Understanding vs. impact: the paradox of how to spend my time
Not long ago William MacAskill, the founder of the Effective Altruist movement, visited Austin, where I got to talk with him in person for the first time. I was a fan of his book What We Owe the Future, and found him as thoughtful and eloquent face-to-face as I did on the page. Talking to Will inspired me to write the following short reflection on how I should spend my time, which I’m now sharing in case it’s of interest to anyone else.
By inclination and temperament, I simply seek the clearest possible understanding of reality. This has led me to spend time on (for example) the Busy Beaver function and the P versus NP problem and quantum computation and the foundations of quantum mechanics and the black hole information puzzle, and on explaining whatever I’ve understood to others. It’s why I became a professor.
But the understanding I’ve gained also tells me that I should try to do things that will have huge positive impact, in what looks like a pivotal and even terrifying time for civilization. It tells me that seeking understanding of the universe, like I’ve been doing, is probably nowhere close to optimizing any values that I could defend. It’s self-indulgent, a few steps above spending my life learning to solve Rubik’s Cube as quickly as possible, but only a few. Basically, it’s the most fun way I could make a good living and have a prestigious career, so it’s what I ended up doing. I should be skeptical that such a course would coincidentally also maximize the good I can do for humanity.
Instead I should plausibly be figuring out how to make billions of dollars, in cryptocurrency or startups or whatever, and then spending it in a way that saves human civilization, for example by making AGI go well. Or I should be convincing whatever billionaires I know to do the same. Or executing some other galaxy-brained plan. Even if I were purely selfish, as I hope I’m not, still there are things other than theoretical computer science research that would bring more hedonistic pleasure. I’ve basically just followed a path of least resistance.
On the other hand, I don’t know how to make billions of dollars. I don’t know how to make AGI go well. I don’t know how to influence Elon Musk or Sam Altman or Peter Thiel or Sergey Brin or Mark Zuckerberg or Marc Andreessen to do good things rather than bad things, even when I have gotten to talk to some of them. Past attempts in this direction by extremely smart and motivated people—for example, those of Eliezer Yudkowsky and Sam Bankman-Fried—have had, err, uneven results, to put it mildly. I don’t know why I would succeed where they failed.
Of course, if I had a better understanding of reality, I might know how better to achieve prosocial goals for humanity. Or I might learn why they were actually the wrong goals, and replace them with better goals. But then I’m back to the original goal of understanding reality as clearly as possible, with the corresponding danger that I spend my time learning to solve Rubik’s Cube faster.
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Comment #1 December 11th, 2025 at 12:37 pm
I have recently read an article (https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/on-john-woolman) on John Woolman, one of the world’s first abolitionists (starting in 1743). As it turns out, living in a world he deeply believed to be full of evil way over the scope of a single human didn’t do his mental stability much good:
> Sometimes he persuaded individual people to free their slaves, but successes were few and far between. Mostly, he gave speeches and wrote pamphlets as eloquently as he could, and then his audience went “huh, food for thought” and went home and beat the people they’d enslaved. Nothing he did had any discernible effect. Sometimes he grew frustrated and angry and lashed out at individual slaveowners; then he felt more guilt for neglecting Christian compassion and love for enemies.
> He continually struggled with the temptation to believe that he was personally responsible for the end of slavery, and that every moment that anyone spent enslaved was his fault.
Almost everybody else didn’t face the issue head-on and slowly adapted when circumstances forced their hand.
I’m not sure how to interpret that story, whether he is an example to be followed or a warning about being too hard on yourself for things that are not your fault. Perhaps this: he had conviction (of a religious type). I think that in the long run, if you aren’t Woolman by disposition, you cannot force yourself to become Woolman, because you would not handle the stress. But you can still be 50% Woolman (e.g., be one of the few people he managed to convince) while being 100% something else that nobody else could be (e.g., a Busy Beaver and quantum computing and free-will-from-boundary-conditions person). The world only needs one 100% Woolman and a couple hundred 50% Woolmans for a new thing to be born.
A lot of objectively good things in the history of science were done with no altruistic motive, just out of the personal interests of the discoverer. Here’s Albert Szent-Györgyi, who first synthesized vitamin C, on its meaning for curing scurvy:
> One day a nice young American-born Hungarian, J. Swirbely, came to Szeged to work with me. When I asked him what he knew he said he could find out whether a substance contained Vitamin C. I still had a gram or so of my hexuronic acid. I gave it to him to test for vitaminic activity. I told him that I expected he would find it identical with Vitamin C. I always had a strong hunch that this was so but never had tested it. I was not acquainted with animal tests in this field and the whole problem was, for me too glamourous, and vitamins were, to my mind, theoretically uninteresting. “Vitamin” means that one has to eat it. What one has to eat is the first concern of the chef, not the scientist.
— Lost in the Twentieth Century (https://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/lost.pdf)
Comment #2 December 11th, 2025 at 12:45 pm
“clearest possible understanding of reality”
I’m sure reality is “clear” so understanding it better may require more fuzziness than you hope.
Comment #3 December 11th, 2025 at 12:55 pm
“Think Big” is a thing I heard a lot growing up. I had ambition, I tried to push forward.
Contrariwise, “Small is Beautiful” is also a thing I heard growing up. I don’t back away from trying to make the world better, but I think it’s much harder than I thought it would be when I was young. We can make the world better by what we do every day. By how we talk to people, by how we drive on the highway.
Often we see the “Think Big” types doing not so great things in the everyday world. Their giant, ambitious goals – which might or might not be laudable – justify cutting in line, being short-tempered with the cashier, or not-saying anything when you’ve been undercharged.
I’ve even done that. I have steered away from that path though, because Big Things turn out to be hard, and there is far more happenstance in the way someone does a Big Thing than we might first realize.
Just keep in mind: Small is Beautiful. Maybe Busy Beaver will never be valuable. But then maybe one of the students you’ve supported will develop their skills, earn an income, and create something that truly is valuable.
People working on number theory mostly thought that what they were doing had little “real world” value. But it led us to digital cryptography, which is very, very valuable – even in spite of the polluting effect of cryptocurrencies.
When we are prodigies especially – and you are more of one that I was – we can think that we were supposed to do something big, splashy and world-changing. And if we didn’t, we can feel guilty. A failure.
I am trying to walk away from that. I hope you can too.
Comment #4 December 11th, 2025 at 1:24 pm
I had similar thoughts about five years ago, that almost all our research is pointless as AGI is around the corner that can anyhow solve everything much better soon. I still vividly recall my wife laughing at me for the whole thing… I think that this moment is for me a bit like when as a kid I realized that one day I will die. And then you just carry on with your life.
Comment #5 December 11th, 2025 at 1:38 pm
These EA arguments taken to their logical conclusion, like most things, lead to ridiculous results. Why am I eating lunch if someone is starving in Africa? I should send them my chicken nuggets until we’re both at caloric equilibrium.
In the real world, things tend to work out pretty darn well if each of us locally optimize our neighborhood set. I need to eat, and make sure my kids are fed, and help my literal neighbors. If we all do that, we will have sufficient resources to share with the person in Africa (until we elect a government that doesn’t want to share).
I’ll go with the writer of Ecclesiastes: what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.
Comment #6 December 11th, 2025 at 1:50 pm
I love the word “should.” It is such a perspicacious marker for flaws in the logic. If “should” worked, it would have already. And there would be no need for “should.”
Our world is dominated by a vast superintelligence: human culture. We each have our own minuscule part. Arbeit und Liebe. Work and love. Wisdom is choosing the place where only you can make your contribution. Being an effective scholar and loving husband/father is a high calling.
Comment #7 December 11th, 2025 at 2:35 pm
Something like “I simply seek the clearest possible understanding of reality”, is what I also have told myself as the basic principle behind why I do what I do. But as AI gets better at understanding reality, this gets demoted to something more like a sport than a deep timeless guiding principle. It is probably naive to expect something like the latter to even exist. If you understand what I mean, I’d be curious to hear your take on it.
Comment #8 December 11th, 2025 at 3:09 pm
Well, I know it is going to sound irrelevant, but I would say that you should hit the gym. When you start squatting a weight that scares you, when you run a 100 miler race without any sleep, when you go for that 1 mile PR; you experience something you can never experience from a math/science/physics textbook(hell as an undergrad that’s the best thing I got for an academic example). I was a pretty insecure, mentally weak guy. And I had also chosen the path of least resistance until I had an accident that got me bedridden for 3.5 months, and realized that I would regret not training when I could. From there on I started choosing the path of the most resistance. I started running and lifting, and I just didn’t give a duck when I felt like stopping. When you are suffering and you wanna stop but you don’t, you reach a point where only thing you experience is peace and silence in your brain. And that feeling is something you need to experience before you reach to that next level of understanding of reality.
In my honest opinion no matter how objective we might think we are, we are still human beings, and most of us don’t know how to deal with our emotions/insecurities, and unless you start looking deeper inside, you will never realize where and when you are being irrational. (Don’t get me wrong though I am not advocating any spiritual shit. I am an agnostic atheist and don’t believe in a soul, I am just saying we aint machines) For me kindling to my journey was David Goggins, and then I was able to look deeper with a psychiatrist on YouTube called Dr. K. It can be something different for you, I bet you are a lot more sophisticated than my young adult ass. So you could in fact have already reached or can reach a lot of the conclusions I came to. (Though your comment about Sam Bankman-Fried made me question how much you know about the guy)
Also about Elon Musk and others, you know you could be the smartest person alive but you still couldn’t convince some mentally ill person that they are wrong. So don’t get too upset about it.
I hope you consider training at the end, though beware that most personal trainers are scammers. Anyone who doesn’t start with basic strength&conditioning will just rob you of your money. Anyway I hope you find your answers man, but for the final time please consider gradually getting into lifting and running.
I never wrote before to appreciate your blogs so: Was a pleasure to read some of your blog posts as I was surfing across the internet. You certainly helped me gain some insights.
