Writing EA-themed fiction that addresses X-risk topics.
https://archiveofourown.org/series/936480
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.05060v1.pdf
One natural decomposition of whether this grant is a good idea is to first ask whether writing fiction of this type is valuable, then whether Miranda is capable of actually creating that type of fiction, and last whether funding Miranda will make a significant difference in the amount/quality of her fiction.
I think that many people reading this will be surprised or confused about this grant. I feel fairly confident that grants of this type are well worth considering, and I am interested in funding more projects like this in the future, so I’ve tried my best to summarize my reasoning. I do think there are some good arguments for why we should be hesitant to do so (partly summarized by the section below that lists things that I think fiction doesn’t do as well as non-fiction), so while I think that grants like this are quite important, and have the potential to do a significant amount of good, I can imagine changing my mind about this in the future.
The track record of fiction
In a general sense, I think that fiction has a pretty strong track record of both being successful at conveying important ideas, and being a good attractor of talent and other resources. I also think that good fiction is often necessary to establish shared norms and shared language.
Here are some examples of communities and institutions that I think used fiction very centrally in their function. Note that after the first example, I am making no claim that the effect was good, I’m just establishing the magnitude of the potential effect size.
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (HPMOR) was instrumental in the growth and development of both the EA and Rationality communities. It is very likely the single most important recruitment mechanism for productive AI alignment researchers, and has also drawn many other people to work on the broader aims of the EA and Rationality communities.
- Fiction was a core part of the strategy of the neoliberal movement; fiction writers were among the groups referred to by Hayek as "secondhand dealers in ideas.” An example of someone whose fiction played both a large role in the rise of neoliberalism and in its eventual spread would be Ayn Rand.
- Almost every major religion, culture and nation-state is built on shared myths and stories, usually fictional (though the stories are often held to be true by the groups in question, making this data point a bit more confusing).
- Francis Bacon’s (unfinished) utopian novel “The New Atlantis” is often cited as the primary inspiration for the founding of the Royal Society, which may have been the single institution with the greatest influence on the progress of the scientific revolution.
On a more conceptual level, I think fiction tends to be particularly good at achieving the following aims (compared to non-fiction writing):
- Teaching low-level cognitive patterns by displaying characters that follow those patterns, allowing the reader to learn from very concrete examples set in a fictional world. (Compare Aesop’s Fables to some nonfiction book of moral precepts — it can be much easier to remember good habits when we attach them to characters.)
- Establishing norms, by having stories that display the consequences of not following certain norms, and the rewards of following them in the right way
- Establishing a common language, by not only explaining concepts, but also showing concepts as they are used, and how they are brought up in conversational context
- Establishing common goals, by creating concrete utopian visions of possible futures that motivate people to work towards them together
- Reaching a broader audience, since we naturally find stories more exciting than abstract descriptions of concepts
(I wrote in more detail about how this works for HPMOR in the last grant round.)
In contrast, here are some things that fiction is generally worse at (though a lot of these depend on context; since fiction often contains embedded non-fiction explanations, some of these can be overcome):
- Carefully evaluating ideas, in particular when evaluating them requires empirical data. There is a norm against showing graphs or tables in fiction books, making any explanation that rests on that kind of data difficult to access in fiction.
- Conveying precise technical definitions
- Engaging in dialogue with other writers and researchers
- Dealing with topics in which readers tend to come to better conclusions by mentally distancing themselves from the problem at hand, instead of engaging with concrete visceral examples (I think some ethical topics like the trolley problem qualify here, as well as problems that require mathematical concepts that don’t neatly correspond to easy real-world examples)
Overall, I think current writing about both existential risk, rationality, and effective altruism skews too much towards non-fiction, so I’m excited about experimenting with funding fiction writing.
Miranda’s writing
The second question is whether I trust Miranda to actually be able to write fiction that leverages these opportunities and provides value. This is why I think Miranda can do a good job:
- Her current fiction project is read by a few people whose taste I trust, and many of them describe having developed valuable skills or insights as a result (for example, better skills for crisis management, a better conception of moral philosophy, an improved moral compass, and some insights about decision theory)
- She wrote frequently on LessWrong and her blog for a few years, producing content of consistently high quality that, while not fictional, often displayed some of the same useful properties as fiction writing.
- I’ve seen her execute a large variety of difficult projects outside of her writing, which means I am a lot more optimistic about things like her ability to motivate herself on this project, and excelling in the non-writing aspects of the work (e.g. promoting her fiction to audiences beyond the EA and rationality communities)
- She worked in operations at CEA and received strong reviews from her coworkers
- She helped CFAR run the operations for SPARC in two consecutive years and performed well as a logistics volunteer for 11 of their other workshops
- I’ve seen her organize various events and provide useful help with logistics and general problem-solving on a large number of occasions
My two biggest concerns are:
- Miranda losing motivation to work on this project, because writing fiction with a specific goal requires a significantly different motivation than doing it for personal enjoyment
- The fiction being well-written and engaging, but failing to actually help people better understand the important issues it tries to cover.
I like the fact that this grant is for an exploratory 3 months rather than a longer period of time; this allows Miranda to pivot if it doesn’t work out, rather than being tied to a project that isn’t going well.
The counterfactual value of funding
It would be reasonable to ask whether a grant is really necessary, given that Miranda has produced a huge amount of fiction in the last two years without receiving funding explicitly dedicated to that. I have two thoughts here:
- I generally think that we should avoid declining to pay people just because they’d be willing to do valuable work for free. It seems good to reward people for work even if this doesn’t make much of a difference in the quality/consistency of the work, because I expect this promise of reward to help people build long-term motivation and encourage exploration.
- To explain this a bit more, I think this grant will help other people build motivation towards pursuing similar projects in the future, by setting a precedent for potential funding in this space. For example, I think the possibility of funding (and recognition) was also a motivator for Miranda in starting to work on this project.
- I expect this grant to have a significant effect on Miranda’s productivity, because I think that there is often a qualitative difference between work someone produces in their spare time and work that someone can focus full-time on. In particular, I expect this grant to cause Miranda’s work to improve in the dimensions that she doesn’t naturally find very stimulating, which I expect will include editing, restructuring, and other forms of “polish”.