#42 - Dr Amanda Askell on moral empathy, the value of information & the ethics of infinity

PhD Experience and Academic Career

• Amanda Askell completed a PhD in philosophy at NYU over six and a half years, focusing on infinite ethics, having previously studied at Oxford.
• Askell describes the US PhD model as demanding singular focus; she found it difficult to maintain her previous ability to "graze intellectually" across multiple topics simultaneously.
• She attributes her ability to focus deeply on one topic to a compensatory mechanism where she compartmentalizes heavily, neglecting administrative tasks like email to preserve mental energy for research.
• Askell expresses uncertainty about pursuing a philosophy PhD again, citing the high time investment and the narrow career trajectory that primarily leads to academic jobs, which are currently scarce.
• The academic job market is described as having a surplus of temporary adjunct positions and a shortage of permanent tenure-track roles, making the path highly risky.
• Non-academic careers for philosophy PhDs are often hindered by a lack of clear external models, as the degree is perceived broadly rather than as specialized training for specific industries like think tanks or tech.
• Askell plans to avoid immediate tenure-track applications to maintain an "exploratory" phase, allowing her to test her skills and interests across different high-impact areas before committing.

The Problem of Moral Cluelessness

• Moral cluelessness refers to the difficulty of predicting the long-term, indirect consequences of actions, which may dwarf direct impacts.
• A classic example is the "ancestors paradox": saving one life can alter the identities of the entire future human population, potentially changing the course of history in unpredictable ways.
• The "new puzzle" of cluelessness challenges the "principle of indifference," which assumes that positive and negative unforeseen long-term outcomes cancel each other out.
• Askell argues that the principle of indifference is often invalid because we may have reason to believe long-term effects have a consistent direction (e.g., economic intervention) rather than random positive/negative outcomes.
• She suggests that the rational response to cluelessness is not necessarily to use imprecise probabilities (intervals) but to actively seek information, as the "value of information" in these domains is extremely high.
• If the value of information is high, it can justify investing in experimental interventions with less existing evidence, provided they generate learnable data, rather than sticking only to well-evidenced interventions.
• Askell notes that even if research provides data, the fundamental chaos of the long-term future may mean we never fully solve the problem of cluelessness, though gathering information remains valuable.

Synthesizing Rationalism and Social Justice

• Askell advocates for steel-manning social justice arguments, arguing that many conclusions align with effective altruism and utilitarianism when supported by historical and analytical evidence rather than caricatured rhetoric.
• She identifies a key tension in social justice discourse: the tendency for opponents to make controversial claims via implication without owning the full implication, leading to unproductive debate.
• Askell emphasizes the need for "moral empathy" in discourse, suggesting that people should assume good faith and engage with the actual moral premises of their opponents (e.g., the belief that abortion is murder) rather than dismissing them as mere preferences or bad faith.
• She critiques the "outrage cycle" on the internet, arguing for a norm of proportionate feedback where critics express disagreement without adding to disproportionate pile-ons that silence controversial but potentially valuable viewpoints.
• Askell suggests that social justice activists would benefit from adopting a stronger prioritization mindset and broadening their scope to include neglected causes like global poverty.
• Conversely, she argues that those skeptical of social justice should adopt more epistemic humility and engage with historical research regarding systemic inequalities.

Infinite Ethics and Impossibility Results

• Infinite ethics deals with scenarios where an infinite number of agents have finite well-being levels, or finite agents have infinite well-being, leading to paradoxes not present in finite ethics.
• Askell's thesis identifies a fundamental tension between five plausible axioms: the Pareto principle (sensitivity), the permutation principle, the qualitative nature of value, transitivity, and completeness.
• She concludes that it is impossible to satisfy all five axioms simultaneously in infinite worlds, leading to an "impossibility result" where some infinite worlds are fundamentally ethically incomparable.
• While some theories suggest "infinitarian paralysis" (where all actions yield infinite utility and thus no action is better than another), Askell argues the Pareto principle is more fundamental and rejects summing total utility in infinite contexts.
• Dropping any of the axioms creates significant issues: rejecting transitivity leads to cycles, rejecting Pareto contradicts a core intuition, and accepting incomparability limits the ability to rank actions.
• Askell suggests that these puzzles affect "subjective permissibility," meaning they apply to our decision-making even if we are uncertain about whether the world is actually infinite.
• She views these results as a "partial update" away from strong moral realism, as they suggest no single ethical theory can satisfy all our intuitions across all physically possible worlds.
• The primary implication for effective altruism is not immediate action on infinite outcomes, but the need to keep research paths open to resolve these foundational ethical paradoxes.

Career Philosophy and Future Directions

• Askell plans to prioritize "research freedom" aligned with her values, noting that academic tenure-track roles often constrain topic selection to what is publishable in top journals rather than what is socially urgent.
• She is currently pivoting her research focus toward AI ethics and policy, viewing it as an urgent and tractable area for high-impact work.
• Askell adopts an "explore/exploit" strategy for her career, intentionally choosing roles that maximize skill acquisition and learning new areas over those that offer immediate security or prestige.
• She acknowledges the necessity of job and income security to maintain psychological safety, noting that her previous "scatterbrained" approach to basic needs was unsustainable.
• Regarding the utility of philosophy degrees, she argues that for non-academic careers, specialized degrees (e.g., in economics) may offer better cost-benefit ratios than a 6-year philosophy PhD due to the latter's heavy focus on general teaching skills.
• Askell suggests that philosophy training improves analytical and communicative skills, but that these are often selection effects rather than solely the result of the curriculum.
• She offers a pragmatic exam tip: utilizing strong verbal memory to memorize pre-written essay answers can be a successful strategy for students with poor performance under time pressure and stress.