Comment #9 December 11th, 2025 at 4:38 pm
There may be two different ways to spend one’s life well:
– dedicate it to advancing the whole body of scientific knowledge of humanity, and when you’ll die you’ll feel like you’ve moved the ball forward and pass it to the next generation, by planting the flag a little bit further.
The particulars of the underlying physics don’t matter all that much, the assumption is that finding more accurate conceptual models of the world is always possible and always a good thing. Is it though?
– dedicate it to understanding how one’s mind works, which could seem too self-centered because it’s all subjective and it would be lost upon death, but the human condition is a constant, and no amount of technological advancement change it in the end (e.g. we and everyone we love die in the end) and it’s a cycle that resets with each human life, but the hope is to make the people around us happier, by radiating our wisdom, and leave the world a tiny bit better than we found it.
– and of course a mix of the two in various proportions.
But we each only think, say, and do the only things that are compatible with what the rest of the universe is also doing, so let’s not worry to much about it, haha.
Comment #10 December 11th, 2025 at 6:15 pm
I am surprised you were impressed by Will’s book. From what I understand, he is multiplying tiny probabilities by huge utilities of unknown sign, unless cherry-picked. Something Eliezer explicitly cautioned against. Wonder what I missed.
Comment #11 December 11th, 2025 at 6:45 pm
Shmi #10: Did you read the book? I wouldn’t say he’s doing that. His utilitarian impulses are (appropriately) tempered by plenty of common sense and ordinary decency.
Comment #12 December 11th, 2025 at 7:16 pm
Those fundamental questions are actually very relevant to the nature of superintelligence and its human precursor. It’s just that so are some other topics that seem more complicated, like values and cognitive architecture. Maybe you touch on those via the ethical dimension of politics and the epistemological dimension of science. So purely as an intellectual I think you have a lot to contribute. Figuring out how to make billions of dollars or persuade billionaires may reasonably be left to people who specialized in finance or politics.
Comment #13 December 12th, 2025 at 4:32 am
Hi Scott,
What are the ten biggest problems in the world, in your view, that you wish you could help solve if you had the time or energy?
Best,
Julian
Comment #14 December 12th, 2025 at 7:01 am
Consider taking Candide at least as seriously as EA.
Comment #15 December 12th, 2025 at 7:48 am
Scott ,
Here is a simple suggestion. Find why Deep Learning works so well at scale , or make substantial progress in that direction, and you would probably achieve both understanding and impact goals at once! You stand at a pivotal moment in humanity’s future, and have pretty good capabilities and chance at this
Comment #16 December 12th, 2025 at 9:39 am
Hi Scott,
Relax.
You’re a many-worlder!
In addition to the impact you’re having in this world, you’re also having all other “possible impacts.”
And you don’t have free will … since simultaneously taking all possible actions rules out just choosing one action.
Existential angst is a local illusion in MWI.
Cheers!
Comment #17 December 12th, 2025 at 9:43 am
Do you think it is reasonable to demand more of yourself than of other people?
My sense from what you’ve written is that many of the people you most admire are doing pure math, computation theory, theoretical physics, or other forms of understanding. Do you think that they are all working on Rubik’s cube? Do you think that their lives would have been better spent or that the world would be a better place, if they had all tried to make billions of dollars that they could then give to worthwhile charities? Do you think that your admiration is misplaced, that these people are actually contemptible, and that your whole admiration should be given to Bill Gates etc.?
Comment #18 December 12th, 2025 at 9:45 am
I accepted a long time past that I had intrinsic interest in the laws of the universe but little interest in the laws of man including accounting, finance, marketing, the law, etc. I even verified this with a night program MBA. The laws of the universe are harmonious with my mental nature but the laws of man often seem ad hoc and arbitrary. I bear no ill will for those who do find interest in man’s laws but accept just not for me.
I try to leave things better than I found them and help those deserving of help in everyday life. I admit to being conflicted about what global actions should be taken in the present to result in the best possible outcome for future humankind. It often seems to me that humans are able to out-procreate favorable living conditions and that in fact, regardless of previous falsified predictions, we do have finite resources that can be exhausted senselessly to support more procreation. Those resources in large measure, it seems to me, would be better used in the interests of future humankind to provide more understanding of natural laws at the earliest possible time.
One concept in man’s laws is Net Present Value that is used to estimate future benefits that accrue from a decision in the present. If you respond only to present needs with little regard for the future then it consigns the future to some sub optimal course.
I haven’t read the book that Dr Aaronson cites but believe the work he is doing now provides more potential benefit for future humankind then say providing $100M of long term ineffective insecticide treated nets to those in areas with endemic malaria. The nets would satisfy some need for immediacy but not lift the prospects for future humankind.
Comment #19 December 12th, 2025 at 2:12 pm
Ernie Davis #17: That’s an extremely interesting intuition pump. Yes, of course, I do admire for example Terry Tao, Sasha Razborov, the late Steven Weinberg, and even popular writers like Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker in a way that I don’t admire some random hedge fund guy who donates $200M to saving kids from malaria (Bill Gates is a special case who brings many other considerations into play, both positive and negative).
On the other hand:
(1) My feelings of admiration could themselves be interrogated! Maybe I should admire the altruistic hedge fund guy, as indeed I do—just in a different and seemingly incommensurable way from how I admire the great scientists and thinkers.
(2) Alas, if I think too much about Terry Tao, my thoughts are just as likely to go the opposite way: “man, if only I could contribute at that level, I’d clearly be justified to continue spending my life on curiosity-driven research! Since I can’t, though, why haven’t I figured out how to make billions of dollars and then spend them to save the world? It must be because I’m too presumptuous or selfish!” 🙂
Comment #20 December 12th, 2025 at 2:22 pm
There is a lot of hubris in assuming you or anyone else knows the best path forward for humanity. And there is immense value in everyone independently pursuing diverse curiosities. I would not stress out over the possibility of being hindsight-sub-optimal. You’re going to be more productive working on problems you’re naturally drawn to anyways.
If you’re interested, there is an excellent short (141 pages) book called “Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned”, written by a pair of computer scientists, exploring this line of thinking and making the case for worrying less about objectives.
Comment #21 December 12th, 2025 at 3:11 pm
I think it the paradox boils down to the fact that humans aren’t reflectively consistent, which manifests as our finite will-power.
For example, Peter Singer is one of the great utilitarian philosophers. He donates 10% of his income to effective alturism. He obviously takes EA seriously to donate that much, but even he admits that he theoretically *should* donate more than that. 10% is, from a theoretical standpoint, just an arbitrary cutoff.
So if even Peter Singer can’t be reflectively consistent, who can!
It is amazing and somewhat scary to think about what humans could achieve if we *did* have the ability to rewrite our cognition anytime we thought we should.
Comment #22 December 13th, 2025 at 7:07 am
‘Another aspect of this problem which goes beyond the limits of the scientific community as a whole is the fact that these high flights of human thought take place at the expense of the population as a whole which is dispossessed of all knowledge. In the sense that in the dominant ideology of our society the only true knowledge is scientific knowledge, which is the prerogative of a few million people on the planet, perhaps one person in a thousand. All the others are supposed to “not know” and in fact when you talk to them they have the impression that they “don’t know”. Those who do know are the ones up there in the high sciences: the mathematicians, the scientists, the very knowledgeable and so on.’
— Alexander Grothendieck
https://github.com/Lapin0t/grothendieck-cern
Profound thoughts sometimes arise when highly intelligent, highly productive people take a moment for self reflection.
Nice post.
Comment #23 December 13th, 2025 at 7:47 am
Avid Reader #20
There are futures for humanity that I would prefer to others but yes “best” path forward implies some absolute standard. My point is that actions taken in the present contribute to future outcomes and continually focusing on short term solutions to ongoing problems allows the future to unfold as it will. The entire advantage of human intelligence is that it allows better planning to achieve future outcomes.
A path forward could be to just distribute the wealth created by Western Civilization and distribute it equally amongst the global population. It could be considered a trade of future discoveries in the West (that would benefit all mankind) for immediate but short term reduction of human misery in the present. I don’t believe this is a good path forward but apparently many do as evidenced by their rhetoric.
A humorous counter point to planning is provided by the great Woody Allen line-You want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.
Comment #24 December 13th, 2025 at 10:08 am
During your 30s and 40s and 50s you might focus on doing things but as you approach your 60s you will start to think about your legacy, and many people shift their focus towards on being good mentors for the next generation, to pursue paths we couldn’t and continue paths we did.
When I am expected to die at around 80 years what I would care about will not be theorems but rather family and friends and colleagues and students. If each of us aim to leave the world a little bit better than how we found it, overall we are in the right track, even if in the grand scheme of things our contribution would seem miniscule.
Meditating on how one would like to die is a very enlightening process.
Comment #25 December 13th, 2025 at 10:09 am
How about just doing what you *can* to make the world a better place? Do what you can bring yourself to do, given the multiple demands on your time and energy. Help out on the causes that actually move you, not on the causes that “should” move you. Forget about optimizing your impact for good. Nobody is able to do that. Anyone who thinks he can is in denial. To quote a blogger (whose name I have forgotten, unfortunately), “utilitarianism is great software that does not run on our hardware.”
Comment #26 December 13th, 2025 at 10:44 am
Questions about impact, like whether trying to make a billion dollars is more impactful than maximizing understanding, seem very hard.
80,000 Hours cites Charles Darwin as a particularly impactful scientist, but at the time, natural history was seen as just a hobby and much less impactful than physics or chemistry.
In the 1930s, Leo Szilard went hunting for a chain reaction to release nuclear energy, but he might never have guessed that getting there required resolving an seemingly unrelated debate about what elements emerge when bombarding uranium with neutrons.
On the other hand, some mathematicians have done work that’s remained obscure without any practical use for decades, and of course, some people study Rubik’s cube solving.
