A lot of the conflict in the Arab spring was driven by increased food priceses. If we could find a way to produce food cheaper, the risk of conflicts like the Syrian conflict would be reduced.
Food makes up a high percentage of the budget of poor people. If it’s praise can be reduced that would have similar effects than GiveDirectly. Poor people would have more free money.
I don’t think we need evidence of resources getting more scarce to justify working on resource production.
If Helion get’s fusion to work, we will have cheaper electricity and that will decrease production costs for lot’s of goods. That means it’s cheaper to produce those goods for poor people. It’s also cheaper to produce goods for rich people.
When it comes to metals like iron, astroid mining could drastically reduce costs and thereby create wealth.
The historical track record of people making fortunes in resources also indicates that it’s a field where individuals can produce large amounts of value for society.
“A lot of the conflict in the Arab spring was driven by increased food prices.”
That sounds plausible, but what’s the evidence that it’s true? Determining cause and effect in a system like that seems quite tricky.
“If we could find a way to produce food cheaper, the risk of conflicts like the Syrian conflict would be reduced.”
Are there any studies seeing if one predicts the other in a time series?
“I don’t think we need evidence of resources getting more scarce to justify working on resource production.”
As a species we already are working on resource production though—a lot. My claim is that a) the stronger the signals of future scarcity, the more we should invest in trying to produce even more; b) there already exists a system that reliably does this. I think both claims are very strong.
“The historical track record of people making fortunes in resources also indicates that it’s a field where individuals can produce large amounts of value for society.”
I wouldn’t deny you can do good producing timber, food, etc. But what’s the evidence that entrepreneurs working on commodities make more money than people contributing to other products?
That sounds plausible, but what’s the evidence that it’s true? Determining cause and effect in a system like that seems quite tricky.
I think there are multiple arguments why we can believe that to be true. Very corrupt political systems like Iran make the political decision to subvention food prices. Do they do it, because those governments want to be nice to their population? Maybe, maybe the also recognize that the government loses stability if it’s population doesn’t have enough to eat because food prices rise.
While citation by authority isn’t prove it, Peter Thiel is well regarded: I think the Arab Spring, I think the fundamental driver for that was the food prices went up 50 percent and people were going to starve and I think it’s smug and complacent to pretend that it was anything other than that.
As a species we already are working on resource production though—a lot.
Overall we are certainly spending resources on resource production. That however doesn’t mean that there aren’t areas in resource production that are underfunded.
Sam Altman decided two years ago that resource production is an important field. What did he do? He went out and talks to people in the field of nuclear energy. Helion became a YCombinator company and Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital fund funded Helion.
Sam Altman then went on to be chairman of the board of Helion. Sam Altman did same thing with uPower.
Sam Altman isn’t chairman of the board of any other YCombinator company. I’m not sure whether Sam Altman self-labels as EA but I think in practice he very much lives the EA values.
I think Sam Altman did make that decision because he rightly thought that the projects of Helion and uPower were otherwise neglegted.
Sam Altman argues in a post about Energy: I think a lot about how important cheap, safe, and abundant energy is to our future. A lot of problems—economic, environmental, war, poverty, food and water availability, bad side effects of globalization, etc.—are deeply related to the energy problem. I believe that if you could choose one single technological development to help the most people in the world, radically better energy generation is probably it. Throughout history, quality of life has gone up as the cost of energy has gone down. [...]
In addition to Peter Thiel and Sam Altman there’s also Elon Musk.
Both Solar City and Tesla are about creating a sustainable energy future.
SpaceX isn’t directly about resource production but it’s about spending a lot less resources for going to space. Indirectly it might further be about resource production via asteroid mining in the future.
I wouldn’t deny you can do good producing timber, food, etc. But what’s the evidence that entrepreneurs working on commodities make more money than people contributing to other products?
I don’t think that Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Bill Gates or Elon Musk focus on producing commodities when they invest resources into the cause of energy scarcity.
If you look at more efficient food production I don’t think RowBot’s Kent Cavender-Bares focuses on commodity production either.
PS: (this forum uses markup. If you start a line with > it formats quotes nicely.
Peter Thiel is widely regarded as a businessman, not an economist or IR theorist.
All your examples are just businessmen, anyway. There’s entrepreneurs in every sector and again it’s still not clear that energy is the most lucrative field.
Peter Thiel is widely regarded as a businessman, not an economist or IR theorist.
Why do you think an economist understands more about the world than a businessman that makes his fortune based on predictions about how things evolve?
