save one other person, and you shouldn't make such accusations so casually.

I honestly don't really get your point. It seems like the person who messaged you basically made the important point in the first sentence, and then the rest of this seems to be you doing a bunch of psychologizing.

I of course lack lots of context here, but I feel like you were trying to make a point that stands on its own. 

I don't really see anything wrong with the original DM. My guess is I agree with this DM and think we should be very hesitant to apply arbitrarily strong incentives to even quite bad things, since they might be correlated or a necessary form of collateral damage with things that are really important with human flourishing.

This of course doesn't imply that I (or the person who DMd you) "do not care about war, rape, nor murder", that seems like a crazy inference that's directly contradicted by the first sentence you quote.

Relatedly on my first reply to the person's DM:

On resource scarcity - I also find it difficult for humans to execute altruism without resources, and may be a privilege to even think about these (financially, educationally, health-wise, and information-wise. Would starting with something important but may or may not be the "most" important help? Sometimes I find the process of finding the "most" a bit less rational than people would expect/theorize. 

Bias and self-preservation by human nature, but need correction

To expand from there, that is one thing that I am worried about. Our views/beliefs are by nature limited by our experiences, and if humans do not recognize or acknowledge that self-preserving natures, we will be claiming altruism but not actually doing them. It will also prevent us from establishing a really good system that incentivize people to do so.

To give an example, there was a manifold question (https://manifold.markets/Bayesian/would-you-rather-manifold-chooses?r=enlj), asking if manifold wants to "Push someone in front of a trolley to save 5 others (NO) -OR- Be the person someone else pushes in front of the trolley to save 5 others (YES)". When I saw the stats before close, it was 92% (I chose YES, and lost, I would say my YES is with 85% confidence).  While we propose we value people's life equally, I see self-preservation persist. Then I see that could radiate to I prefer preservation of my family, friends, people you are more familiar with, etc. 

Simple majority vs minority situation

This is similar with majority voting. When the population has 80% of people A, and 20% of people B, assuming equal vote/power for everyone, when there are issues that is in conflict between A and B, especially some sort of historical oppression of A towards B, then B's concerns would rarely be addressed. (Hope humans nowadays are better than this, and more educated, but who knows).

Power

When power (social and economical) is added into the self-preservation, without a proper social contract, this will be even more messed-up. The decision maker of these problems will always the people with some sort of power. 

This is true in reality, where the people who get to choose/plan what is the most important in reality and our society, are either the powerful people, or the population outnumbering others. Worse if both. Therefore, we see less passionate caring on minority issues, on a platform like this practicing rationality.  With power, everything can go below it, including other people, policies, and law. 

How do we create a world with max. freedom to people, with constraint on people do not harm other people, regardless of they have power or not/regardless if they will get caught or not? What level of "constraint" are historically powerful groups willing to accept? I am not sure of right balance/what is most effective yet; I have seen cases where some men were reluctant to receive education materials on consent, claiming they know, but they don't. This is a very very small cost, but yet there are people who are not willing to even take that. This makes me frustrated.

Regardless, I do believe in the effectiveness of awareness, continuous education, law, and the need to foster a culture to cultivate humans that truly respect other lives.

Real life examples

I was not very aware of many related women's suffering issues, until recently, from the Korean pop star group 

to recent female doctor case (https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/08/26/g-s1-18366/rape-murder-doctor-india-sexual-violence-protests). I was believing in 2024, these are things humans should have been able to solve but not yet, but maybe I was in my own bubble. And organizationally, on the country level, I believe you would have seen many news on different wars now.

Thanks for sharing the two pages! Not sure if the above are clear or not, but I try to document all of my thoughts.