Comment #27 December 13th, 2025 at 11:48 am
Hi Scott,
As a man who has suffered a tremendous amount from the cruelty and indifference of other people, and who as a young man was almost driven to suicide because of loneliness and the cruelty of other people, I am curious how you emerged with the altruistic mentality you have now, the “make the world a better place” mentality, as opposed to the “burn it all down mentality” that so many young men have these days (and that I’m personally struggling to resist), embodied for example in the rise of Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate.
I know you don’t want to perform therapy for your blog readers, which is totally fine, so please don’t hesistate to delete this comment if you feel I’m crossing that boundary. For what it’s worth, I ask more so that your answer might help other young men in this situation, than myself specifically.
Comment #28 December 13th, 2025 at 1:57 pm
Ignore is bliss. You seek understanding reality so you may have enough foresight to not like where this reality is going. Would have been so much easier to not understand any of this…
Comment #29 December 13th, 2025 at 10:28 pm
I agree with questioning oneself about this. I read through all the comments, by the way, and I thought the first one about the experience of the abolitionist was most helpful.
You know, all that Socrates did, to give a possibly useful example, was to go into the public square and start vigorous discussions with people about what they knew, and how they thought people should go about living a ‘good’ life—and what they would even mean by that. The point of morality is not to know the answers. The point is to ask the questions.
And that’s something I’ve had to reflect on myself, lately, by the way, as I’ve been having to spend more time on social media, as part of my work, and having to take more seriously the idea that I myself need to really engage in discourse ethics. Which means, going ahead and letting your thoughts rip, even if you (I) so often feel hopelessly out of depth with what I’m talking about. And me, being someone who writes ‘professionally.’ Sigh.
It’s hard to reckon with these things. Certainly, in the age where more and more and more can be automated, you have to look towards morality and ethics, which can never really be automated, as being the thing that truly matters. Caring for others is never automated or done away with. We will always have a maximal obligation to do it and we will never be doing it good enough, at least, not in practice.
And, by the way, that was always supposed to be the point of science, wasn’t it? Back when some kind of social contract was developed, where it was decided we would all support science?
We all need to be questioning ourselves about these things. There’s no easy way out of it. I wish more people in science, who tend to be very privileged, would be asking these questions. And as the AGI issue has really sunken in, for me personally, it’s felt more and more clear that it’s a failure of the moral journey of society, an institutional and social issue, a historical issue of the struggle of society to be ethical, rather than just, ‘Oh shucks, if only we could figure out that damned proof for turbulence.’
Comment #30 December 14th, 2025 at 1:14 am
Assuming you would like to maximize your contribution to humanity (whatever this means) I think you are going at it the wrong way around. You seem to first consider what are the most important problems that we humans need to solve and then you are thinking how to solve them. However, there are too many important problems and if we will all focus on the most important ones it will be very inefficient. Moreover, it is unlikely that any of these problems will be solved by one person. So you should focus your abilities on where you will make the biggest difference. Therefore, you should start by asking yourself what are my abilities and where they will be the most useful. In your specific case it is probably something to do with CS, most likely quantum computing (although there is always the risk that Gil is right, so you should take this into consideration). You should also remember that how much you are interest in something is also critical as it is very hard to make a contribution in something you dislike.
Comment #31 December 14th, 2025 at 6:59 am
I tend to like free-energy-style arguments about the goals of humanity. Optimizing how we act in the world (AI included) matters, but diversity feels just as important to me because this is what gives systems resilience when conditions change.
Comment #32 December 14th, 2025 at 8:35 am
Scott, I think you already have an amazing career and are doing a lot for humanity. I wouldn’t second-guess yourself like this at all.
For one, seeking “the clearest possible understanding of reality,” with no utilitarian or practical motivation, is what has produced science, which is the foundation of the greatest value-production for humanity ever. We absolutely need people who have this motivation and pursue it; we’d be nowhere without it.
For another, everyone has to pursue their own independent path with the talents and interests they have. Scott Alexander wrote in “The Parable of the Talents” that: “Rabbi Zusya once said that when he died, he wasn’t worried that God would ask him ‘Why weren’t you Moses?’ or ‘Why weren’t you Solomon?’ But he did worry that God might ask ‘Why weren’t you Rabbi Zusya?’”
And you clearly have something that is working—you are well-known and respected, you have a big audience to hear anything important you have to say, and I think you have inspired many people to study important problems in math and CS.
And it’s not as if you’re ignoring the big important things going on in the world around you. You took a sabbatical to work on AI safety. You’re creating an AI alignment group at UT! And you use your platform to speak out on important issues. This feels to me like exactly what someone in your position should be doing.
Quite possibly you know all of this already, but just in case, I thought it might help to hear it from someone else.
Comment #33 December 14th, 2025 at 11:08 am
As someone working towards a pure math PhD I often have doubts about the morality of the whole thing too. I think I’ve worked out a satisfactory answer regarding AGI/ASI though, at least. (Note: ASI here means “there is no meaningful comparative advantage to be gained by me assisting it.”)
First off, AGI is not super relevant – by the above I can still make meaningful contributions even if AGI is on the scene. AGI’s effects will be controlled by politicians and corporates, not me (I lack essential talents to obtain such roles), so there’s no meaningful action I can take in this situation.
For ASI:
– If ASI happens, then the future of humanity will most likely be whatever its makers envisioned. Short of me also making ASI (unlikely, I lack the skillset,) there’s nothing I can do here.
– If ASI doesn’t happen, then we still need contributors to human knowledge, and their impact on the future is far larger than one could expect. (For instance, Rafael Bombelli is a relatively-unknown 16th-century Italian mathematician, whose work inspired the modern theory of complex numbers, and he is hence partially responsible for the electric circuits which power modern civilization.) So my contribution is for the good, if I work towards where my particular skillset has most applicability and usefulness. (Of course there are certain subfields of pure math which are very unlikely to find future use; I find it a reasonable moral burden to stay away from those, even if they are fun.)
So I think any moral questions can deal without the ASI/AGI conditional. Of course I still don’t know whether or not even disregarding the ASI/AGI conditional my work is morally optimized, but does anyone?
Comment #34 December 14th, 2025 at 11:57 am
I wrote something rather similar to these thoughts on my (now very defunct) blog some years back. You may resonate with it a bit, especially the Jewish literature + secular message:
https://empathicdynamics.wordpress.com/2019/01/06/theodicy/
Comment #35 December 14th, 2025 at 12:37 pm
Western led advancements in agronomy have been nothing short of spectacular as shown in this chart.
https://ourworldindata.org/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/qLq-8BTgXU8yG0N6HnOy8g/5823687d-9785-4b72-3aee-bb05cbd5af00/w=1620
I linked a paper below that finds a significant disparity between the data used in rural areas to arrive at the usual estimate of 8 billion global population (2023) and careful population surveys conducted in preparation for dam construction projects. The 8 billion number most likely significantly underestimates global populations. From the abstract-
“Numerous initiatives towards sustainable development rely on global gridded population data. Such data have been calibrated primarily for urban environments, but their accuracy in the rural domain remains largely unexplored. This study systematically validates global gridded population datasets in rural areas, based on reported human resettlement from 307 large dam construction projects in 35 countries. We find large discrepancies between the examined datasets, and, without exception, significant negative biases of −53%, −65%, −67%, −68%, and −84% for WorldPop, GWP, GRUMP, LandScan, and GHS-POP, respectively. This implies that rural population is, even in the most accurate dataset, underestimated by half compared to reported figures.”
Even using the 8 billion number global population roughly doubled in 50 years but during that same period estimated deaths from famine have reduced from 17 million (60’s) to less than a million per decade and currently famine only accompanies armed conflict.
Science has led the way in being able to feed double the population while essentially eradicating famine during the same period. Spectacular results but I doubt the extrapolation can continue for another population doubling in say fifty years. Fertility rates remain high in large swaths of the world. Science has held famine at bay thus far and provides the most probable source of significant further improvements but a few billion a year in philanthropy will be spitting in the ocean.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11920052/
Comment #36 December 14th, 2025 at 12:54 pm
I haven’t read much about effective altruism, but I’m under the impression it concentrates on charitable giving by individuals, which is hardly the only way to improve the world. Political change and basic research are hard to put exact numbers on, but I’d say they have more of an impact on the real world than private donations.
Comment #37 December 14th, 2025 at 7:37 pm
Wouldn’t it be liberating or interesting to live as a dolphin or a whale?
Where each generation repeats the same cycle, with no pressure to answer to the modern gods of science and technology and their “exponential” revolutions, which we’ll never be adapted to deal with properly, by definition.
Comment #38 December 15th, 2025 at 4:37 am
I wondered what ChatGPT (version 5.2) would answer. Here it is:
It seems to me that your post rests on a misleading comparison between two kinds of rationality, and that this comparison leads you to an unjustified sense of intellectual guilt.
1. You are conflating ex post optimization with ex ante rationality.
It is trivially true, after the fact, that “doing something else might have had more impact.” That’s true of almost any human life. The relevant question is instead: what was rational given your actual skills, the information available to you, and deep uncertainty?
Ex ante, working on computability, P vs NP, quantum computation, or the foundations of quantum mechanics was exactly what someone like you was best positioned to do — where you had a genuine, demonstrable, and cumulative comparative advantage.
2. The Rubik’s Cube analogy is deeply misleading.
Speed-cubing is a closed game with no serious intellectual externalities. By contrast, clarifying the limits of computation, complexity, or quantum information produces:
• durable conceptual frameworks,
• transferable tools,
• norms of intellectual rigor,
• and, crucially, maps of impossibility.
Those maps matter enormously in a world saturated with grand technological promises and confused discourse — including, and especially, around AGI.
3. The ideology of “maximal impact” is itself highly speculative.
You appear to assign overwhelming weight to the idea that “making money and influencing AGI” is objectively more moral. But that belief rests on a very fragile chain of assumptions:
• that AGI is imminent,
• that it will be civilization-decisive,
• that influence primarily flows through money or access to billionaires,
• and that these levers are more reliable than producing robust knowledge.
None of this is well established.