He might not do IR theory but he’s a member of the steering committee of Bilderberg which makes him actively involved in interantional relations.
As far as Peter Thiel being just a businessman I think it would be likely that this forum wouldn’t exist the way it does if it Peter Thiel hadn’t donated money for causes he considers good for society.
Lastly the list of people isn’t random. If you show any person in this community the list of those names and ask what they have in common the likely answer wouldn’t be that they are all invested into energy.
It might be that they are all smart enough to be public about treating AI risk at a big danger. They are all people who rationally thought about how to do good in the world.
Why do you think an economist understands more about the world than a businessman that makes his fortune based on predictions about how things evolve?
Because financiers look at things in the short term—they look for fluctuations in prices and policies over a scale of days, months or <1 decade at most. What we’re doing here is something that has basically nothing to do with the vagaries of the market and everything to do with long term economic trends in resource production and consumption.
He might not do IR theory but he’s a member of the steering committee of Bilderberg which makes him actively involved in interantional relations.
Well, great. Sure the guy is smart, but he’s no better than the scores or hundreds of other businessmen who have similar credentials. Tons of those businessmen invest in oil and gas and other commodities and think they are going to continue to be strong industries with strong resource bases, rising demand and minimal environmental concerns; others don’t invest in them because they expect availability to remain high.
Tons of these businessmen also invest in all sorts of other things besides oil and gas. People invest in healthcare, technology, retail, aerospace, and all sorts of other things, but it doesn’t mean there’s an impending shortage of any of those things. Even the people that you mention don’t appear to explicitly believe that energy shortages are the most important thing to worry about or invest in: Bill Gates has invested in tons of projects and supports plenty of initiatives besides nuclear power. Wiblin isn’t saying that energy is unimportant, he’s saying that it’s not the most important issue, and Gates hasn’t demonstrated prioritization of energy over the disjunction of other issues. As for Musk, saying “SpaceX isn’t directly about resource production but it’s about spending a lot less resources for going to space” means nothing—it’s like saying that Walmart is trying to save resources because they’re about spending a lot less resources for delivering manufactured products to consumers.
Again, sure these people are smart. But they’re not geniuses, and they screw up too, and of course they have little directly relevant formal education and no research experience pertaining to these issues. Just because they want to do good in the world (who doesn’t?) and EA-ish doesn’t mean they’re right about everything. It doesn’t qualify them to be better authorities than a typical researcher in the field.
A lot of the conflict in the Arab spring was driven by increased food priceses. If we could find a way to produce food cheaper, the risk of conflicts like the Syrian conflict would be reduced. Food makes up a high percentage of the budget of poor people. If it’s praise can be reduced that would have similar effects than GiveDirectly. Poor people would have more free money.
I don’t think we need evidence of resources getting more scarce to justify working on resource production.
If Helion get’s fusion to work, we will have cheaper electricity and that will decrease production costs for lot’s of goods. That means it’s cheaper to produce those goods for poor people. It’s also cheaper to produce goods for rich people.
When it comes to metals like iron, astroid mining could drastically reduce costs and thereby create wealth.
The historical track record of people making fortunes in resources also indicates that it’s a field where individuals can produce large amounts of value for society.
“A lot of the conflict in the Arab spring was driven by increased food prices.”
That sounds plausible, but what’s the evidence that it’s true? Determining cause and effect in a system like that seems quite tricky.
“If we could find a way to produce food cheaper, the risk of conflicts like the Syrian conflict would be reduced.”
Are there any studies seeing if one predicts the other in a time series?
“I don’t think we need evidence of resources getting more scarce to justify working on resource production.”
As a species we already are working on resource production though—a lot. My claim is that a) the stronger the signals of future scarcity, the more we should invest in trying to produce even more; b) there already exists a system that reliably does this. I think both claims are very strong.
“The historical track record of people making fortunes in resources also indicates that it’s a field where individuals can produce large amounts of value for society.”
I wouldn’t deny you can do good producing timber, food, etc. But what’s the evidence that entrepreneurs working on commodities make more money than people contributing to other products?
I think there are multiple arguments why we can believe that to be true. Very corrupt political systems like Iran make the political decision to subvention food prices. Do they do it, because those governments want to be nice to their population? Maybe, maybe the also recognize that the government loses stability if it’s population doesn’t have enough to eat because food prices rise.
