This morning I gave a colloquium to my Psychology Department here at University of New Mexico. Most of the 30+ audience members had never heard of EA, although a few had a vague idea about it.
I analyzed 10 cognitive and emotional barriers that people face in accepting EA approaches to moral activism, from confirmation bias and speciesism to scope-insensitivity and Theory of Mind failures in understanding likely AGI systems.
I also made a pitch for more psychology grad students and faculty to get involved in EA, to share our expertise on human nature, statistics, research design, public outreach, program evaluation, mental health welfare issues, etc.
The powerpoint is here if anyone's interested: https://geoffrey-miller-y5jr.squarespace.com/s/EA-talk-march09-public-shorter-tcdh.pptx
I've proposed to give a similar but shorter talk at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) conference this June in Amsterdam, which is the main evolutionary psychology research meeting -- so I'd appreciate any feedback on this version.
Do you offer any recommendations for communicating utilitarian ideas based on Everett's research or someone else's?
For example, in Everett's 2016 paper the following is said:
"When communicating that a consequentialist judgment was made with difficulty, negativity toward agents who made these judgments was reduced. And when a harmful action either did not blatantly violate implicit social contracts, or actually served to honor them, there was no preference for a deontologist over a consequentialist."
I imagine more or less anything which expresses conflictedness about taking the 'utilitarian' decision and/or expresses feeling the pull of the contrary deontological norm would fit the bill for what Everett is saying here. That said, I'm not convinced that Everett (2016) is really getting at reactions to "consequentialism" (see here ( 1 , 2 )
I think that this paper by Uhlmann et al, does show that people judge negatively those who take utilitarian decisions though, even when they judge that the utilitarian act was the right one to take. Expressi... (read more)