4. The examples you cite actually undermine your case.
You mention Yudkowsky and Sam Bankman-Fried as attempts at direct, high-leverage action. But precisely:
• one ended up trapped in apocalyptic rhetoric with little causal traction,
• the other caused a massive moral and institutional disaster.
This suggests that leaving the domain of epistemic competence for large-scale social engineering is extraordinarily dangerous, even for brilliant and sincere people.
5. Fundamental research is a form of moral prudence.
In complex, poorly understood systems, naïve attempts to maximize good often do more harm than good. Producing understanding, training people to say “this argument is invalid,” “this model is incoherent,” or “this promise violates fundamental limits” is a slow but robust contribution over the long term.
6. Finally, there is an implicit normative mistake.
You seem to assume that the moral value of an intellectual life is primarily measured by global causal impact. That is an extreme form of consequentialism, neither obvious nor uncontested. A different — classical and non-naïve — view is that the honest pursuit of truth is itself a major human good, independently of its immediate instrumental payoffs.
In short:
You didn’t “follow the path of least resistance.” You followed the path of coherence between your abilities, your epistemic values, and what you could actually control. The regret you express looks less like moral clarity than like a side effect of our current atmosphere, which fetishizes “impact” while dramatically underestimating the value of understanding.
Yes, of course, there is always the risk of spending one’s life getting faster at solving a Rubik’s Cube. But that risk arises precisely when we abandon the demand for truth in favor of immediate effectiveness, not the other way around.
—————
Hard to persist in saying this is only a glorified auto-complete 🙂
Comment #39 December 15th, 2025 at 6:54 am
Adding to the points previously made, this problem seems universal to theorists who are inevitably lead to ponder the impact to Humanity of their contribution / life’s work. As such, the problem seems informed by examination of how various theorists have framed, approached, embraced or avoided the problem.
Names already mentioned include Grothendieck (whose life was an epic journey of truly legendary proportions), Szilard, Bombelli, Darwin, Tao, Gates and (tangentially by way of reference to billionaires) Jim Simons. To these names ones that immediately come to my mind are the approaches of Ramanujan and Hardy (who queried the contributions of his choices to Ramanujan’s early demise ), Oppenheimer, Feynman and von Neumann.
The purity of purpose illustrated by Ramanujan and Hardy (and the subsequent unintended impact of their work we see today in our technology) contrasts in my mind with the folklore about Oppenheimer, Feynman and Von Neumann.
The apocrypha would have it that Oppenheimer carried the Bhagavad Gita with him in a manner similar to Mahatma Gandhi: The Gita accompanied both men; sitting on their night stands (or tucked under their pillows at night) and repeatedly serving as the panacea for any long dark night of the soul that presented itself. Famously Oppenheimer tied the Gita to his life’s labor and the chilling impact of his work. Similarly for Gandhi who also tied the Gita to work which, at a fundamental level, was of a profoundly different nature to the `device development` of Oppenheimer’s work.
The Gita proposes that each individual `do what ought to be done` (Dharma) when facing the Universe as it presents itself to that individual. This proposal from eastern `wisdom traditions` presupposes each individual’s inability to comprehend the `grand scheme`. The Gita then proposes, as a solution to the doubt and uncertainty framed by the individual’s blindness of the whole, proceeding with the immediate obstacles the Universe presents to the individual: Let the Universe worry about the rest of it.
Oppenheimer (and Grothendieck’s) repeated points / arguments for consideration of the impact of their work is contrasted with folklore about Feynman that concerns spinning plates thrown in the lunch room at Cornell and how that led Feynman to consider spin in quantum electrodynamics. I wish I could point directly to the source of this folklore, which is buried somewhere in all the Feynman vignettes. Gleick’s biography does allude to the impact of Los Alamos on Feynman and a conversation Feynman had with von Neumann in which the senior scientist (von Neumann) recommend to the junior scientist (Feynman) to `focus on your work and let the others worry about the big picture`.
Many examples of different approaches theorists have taken to the problem of the impact of their work.
Comment #40 December 15th, 2025 at 8:48 am
f3et #38
“Hard to persist in saying this is only a glorified auto-complete”. Agreed
I particularly liked the phrase “maps of impossibility”-ancient cartographers mapped where you could go and Dr Aaronson, as a modern quantum cartographer, maps where it is impossible for you to go.
I also liked the phrase “apocalyptic rhetoric with little causal traction”-simply because nice phrase that represents my view.
Kudos to ChatGPT and to you for prompting this.
Comment #41 December 15th, 2025 at 10:49 am
My problem with effective-altruism is when it’s taken to the extremes, and used to justify almost any behavior.
“Instead of donating 10 euros now, I invest that money in company X even though I know they cause harm. Because then in 10 years I’ll have more money to donate”
This logic makes short-term suffering acceptable – even logical – because it supposedly enables long-term benefit.
It ‘justifies’ living your life as ruthless capitalist, making money whatever-the-cost, as long as you ‘intend’ to spend it on good causes it at the end of your life.
Worse: you frame yourself as a _better person_ than the modest loser who donates time and money to charity right now.
Worse still is the idea of taking future-humans into account, as Musk sometimes does: “for the benefit of the future human race, I will spend my money on whatever project I deem worthy instead of trying to solve current human suffering”
There _is_ value in some of the effective-altruism ideas. But beware that in a lot of cases, they function as a veiled justification for greed and hedonism.
There is already enough money and food in the world for no-one to live in poverty, war or famine. It’s just distributed unfairly. We don’t to wait to do good. We don’t need the greedy to accumulate more wealth on the promise that they’ll distribute it fairly ‘later’.
Comment #42 December 15th, 2025 at 2:17 pm
Matthijs #41
I do not agree with your premise that the future of mankind has no importance relative to current suffering. Leftist politics in Western Civilization has become the politics of NOW, ignore the past and screw the future, there is suffering now. It doesn’t matter that country X invaded country Y and wantonly killed women and children and pose a threat to repeat these acts in the future, all that matters is country Y is now causing suffering in country X. It doesn’t matter that investors in corporations have resulted in food for a doubled global population and essentially eliminated global famine, there is still suffering somewhere that must be addressed NOW.
My view is that Western Civilization and capitalism have had an enormously positive impact on the development of mankind and a tragedy if it is disassembled and distributed equally across the globe. It has worked well thus far in improving global food production to eliminate famine and no reason to expect that the positive impact will stop unless it is disassembled. If it is then my expectation is that once the distribution party concludes mankind will suffer from a horrific primarily static dystopia.
I never understand the ultimate goal of these redistribution schemes. Are they to achieve the maximum possible human global population to test how far we can procreate with respect to the available resource base, that all should suffer in order to respect the inalienable right to procreate as you wish.
I am not a blanket supporter of Musk and in particular his benefits from tax breaks and absurd legislation but I can find no fault in using his money in accordance with the stated goal of improving the future of mankind.
The top 400 on the Forbes US wealth list are valued at around $7 trillion and that is about the amount the US government will spend this year and then next year and the following years. Why do you believe this amount of money will do dramatically more good than the funds spent by the US government each year. That is even if you could monetize their holdings for their estimated wealth and that is unlikely.
It seems you hold your views with sincerity but I must respectfully disagree with you.
Comment #43 December 15th, 2025 at 3:49 pm
OhMyGoodness #42: you disagree with my views mainly because you misrepresent my views.
– I don’t want redistribution schemes. But we can scheme to stop the concentration of wealth to a small minority. I want proper monopoly and taxation laws, and I think that billionaires are an indication of a bug in the system.
– I agree western civilization and capitalism had positive impacts on the world (but also negative impacts). Food production is one example, health another, peace through trade also. Loads of benefits. No need to throw the system away, and I never stated that.
– of course minimizing future suffering is important. The problem with _extremist_ effective altruism views, however, is that they morally whitewash their actions through misconstructed utilitarianism by stating far fetched suffering. “Of course I have to invest in AI, because AI may someday destroy all of humanity if I don’t” or “of course I should build spaceships, because our future may be on mars”. These are worthy goals by themselves, and we should pursue them – but please don’t think these goals are morally superior to solving Sudanese hunger problem.
The amount of money the USA spends on its broken system is absurd, I agree. But that is not a money problem, it’s politics. Also, I don’t see the relation to altruism
(With respect to procreation, I don’t know why you bring it up, but better distribution of wealth and safety is shown to decrease birth rate.)
My post was about _altruism_, which means helping others without benefit to the self. Please read it in that regard: effective altruism has some really weird followers and beliefs in the fringes. “It’s my moral obligation to become insanely rich, so I can better help others” was the absurdity I addressed.
Comment #44 December 15th, 2025 at 6:09 pm
Thanks-and a few comments.
The wealth that billionaires hold is insignificant relative to global problems and they have been a bug in the system in that many have produced technologies that have revolutionized the life of billions of people. They have been a golden bug for humanity. The taxation of unrealized gains (included in wealth estimates) has never been taxable and this applies to middle class taxpayers as well as billionaires. Many billionaires also pay various foreign taxes due to holdings outside the US. They typically have a high tax burden but their foreign taxes are not as visible as US taxes. As it stands now the top 1% pay 40% of US Federal taxes (top 5% 60%) and the bottom 50% pay about 3%. I suppose you could double their taxes and make them pay for essentially the entire US budget but I don’t see a big advantage in doing so except to satisfy some urge to soak the rich.
To the best of my knowledge hunger in the Sudan is due primarily to an armed local conflict and has nothing to do with global food supply, humanitarian supplies have been been looted and much of the country. Is unsafe for aid workers.. I see this as primarily a military issue rather than one of philanthropy. I don’t see an appropriate ethical balance between ending armed local conflict and investing in more efficient space travel
Of course there have been negative impacts depending on point of view but the net positive impact is incomparable.
I don’t believe it is an immutable law that increases in the standard of living results in lower fertility rates. It also depends on culture. As an example Kazakhstan doesn’t suffer from hunger and has experienced strong growth but has a fertility rate of about 3 and Iraq is above 3. Botswana is prosperous in Southern Africa but still birth rate of about 2.7.