While citation by authority isn’t prove it, Peter Thiel is well regarded:
I think the Arab Spring, I think the fundamental driver for that was the food prices went up 50 percent and people were going to starve and I think it’s smug and complacent to pretend that it was anything other than that.
I opened a question on Skeptics.Stackexchange that might produce further evidence.
Overall we are certainly spending resources on resource production. That however doesn’t mean that there aren’t areas in resource production that are underfunded.
Sam Altman decided two years ago that resource production is an important field. What did he do? He went out and talks to people in the field of nuclear energy. Helion became a YCombinator company and Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital fund funded Helion. Sam Altman then went on to be chairman of the board of Helion. Sam Altman did same thing with uPower.
Sam Altman isn’t chairman of the board of any other YCombinator company. I’m not sure whether Sam Altman self-labels as EA but I think in practice he very much lives the EA values.
I think Sam Altman did make that decision because he rightly thought that the projects of Helion and uPower were otherwise neglegted.
Sam Altman argues in a post about Energy:
I think a lot about how important cheap, safe, and abundant energy is to our future. A lot of problems—economic, environmental, war, poverty, food and water availability, bad side effects of globalization, etc.—are deeply related to the energy problem. I believe that if you could choose one single technological development to help the most people in the world, radically better energy generation is probably it. Throughout history, quality of life has gone up as the cost of energy has gone down. [...]
In addition to Peter Thiel and Sam Altman there’s also Elon Musk. Both Solar City and Tesla are about creating a sustainable energy future.
SpaceX isn’t directly about resource production but it’s about spending a lot less resources for going to space. Indirectly it might further be about resource production via asteroid mining in the future.
Bill Gates considers nuclear energy also a valuable cause.
I don’t think that Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Bill Gates or Elon Musk focus on producing commodities when they invest resources into the cause of energy scarcity.
If you look at more efficient food production I don’t think RowBot’s Kent Cavender-Bares focuses on commodity production either.
PS: (this forum uses markup. If you start a line with
>
it formats quotes nicely.Peter Thiel is widely regarded as a businessman, not an economist or IR theorist.
All your examples are just businessmen, anyway. There’s entrepreneurs in every sector and again it’s still not clear that energy is the most lucrative field.
Why do you think an economist understands more about the world than a businessman that makes his fortune based on predictions about how things evolve? He might not do IR theory but he’s a member of the steering committee of Bilderberg which makes him actively involved in interantional relations.
As far as Peter Thiel being just a businessman I think it would be likely that this forum wouldn’t exist the way it does if it Peter Thiel hadn’t donated money for causes he considers good for society.
Lastly the list of people isn’t random. If you show any person in this community the list of those names and ask what they have in common the likely answer wouldn’t be that they are all invested into energy.
It might be that they are all smart enough to be public about treating AI risk at a big danger. They are all people who rationally thought about how to do good in the world.
Because financiers look at things in the short term—they look for fluctuations in prices and policies over a scale of days, months or <1 decade at most. What we’re doing here is something that has basically nothing to do with the vagaries of the market and everything to do with long term economic trends in resource production and consumption.
Well, great. Sure the guy is smart, but he’s no better than the scores or hundreds of other businessmen who have similar credentials. Tons of those businessmen invest in oil and gas and other commodities and think they are going to continue to be strong industries with strong resource bases, rising demand and minimal environmental concerns; others don’t invest in them because they expect availability to remain high.
Tons of these businessmen also invest in all sorts of other things besides oil and gas. People invest in healthcare, technology, retail, aerospace, and all sorts of other things, but it doesn’t mean there’s an impending shortage of any of those things. Even the people that you mention don’t appear to explicitly believe that energy shortages are the most important thing to worry about or invest in: Bill Gates has invested in tons of projects and supports plenty of initiatives besides nuclear power. Wiblin isn’t saying that energy is unimportant, he’s saying that it’s not the most important issue, and Gates hasn’t demonstrated prioritization of energy over the disjunction of other issues. As for Musk, saying “SpaceX isn’t directly about resource production but it’s about spending a lot less resources for going to space” means nothing—it’s like saying that Walmart is trying to save resources because they’re about spending a lot less resources for delivering manufactured products to consumers.
Again, sure these people are smart. But they’re not geniuses, and they screw up too, and of course they have little directly relevant formal education and no research experience pertaining to these issues. Just because they want to do good in the world (who doesn’t?) and EA-ish doesn’t mean they’re right about everything. It doesn’t qualify them to be better authorities than a typical researcher in the field.