The reason I brought up procreation is that an ever increasing global population increases the probability of famine and conflict that (as in the case of Sudan using your example) would require (in your view) remediation through philanthropy.
As for effective altruism my point was that quite often the funds designated for philanthropic efforts (whether effective altruistic or altruistic) are insignificant compared to the benefits that accrue from research and technical advances.
Comment #45 December 16th, 2025 at 2:07 pm
@OhMyGoodness #44
Thanks for the in-depth and thoughtful comment!
“they have been a bug in the system in that many have produced technologies that have revolutionized the life of billions of people. They have been a golden bug for humanity”
This reflects the “great men” view of history, which makes for good story, but also has flaws. Attribution bias and selection bias are some of them.
Selection bias: you only hear/remember the few _good stories_, but what about all the oligarchs quietly siphoning wealth out of the system without giving anything in return? There is a reinforcement here also of the stories of individual billionaires: you remember Carnegie because his name is on the library, but forget the less-fortunate stuff he did.
And then attribution bias: was it really the single-billionaire who is responsible for technological progress? Often the influence of one person is overstated, especially when it’s not the person actually doing the work. Great advancements are done by combination of factors, and then we attribute them to one single thing – because that’s how our brain works. (there are counter-examples, but those aren’t all billionaires: Einstein, Wright-brothers, etc)
Again, the Carnegie library: there are hundreds of unnamed libraries that were paid for by government money that are _just as good_.
Maybe we’d even have more and better libraries if Carnegie didn’t concentrate so much of his wealth.
A lot of really good progress was done by scientists/engineers with public money or private money that was not from billionaires. The first real billionaire was only in the early 20th century and we had scientific and engineering progress before then also.
And yes: rockets cost a lot of money. But we don’t need Musk _personally_ investing in them. There’s no need for a _person_ to own so much wealth, it could be a company or organization.
“As it stands now the top 1% pay 40% of US Federal taxes (top 5% 60%) and the bottom 50% pay about 3%. I suppose you could double their taxes and make them pay for essentially the entire US budget but I don’t see a big advantage in doing so except to satisfy some urge to soak the rich.” => here you confuse ‘top 1%’-income with ‘top 1% wealth’. These aren’t the same: billionaires are a very specific category, very different from the top-1% earners. Steve Jobs famously boasted about having a $1 yearly income from Apple. They defer taxes indefinitely, or borrow against assets. Actually, some billionaires ‘lose’ money every year and get tax _credits_ instead of paying. All of this is not uncommon in billionaire-land.
(also, less relevant, but federal tax doesn’t reflect total tax-burden: when you include for example payroll-taxes, state and local sales tax the figures change)
“To the best of my knowledge hunger in the Sudan is due primarily to an armed local conflict” -> yes. But behind that lies income and wealth disparity. Give people good living wage, some social security, a Netflix account and a future for their kids… And conflict is largely avoided. Except when some ultra-rich billionaire dictator decides he’d rather have war (Putin).
“I don’t believe it is an immutable law that increases in the standard of living results in lower fertility rates. It also depends on culture.” => not an immutable law, but a strong relationship yes. Even higher correlation is with higher rate of female education/participation in work – that’s cultural but increased GDP is often a precondition to female-rights.
“As for effective altruism my point was that quite often the funds designated for philanthropic efforts (whether effective altruistic or altruistic) are insignificant compared to the benefits that accrue from research and technical advances.”
I see this more nuanced. Research and technical advances are _investments_ into a better future for all. They are beneficial and necessary – but slow. They are not the only way.
There are cases where direct philanthropic efforts pay off much faster. For example access to clean drinking water – we do not need to wait for AGI or space-rockets to fix this.
And also systemic changes can have huge benefits: ensuring living wage, clearing debts, reliable legal-system, strong separation of power, etc. (these are things some billionaires btw are actively trying to dismantle through regulatory capture, lobbying, media ownership, and legal arbitrage, and they have uncheckable power to do so – there’s a reason we normally vote every four years so its possible to take away someones power when they misbehave)
— anyway, good discussion, thanks!
Comment #46 December 16th, 2025 at 6:19 pm
Matthijs #45
…and thank you again for this response.
My only comments is that it seems to me this last post so clearly represents the great American worldview intellectual bias. There is a proper way to think and so of course people the world will respond as I think they should. You do this and that and people will respond thus. Please tour Afghanistan and explain that if they improve women’s education and offer professional career paths for women that their hostility will decrease and tribal conflict will simply fade away. We could build nice schools again for the girls.
The US spent maybe a trillion dollars or so on civil upgrades in Iraq. Most of it was promptly destroyed. The idea was that if given the opportunity of course the Iraqi’s will think as we do-they didn’t, they don’t, and they won’t
Same mistake is proposed now for Gaza. Hey let’s build resort hotels and everything will be cool and Gazans will think as we do. They won’t.
In Iran-hey let’s do an embargo and then they will be forced to think as we do-they didn’t, they don’t, and they won’t.
The idea that there is a proper default mode of thinking that blossoms with infrastructure upgrades is faulty. I don’t know how many lessons are required before that is recognized and the everpresent improper analogy to WW 2 is abandoned.
One minor thing about Musk- I have always intensely hated the word Grok and detested the novel.
Comment #47 December 16th, 2025 at 7:17 pm
OhMyGoodness #46: Clearly, some attempts to “make other people think like we do” failed pretty badly (Afghanistan), and equally clearly, others succeeded (Germany, Japan). Given this conflicting data, wouldn’t the correct approach be to figure out what was done in the successful cases that wasn’t done in the failed ones?
Comment #48 December 16th, 2025 at 11:18 pm
Scott #47
The differences in approach are clear. A sizable portion of the male populations were killed, both German and Japanese, and both fought to unconditional surrender and then use of the gallows as required. Both countries civilian populations were targeted for bombing (both Germany and Japan targeted civilian populations). Japan also faced extinction from the new atomic weapons.
The German and Japanese cultures were technological, both had a technical advantage in military equipment at the start of the war. Other cultures may not be technologically focused and have for centuries waged war with strong metaphysical conviction to jihad and/or tribe. These cultures through the centuries likely selected for characteristics that the populations show today and variants were often put to death.
If you attribute success in Germany and Japan to sufficient deaths of those devoted to violent opposition (I haven’t looked at it for quite some time but believe it was about 25% of the German male population and 15% of the Japanese male population) and ask what the equivalent percentage would be in some populations today then easy to conclude it would be quite high. Higher than the 25% of the German male populations.
The prosecution of WW2 was inconsistent with current political beliefs in the West and the cultures under discussion are significantly different than in Germany and Japan so here we are. The cultures in question are very strong and even materially different integration dynamics relative to the German and Japanese populations that emigrated to the US pre and post war.
My answer is consistent with the way war has been waged through the centuries but inconsistent with the current politically acceptable strategy of bombing select military targets, while minimizing loss of life, and then sending in pallets of dollars. I wish I could say that opening Four Seasons Hotels would do the trick but don’t believe that it will.
Different cultures and different strategies and here we are.
Comment #49 December 17th, 2025 at 6:19 am
Scott #47
I would like to add that the differences between current and WW2 strategies are clear but many cannot accept the implications and some likely find it inconceivable. It is foreign to modern American thinking. I reserved my personal judgement from the posts and tried only to relate the fact sets as I see them.
Comment #50 December 17th, 2025 at 8:46 am
@OhMyGoodness #46 and #48:
There’s no need to kill a large part of the population to induce change.
I think a large part why change didn’t happen in Iraq/Afghanistan was the whole premise of “let’s bring democracy through fire”.
The USA invaded and bombed Iraq and Afghanistan (nearly a 250.000 direct civil casualties, millions more indirect), triggered internal chaos, strife and civil-war. And they only half-heartedly tried to rebuild (the trillion dollar on rebuilding you mentioned is a lot less in actuality (it includes war-efforts, veteran care and interests on lending), and a lot of the money on rebuilding flowed right back into American construction companies). You shouldn’t be surprised that didn’t work.
Change happens slowly until it happens rapidly. It cannot be forced.
You write as-if Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Ghaza are the same: they are not. Afghanistan has _very_ different attitudes to women than Iran. Although women are not equal to men in Iran, they go to university, go to places without male chaperones, and can work (even in highest regions of government).
Plus, there is diversity _within_ the country. Not every male agrees with banning women from school Afghanistan. It’s difficult to poll the country, and it’s difficult to protest (as you’ll get killed by Taliban) – so I’ll have to excuse you the exact numbers. But even Taliban-leaders have protested the ban on female education from 12 yr.
Countries can change: you can see that in Saudi Arabia. Life for women was horribly restricted there, and is opening up now rapidly. It’s not a success-story (yet), there are still many-many barriers for women. But it is evidence that culture/countries can change.
Other examples are Ireland (strongly catholic, now has samesex-marriage), South Korea (poor and authoritarian to rich and democratic), Tunisia (still going through change). Even the USA: going from deep segregation to equal rights.
> My only comments is that it seems to me this last post so clearly represents the great American worldview intellectual bias. There is a proper way to think and so of course people the world will respond as I think they should. You do this and that and people will respond thus.
That’s not what I intended. We cannot force change.
But: change will happen. Unpredictably and with setbacks, but it will happen.
The position of women was born out of necessity centuries ago:
– “Stay home” because maintaining a household was a lot of hard work
– “Bear a lot children” because high-death in childbirth and having more kids meant more potential/status
This was codified in culture and law. But the situation changed. Maintaining a household is now a lot simpler (washing machine, microwave, clean water from the tap instead of having to walk half a mile, groceries get delivered) and the need for ‘many children’ is gone. This leaves more opportunity for women to get educated, which further reduces the want for children.
The codified differences will erode. Culture, religion and tradition erode.
In a large part because of advances in engineering, science and technology – as you yourself mentioned. But also by bringing in prosperity through investment and philanthropy.
That’s not because western-thinking is ‘superior’, but simply because men and women are not very different. Women _also_ want freedom to do pursue life-goals. They fought themselves free in the USA, they fought themselves free in Europe.
Comment #51 December 17th, 2025 at 9:08 am
In short, your well-above-average intelligence allows you to tackle problems for geniuses but you are not a genius (so, you teach). Then your average little man inside tells you that you should be an “impactful” kind of human being, a genius, and that guy made you write in the title the word “paradox”, creating also the dramatic (and fake) combat between understanding and impact. After that, reality, the very same reality you say you want to clarify, comes up and adds some comedy by saying “No drama, Obama, you can legitimately spend your life trying to solve 4-D Rubick cubes. Any guilty feeling is pointless. “Impactless” lives are as meaningul and joyful (or not so much) as any other one”.
This melodrama in one act is played everywhere across the globe, over and over, but nobody is tired of telling it to others (or reading it, again and again)
Comment #52 December 17th, 2025 at 10:40 am
Rafael #51: It’s always a pleasure to learn in my comment section from the true geniuses, the people who feel no conflict whatsoever between discovering the truths of the world and changing the world for the better, so they achieve both by spending their time leaving comments here under first names only.
Comment #53 December 17th, 2025 at 11:29 am
Mathijs#48
Of course countries can change over time both to the positive and the negative. In the course of international affairs it is sometimes necessary to consider speeding the process of change to the positive as a result of threat to national integrity or citizens safety. The question then is why were the actions so successful in WW2 (which were brought by fire) but not more recently when similar changes were sought. The civilian losses of Germany and Japan were quite large
I made individual comments about each of the countries and didn’t in any way indicate they were identical with respect to women’s rights. The WEF 2015 report ranks 148 countries for gender equality and has Saudi Arabia at 132, Iran at 145, Sudan is at 147 BTW, and Afghanistan and Iraq are not. ranked. Iran at 145/148 is considered upper middle income by the WEF so another exception to the thesis relating women’s rights and GDP.
https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-gender-gap-report-2025/in-full/benchmarking-gender-gaps-2025/#performance-by-subindex
Your comment about US contractors being the cause of lack of efficacy of infrastructure upgrades in Iraq implies that there was a quality problem with construction that led to early failure. Is that your intended meaning?
Comment #54 December 17th, 2025 at 12:02 pm
I wasn’t aware the Iraqi reconstruction projects are ongoing with another $18 billion approved in 2024. I know issues early on were providing safety for expat workers and considerable corruption in the Iraqi ministries.
https://www.dvidshub.net/news/535558/reconstruction-funds-flow-into-iraq-projects-move-forward
Comment #55 December 17th, 2025 at 3:11 pm
> The question then is why were the actions so successful in WW2 (which were brought by fire) but not more recently when similar changes were sought
Germany and Japan were about _ending_ wars (wars they brought into themselves). Afghanistan and Iraq about _starting_ wars unprovoked. That’s a major difference I think (“What the hell are these Americans doing here”)
In both Germany and Japan the same inhabitants also had to reflect on their _own role_. And the massive casualties and destruction meant a total reboot.
Most important, however:
Japan and Germany were both ready for change. They were radically changing already before the war (and during, and after the war). Iraq and Afghanistan were not in a state of change, they did not self-initiate.
Durable social change occurs through internal economic and cultural evolution, not external coercion. Even though Germany/Japan seemed to be coerced _after_ losing the war, they were already in change-mode loooong before.
Like I said: change cannot be forced.
Regards to the WEF-scores: these don’t measure _lived freedoms_ (can drive, travel without chaperone, forced marriage, can sport, clothing restrictions). Perhaps we don’t need to squabble: both countries are not ideal places for women. But also, both are changing (to better) in this regard.
GDP is a driver behind better women’s rights, there is a correlation. But this doesn’t mean a strict causal relationship. It’s statistics, not mechanics. Specifically Iran has a very strict government, which suppresses change. This was similarly the case for Saudi Arabia, but this recently changed as they are opening up more to the world (notice that this happened without regime change through fire)
Comment #56 December 17th, 2025 at 3:36 pm
Matthijs #55:
Afghanistan and Iraq about _starting_ wars unprovoked.
Iraq we can grant was “unprovoked,” but Afghanistan?? ROFL. The election of a “Globalize the Intifada” proponent as mayor of NYC has made it obvious that there’s now a great deal of pretending like 9/11 never happened—or was not the equivalent of Pearl Harbor for those who lived through it—but I hadn’t realized it had reached this extreme.
Comment #57 December 17th, 2025 at 4:08 pm
I’m not pretending 9/11 didn’t happen.
That was an attack by a terrorist group operating from Afghanistan. The country itself did not declare war. That’s quite a fundamental difference.
None of the perpetrators of 9/11 was Afghan.
Yes, Taliban are (and were) scum. Yes, the USA had all the right to retaliate. But war on _the country_ Afghanistan to extract the _individual_ Osama bin Laden (and others) was a gross overreach. And it _didnt work_
The initial military objective (destroy al-Qaeda camps, capture leadership) did not logically require overthrowing the Taliban government, occupying Afghanistan for 20 years, and rebuilding a state from scratch. A few missiles on training camps and a dedicated strike team (like Obama sent in decade later to Pakistan) would’ve been a much better option.
The reason Bush was so willing to start a war, was because of the failed “bring democracy” doctrine.
Comment #58 December 17th, 2025 at 4:24 pm
Matthijs #57: The US’s ultimatum to the Taliban in 2001 was, either turn over Al Qaeda or else we invade. The Taliban said screw you, we won’t turn them over. So we invaded.
If we’d done a better job as an occupying power, that would’ve been the end of the Taliban, and 40 million Afghans would now live in freedom rather than misery, and girls would go to school there. But that’s a sad story for another day.
For now the relevant point is: if country X (whether Afghanistan or Lebanon or any other) harbors a terrorist group that invades or attacks other countries, and the government of country X does nothing serious to control that terrorist group, then as far as the rest of the world ought to be concerned, the government and the terrorist group are the same. Just like you, as a parent, should be treated as a murderer if you hand your five-year-old a loaded weapon, then sit back and watch contentedly as your five-year-old shoots into a crowd. Furthermore, this is so overwhelmingly obvious that I find it hard to hard to credit anyone who denies it with actually believing what they say—they seem instead like defense lawyers, trying to get their terrorist client country off on a technicality.
Comment #59 December 17th, 2025 at 4:34 pm
Mathijs #54
I’m not sure I understand the change timeline for Germany. They were planning to change just as soon as the 1000 year Reich concluded?
At the time of Pearl Harbor Japan still brutally occupied Korea, much of China, and annexed Vietnam in 1940. Were they planning mea culpas for these areas and for mistakenly attacking Pearl Harbor (darn navigator made a boneheaded mistake) but the US overreacted with a declaration of war before they could put things right?
Comment #60 December 18th, 2025 at 5:02 am
Scott #58:
> The US’s ultimatum to the Taliban in 2001 was, either turn over Al Qaeda or else we invade. The Taliban said screw you, we won’t turn them over. So we invaded.
Here we get into semantics on invasion and war.
Military intervention was an absolute necessity and fully defendable. Negotiating with Taliban was pointless. Even if they’d been _willing_, they probably wouldn’t have been _capable_ of turning over Al Qaeda. But military action does not necessitate full-scale invasion, war, occupation, and regime-change.
I think you have your ‘5 year old’-analogy the wrong way around. The Taliban in Afghanistan is not a government in the same sense as Germany has a government, or China or the USA. It’s barely a country and more an area with decentralized tribes. Overlapping groups who sometimes align and sometimes fight inward. They are the ‘5 year olds’. And they had a terrorist party in their backyard, which also extended to _other_ backyards (at the time Jemen, Pakistan, Saudi-Arabia, others).
In short:
– take out Al Qaeda training-camps and the people who orchestrated the attacks: good idea (and shouldn’t be limited on Afghanistan either)
– punishing Taliban for hosting Al Qaeda: also great idea
– full-scale war with the intention on bringing ‘democracy and freedom’ to Afghanistan: a delusion by Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush
Carrot-and-sticking people into change is _very hard_ if they are not ready for change.
OhMyGoodness #59:
You mean “change” as “change into good”. That is not what I meant. You are (obviously) right that Nazi-Germany and 40s Japan were not going to change their ways by themselves.
I meant change as a transition (regardless of direction).
Change brews before it explodes.
Germany was in a state of change since the 20s. High experimentation, energy and uncertainty. People sought change, and voted for communist and fascist parties. In the end the bad won out and the whole thing erupted in full-blown nazism, holocaust and intercontinental war.
The USA came in (with other countries) and directed the change to a stable world-order. Basically finishing the transition into a ‘good change’. For which we are all very grateful.
Japan was similarly in a state of transition _before_ they started their wars. Although rather uniquely this time the change _was_ initiated centrally and in a hierarchical manner (through the emperors idea of modernization) – it was already ‘in the air’. The country was already changing from isolated-island-mode into opening-up-to-the world.
—
In conclusion: my central idea is that change is a transition between states. It needs energy/entropy. You need to travel from one stable-state-of-being to another stable-state.
Your current state-of-being is an attractor. It will pull you back.
Japan and Germany were high vats of energy and they were well on their way of escaping their old-stable-state and moving towards a stable-state of ‘permanent evil’. Luckily, the USA (and others) changed the trajectory through tremendous coercion and steered the world to much better stable-state.
Afghanistan/Iraq: very different stories. The base level of entropy for change was _low_ inside these countries. That’s why the population/government was so susceptible going back to ‘old stable-state’. Not enough kinetic energy to escape the “tribal system”.
(they will be ready one day, but that change will happen slowly – and then very fast all of a sudden)
If my argument is unclear, it’s this: external force can redirect a society only when internal forces are already moving. Afghanistan and Iraq lacked those conditions in 2001–2003; Germany and Japan did not.
This might be my last message on this, as I feel I’m kinda ridiculed into an ignorant Taliban/Nazi-supporter. Unsure if that’s because I explain wrong, or if it’s the interpretors of my words. If this is to be my last message, I wish you all the best for this festive season (hoping you had a great Hanukkah and wishing you a merry Christmas and great new year).
Comment #61 December 18th, 2025 at 5:54 am
Matthijs #60: Aha, thank you for the much clearer explanation!
From your earlier comment, I’d been unable to distinguish your position from “nyah nyah, the Taliban can shelter Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda can do all the international terrorism it wants, and apart from some limited strikes that probably won’t be effective, no one is allowed to stop them because the Taliban and Al Qaeda are not the same entity.”
Something like that actually was the position of hard leftists at the time (I was there! I remember!), but you’ve now made clear that it’s not your position. Your position, you’ve now explained, wasn’t about the rights or morality of regime change but about the conditions for its effectiveness, which you plausibly maintain weren’t there.
To me, it seems like a much closer thing: if there were twice as many who wanted Afghanistan to be a modern country or half as many who wanted a theocracy, the forces of modernity would have prevailed. And relatedly: if we had a bureaucracy in the US that operated on clear understanding of reality rather than self-serving delusions — more like what we had in WWII — we would’ve known to stay there, provide air support, not abandon our allies, etc unless and until the forces of modernity were likely to prevail on their own.
But this is a totally reasonable factual/strategic/historical disagreement, one where my mind could easily be changed by new evidence, rather than a disagreement over fundamental values!
So, I’m sorry if I was rude, thanks for your comments here, and I hope you have wonderful holidays too!
Comment #62 December 18th, 2025 at 6:25 am
I marvel at the success of Bill Ayers er al in substituting a Marxist version of Mary Poppins for US education.
Comment #63 December 18th, 2025 at 9:20 am
Mathijs #60
Thanks for the best wishes and I hope the same for you. I don’t agree with your characterizations . For instance-
“ The country was already changing from isolated-island-mode into opening-up-to-the world.”
This is a gross mischaracterization in my view. They were not a babe in the woods taking their first tentative steps on the global stage.
Japan occupied Taiwan in 1894 and annexed Korea in 1910 and Manchuria 1931 and China 1937 and Vietnam in 1940. They badly defeated Russia in the 1904-1905 war. They occupied Sakhalin Island and South Eastern Russia eventually transporting Korean slaves there for construction whose descendants still live there but the timeline of Japan makes it easier to see. The defeat of Russia was viewed globally as the first defeat of an European Great Power by an Asian nation. The Japanese attacked the Russian fleet before the declarations of war. At the start of the Second World War Japanese naval forces were pre eminent in the Pacific with respect to quantity and quality of planes and ships.
The Japanese themselves often trace the origin of their recognition of the wider world to the mapping voyage of Captain Cook in 1780 or so. Japan was closed at that time and so limited interaction but made the Japanese recognize that their was a wider world with better technology and this began their wider imperial ambitions.
I could make similar arguments for Germany prior to the invasion of Poland but the timeline fr Japan isn’t as compressed and so better makes my point.
So 1780 Captain Cook
1780-1850 Late Edo Period and information concerning the wider world via the Dutch.
1853 Perry opens Japanese ports
1868 war that restored power to the Emperor from the i h
1869 Constitution adopted and Diet empaneled
1870’s adoption of western in military and education
1872 rapid industrialization begins
1894 first war with Russia
I characterize the above as rapid advance from feudalism to a modern competitive nation brought on by knowledge of the wider world. The next step was to provide a wider empire for the Emperor and all the above more than 50 years before WW2. I hope you can see why I consider your statement a mischaracterization. The war on Japan was necessary to end its imperial ambitions.
Contrast the above with a culture that has been in contact with Europe for more than 3000 years with very little change. Why did Japan rapidly evolve and country X did not. My conclusion is that it can be explained by differences in culture and the effects that the culture has had on its people over millennia. After resisting change over millennia I reasonably conclude without an external factor the probability is they will remain close to business as usual in the future. If they pose a danger to others then what options other than provide an external force. I agree that due to culture and the people that culture engenders Japan was capable of change and the external force the US provided caused them to abandon their imperial ambitions. The amount of external force than is required to induce change in a culture stable for millennia is likely to be greater given their respective proclivities for change.
Please forgive me if my remarks seemed disrespectful.
Comment #64 December 18th, 2025 at 9:23 am
Thanks Scott! That means a lot!
One clarification:
Morality _does_ play a part for me. Morality balances on three things: the motivation behind actions, the actions themselves and the outcome/consequences of actions:
– The motivation (“bring democracy and freedom to the people”)
– The action (“invasion, war, occupation”)
– The outcome (however you define it)
All play a part in judging morality.
Of course, it “could have worked, if only”. If there were more susceptible Afghanis, if the USA had stayed longer and invested more, if other countries had done more, if an Afghan version of Ghandi rose to prominence, etc.
It’s like Kripke’s possible worlds: yes, some potential futures are reachable, but are they _likely_ to be reached? Permanent regime change was logically and causally possible… But was it the most _likely_ outcome?
It’s hard to judge outcomes of actions beforehand. We cannot predict the future with certainty, but we can assign probabilities. We make outcome-predictions _all the time_ and act accordingly (‘can I cross the street now, or should I wait for the approaching car’).
The lives lost (American and Afghan), the trillions of dollars spent, the end-state after 20+ years of “back to Taliban”… I think it’s fair to say these outcomes could’ve been declared and estimated beforehand (“We declared 17 possible outcome scenarios and assigned a likelihood to them. One unlikely outcome is we’re stuck 20 years and still have a Taliban-relapse”)
This is all easy to say in retrospective, I know.
But large scale planned military operations _should_ have forecasts. And to the best of my knowledge worst-case-scenarios were not seriously considered.
Depending on your viewpoint, _not considering possible outcomes_ could be seen as immoral by itself.
It’s a delicate balance, you cannot always consider outcomes. You can end in analysis-paralysis, or miss an opportunity. Or you give political opponents material with which they can stop your plans. But considering the impact of war on society – it should still happen even if it’s hard.
We can only spend our money, time and life once – and pursuing regime change in the Middle-East meant postponing/cancelling other political actions. Actions that were more prudent or more success-guaranteed.
Regime change by itself is not immoral, but botching a regime-change because you didn’t estimate the chance of success and properly assess cost/benefit can be.
(and for 100% clarity, the above is completely separate from the _other_ goal of taking out Al Qaeda. Which was justified as we’ve discussed)
Comment #65 December 18th, 2025 at 10:01 am
I apologize for the typos in #63. I was typing on an iPhone and ran out of edit time. To quote my daughters-It wasn’t my fault
Comment #66 December 18th, 2025 at 10:26 am
Matthijs
One more comment. You refer to correlations that demonstrate a relationship between GDP and gender equality but I believe much of the variance in the data is due to confounding variables. I could ask a few questions about a mystery country and better predict where that country ranks globally on gender equality then using your linear fit to the data assuming random variance.
Comment #67 December 18th, 2025 at 2:49 pm
OhMyGoodness #65:
You are excused for the typos, and actually commended for the perseverance in typing all that on a smartphone!
> “ The country was already changing from isolated-island-mode into opening-up-to-the world.”
> This is a gross mischaracterization in my view. They were not a babe in the woods taking their first tentative steps on the global stage.
You are correct. ‘opening-up-to-the-world’ was an extremely bad wording of the aggressive and violent expansion. I knew too little of this history, and I misremembered other parts of it.
> I characterize the above as rapid advance from feudalism to a modern competitive nation brought on by knowledge of the wider world. The next step was to provide a wider empire for the Emperor and all the above more than 50 years before WW2. I hope you can see why I consider your statement a mischaracterization. The war on Japan was necessary to end its imperial ambitions.
I fully agree with this. The war was definitely necessary.
I think I’m just not coming across very well, because your historical timeline aligns with what I meant to say: Japan’s change started brewing (from 1750-1850), then erupted. It took time.
> Contrast the above with a culture that has been in contact with Europe for more than 3000 years with very little change. Why did Japan rapidly evolve and country X did not. My conclusion is that it can be explained by differences in culture and the effects that the culture has had on its people over millennia. After resisting change over millennia I reasonably conclude without an external factor the probability is they will remain close to business as usual in the future.
This I also agree with. Long-stable cultures respond differently to external pressure, and sustained contact alone does not guarantee internal transformation. Some societies absorb and adapt; others resist for centuries. For them, continuity is the default.
I think that’s also why the Afghanistan regime-change-by-war didn’t succeed. The Afghan culture resisted change for millennia, and weren’t going to change in 20 years. The Taliban just had to wait until enough democratic 4-year-cycles passed in the USA, and then swoop back in.
Maybe it could’ve worked if the USA had stayed much longer (at least 50 years) so multiple generations could’ve lived the change.
> The amount of external force than is required to induce change in a culture stable for millennia is likely to be greater given their respective proclivities for change.
That’s not to say that it will never ‘click’. Saudi-Arabia also resisted millennia, and is now changing.
Also for Afghanistan there is external force: in the form of internet, smartphones, trade, philanthropy, diaspora. It’s still there, seeping in and brewing.
We’ll probably see a long period of stagnation with creeping social change, followed by a sudden political shift triggered by an (external) shock. Which can result in a long (civil) war.
Afghanistan will change. The danger is not that it won’t – it’s that when it does, it may change faster than anyone can control.
Comment #68 December 19th, 2025 at 7:13 am
Matthijs #67
I see it differently. Your arguments rest on some kind of inevitability (call it a law) that in all cases cultural groups evolve to resemble the West. I don’t know of any law that requires this and have pointed out some cultural groups have in fact resisted this over millennia. You are certainly free to claim this transformation will come but I don’t believe this to be true and particularly over the durations often important for national security and citizens safety.
My point is that a short military action followed by upgrading everyone’s iPhone to the latest model has failed (forgive me for this phrase) while a strategy of all out war to eliminate militarily all possible threats for ongoing armed resistance have been successful.
These inevitability arguments seem to me the American version of the Marxist laws of development of society. The American version is modified to assume that inside all people is the desire to share American values. I don’t believe that to be true. I don’t expect you to change your view because it is so typical of the consensus American view.
I have pointed out that your previous claim that Japan was in the process of transforming from an isolated island nation at the start of the war was an mis chacterization. Also pointed out that your claim (another inevitability condition) that GDP and gender equality are correlated by a linear fit is in fact confounded by other variables. There is no basis to argue against your expectations based on some type of inevitable process. It is fundamentally meta-physical with appeal to the fact that women can now drive in Saudi Arabia.
Comment #69 December 19th, 2025 at 7:29 am
Matthijs #64
I first read Al Qaeda as AI Qaeda and thought we were venturing into the alignment issue with AI as a jihadist.
Comment #70 December 19th, 2025 at 10:19 am
This is similar to a portion of the AI alignment dialogue. Would a super AGI inevitably adopt American values? Super AGI more intelligent than any in the current global population which is a different condition but are American values inevitably adopted especially in the case of a super intelligent entity?
Comment #71 December 19th, 2025 at 5:02 pm
Hi OhMyGoodness,
I think we won’t reach agreement, and that’s okay 🙂
Let me just one more time layout my position.
It’s not a law or strictly linear fit. More probabilistic convergence. There are obviously a lot of counter examples and regressions. But looking at the world, on a larger (decades) timeline most countries move closer to individual freedoms. It’s more akin to the a stock market trend.
These things take time and are bumpy, and from a historical point we are largely in the beginning still.
The USA grew from slavery to equal rights. Took centuries and lasted until the 60s.
Women’s rights, gay rights: these are very new, even in progressive countries. The Netherlands only abolished “female incompetence on marriage” in 1957 and took until the 80s to realize completely equal rights.
I don’t think these values are baked “inside the people”, instead I think people are inherently different. Fighting that with law and culture is a losing game. For a society to stay competitive in a global market, I think you will need all people educated and not in fear of their neighbors or government.
That’s why it can take decades/centuries: it’s not a “curse lifted”, it’s new behavior and mindset that people need to get accustomed to. They might instead fight it, especially those in charge: because this change means they may no longer be in charge.
I’m not so sure we really have rights to minorities based on our great western values. If that was the case, and these values are enshrined in our society, than why did it take so long?
No, I think instead thats how we sell it to ourselves. A society gravitates towards these values because of their economic value (first for the men, then the women, then the large-minorities and then the minor-minorities).
Is change completely inevitable? No: some countries/societies seem to have found ways to prevent value-change while still maintaining GDP growth. A prime example is china. They engineered a system of general suppression combined with increases in individual comfort.
I don’t know if this scales and is long-term maintainable. My guess is the system won’t survive a large economical crisis and shift in leadership.
> My point is that a short military action followed by upgrading everyone’s iPhone to the latest model has failed (forgive me for this phrase) while a strategy of all out war to eliminate militarily all possible threats for ongoing armed resistance have been successful.
That’s also why Afghanistan’s “short military action and new iPhone” failed. Not because of the rigor in exterminating possible threats, but because instilling change takes decades.
If you had invaded 1750s Japan and tried to create a western society in 20 years, I think you’d equally have failed.
Japan was already going through changes for a very long time. The people were accustomed to change. That’s why American intervention was successful: there was no going back to “the way we did things for centuries”, because that way was already erased in the preceding century.
With respect to AI: we are at risk of baking in our current state. Current AI is inevitably trained on the past and doesn’t learn from new data. If we’d had trained it in the sixties, we’d have another blocker to minorities rights (besides legal and cultural)
I don’t think we are at “peak enlightenment” at all (even in the west), and an AI may hold us back from our growth. In that sense AI Qaeda is a very real threat.
Comment #72 December 19th, 2025 at 5:37 pm
Matthijs #67
“Also for Afghanistan there is external force: in the form of internet, smartphones, trade, philanthropy, diaspora. It’s still there, seeping in and brewing.”
The internet is tightly controlled by the Taliban and in September-October was completely severed. This from the BBC article linked below-
“A man who works as a money changer in Takhar province said that his daughters’ online English classes were disrupted. “Their last opportunity to study and stay engaged is now gone,” he said.
Another woman previously told the BBC that she could not attend online classes since her home internet was cut off. “I had hoped to finish my studies and find an online job, but that dream has also been destroyed,” she said. “Without internet access, I don’t know what will happen next.””
Internet restrictions are becoming generally stronger around the world rather than weakening.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxqdy5nrlqo
Their trading partners are-Pakistan, China, Iran, India, UAE, Russia, and Central Asia. I don’t have any data on philanthropy or diaspora but would expect communications are very circumspect considering Taliban oversight and severity of penalties.
Comment #73 December 20th, 2025 at 3:26 am
OhMyGoodness:
This is all true and is extremely sad.
But I see this as a sign Taliban is fighting a change that’s already brewing.
If existing culture and law was immutable for this population, they wouldn’t care about internet, books, trade, etc seeping in.
I never meant change would happen linearly, predictably.
It needs constant pressure, driving forces internal and external to the country.
It’s like a stone filling itself with water until it’s ready to break.
We as the west can’t sit back and relax. We need to help the afghan people. For example with philanthropy (Oxfam Novib, Amnesty, doctors without borders), international pressure through trade (both stick and carrot – sanctions-only doesn’t work, if you want progress you need to enable progress), and military action when appropriate.
If we don’t, change will still happen – and in a way we don’t like.
America First is a huge detriment on this, IMHO. And it may give evil actors the possibility to prevent or delay positive change in countries like Afghanistan.
In my mind, social change happens slow and is a necessary by-product of (technological) progress and capitalism. You want a new car, you need money, money only happens in a stable environment, it needs urbanization, urbanization means complex government, which needs bureaucracy, which needs computers with internet (at some point). The same goes for international trade, you’ll need access to outside resources at some point – which needs connecting to existing systems. A tribal sharia-based system is incompatible with this, you will need more central and structured government. Note that “change” is not necessarily good: this can also be used to restrict freedoms.
And once you have your new car, you realize it’s _yours_.
When multiple people get wealth, they will lessen their reliability on the community and individualize. But this change is not necessarily “good”. Capitalism can swing both ways: “I won’t let you set the rules, this is my money” + “I’ll leave you alone if you leave me alone” or “I have my car now, but I’m scared minority X will take it away from me”.
Technological and Economic development is like a scaffold for social change.
These foundations (or scaffolds or wiring or whatever you call it) wasn’t there in 2001. And it was not likely to be built in 20 years. We tried to go fast and the scaffold fell apart.
I think that the building blocks are still being put into place – which is why the power has to actively fight back.
By and large, I am convinced the trend is upwards for individual freedoms (as a byproduct of economic success) – the asshole Taliban leaders are sending _their own daughters_ to private schools. But maybe I’m wrong, maybe (religious) fascism or communism can also be long term stable. Afghanistan _will_ change, but how?
When Putin or Xi or Taliban lose their hold on power: that’s when change will erupt. A period of instability that enables a new order on the same scaffolding. But that’s not necessarily “good change”. The same scaffolding can be hijacked by evil leaders (like nazi-Germany, Iran 1979, etc). And then we need to be vigilant that it doesn’t swing to “more-evil” – with appropriate military action. Although I’m still convinced that this would be a “temporary setback” – temporary can mean decades or centuries and that’s wasting too much human potential.
Comment #74 December 20th, 2025 at 4:22 am
One last comment just of a personal nature. When I read many of Matthijs comments they are usual and comforting. I have heard and read similar things my entire life-A good global future is inevitable, we are on the path, downhill from here. When these statements are not just automatically filed in my inevitable and comforting folder and I am able to focus and consider them analytically then the inevitability turns to fairy dust. I then consider that a smug sense of righteous inevitability is not an optimal approach to global affairs.
Comment #75 December 20th, 2025 at 6:52 am
Matthijs #73
“By and large, I am convinced the trend is upwards for individual freedoms (as a byproduct of economic success)”
Considering free and unfettered internet access as a proxie for individual freedoms, this statement is inconsistent with recent trends. Excerpt from linked Freedom House report below-
“Global internet freedom declined for the 15th consecutive year. Of the 72 countries assessed in Freedom on the Net 2025, conditions deteriorated in 28, while 17 countries registered overall gains.”
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2025/uncertain-future-global-internet
I personally have been shocked at the rapid adoption of news website blockages outside the US.
Comment #76 December 20th, 2025 at 8:58 am
I did not intend righteous smugness.
Looking at the past 70 years most countries _have_ progressed towards more individual freedoms. Some stagnated, some regressed. But by and large gdp grew, birth rates shrunk, freedoms increased. In most western countries the upwards trajectory (with huge dips) is going on for centuries already.
But I concede that this may be luck. Or survivorship bias.
Perhaps Nazi-Germany could have “worked” as a successful system (ie an alternative history where it wasn’t defeated and didn’t subsequently collapse on itself), and we’d consider fascism as the inevitable winning system.
Comment #77 December 20th, 2025 at 12:24 pm
Matthijs #76
I wasn’t referring to you specifically but rather how I see the general attitude in the US about these topics. Whatever our disagreements I know you want the best for other people.
Comment #78 December 27th, 2025 at 7:36 pm
Have you considered running for a public office?
Comment #79 December 27th, 2025 at 9:13 pm
AG #78: For me, it’s enough of an achievement to live my life as a STEM professor without getting cancelled or denounced too hard, without even thinking about submitting myself to the vote of the masses… 😀
Comment #80 December 27th, 2025 at 11:21 pm
Scott #79: In the “Enlightenment Project” — to which you are thoroughly committed — it is the humans at large (“vote of the masses”) that possess the key (or at the very least a veto on the key-distributing function) to “understanding of reality”. Separately, it is my sense — for what it is worth — that you are likely to exceed your expectations while running for, say, a state-wide office. In any case, being a justly distinguished STEM professor while presiding over a consequential public forum might well be — on balance — the least problematic way of effectively addressing “the paradox of how to spend my time”.