I wish we could finally strike off cryonics from the list. The most popular answers in the linked ‘Is there a hedonistic utilitarian case for Cryonics? (Discuss)’ essay seem to be essentially ‘no’.
The claim that ‘it might also divert money from wealthy people who would otherwise spend it on more selfish things’ gives no reason to suppose that spending money on yourself in this context is somehow unselfish.
As for ‘Further, cryonics might help people take long-term risks more seriously’. Sure. So might giving people better health, or, say, funding long-term risk outreach. At least equally as plausibly to me, constantly telling people that they don’t fear death enough and should sign up for cryonics seems likely to make people fear death more, which seems like a pretty miserable thing to inflict on them.
I just don’t see any positive case for this to be on the list. It seems to be a vestige of a cultural habit among Less Wrongers that has no place in the EA world.
The goal of this list was to be comprehensive, not opinionated. We’re thinking about ways of doing ranking/evaluation (particularly, with forecasting) going forward. I’d also encourage others to give it their own go, it’s a tricky problem.
One reason to lean towards comprehension is to make it more evident which causes are quite bad. I’m sure, given the number, that many of these causes are quite poor. Hopefully systematic analysis would both help identify these, and then make a strong case for their placement.
The Cause Candidates tag has these criteria. You’ll note that Cryonics qualifies, as would e.g. each of kbog’s political proposals, even though I vehemently disagree with them. I think that the case for this is similar to the case in Rule Thinkers In, Not Out
Can you spell both of these points out for me? Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place, but I don’t see anything in that tag description that recommends criteria for cause candidates.
As for Scott’s post, I don’t see anything more than a superficial analogy. His argument is something like ‘the weight by which we improve our estimation of someone for their having a great idea should be much greater than the weight by which we downgrade our estimation of them for having a stupid idea’. Whether or not one agrees with this, what does it have to do with including on this list an expensive luxury that seemingly no-one has argued for on (effective) altruistic grounds?
Right, the criteria in the tag are almost maximally inclusive (“posts which specifically suggest, consider or present a cause area, cause, or intervention. This is independent of the quality of the suggestion, the community consensus about it, or the level of specificity”). This is because I want to distinguish between the gathering step and the evaluation step. I happen to agree that cryonics right now doesn’t feel that promising, but I’d still include it because some evaluation processes might judge it to be valuable after all. Incidentally, this has happened before for me, seeing an idea which struck me as really weird and then later coming to appreciate it (fish welfare)
Per Scott Alexander’s post, considering the N least promising cause candidates in my list would be like a box which has a low chance of producing a really good idea. It will fail most of the time, but produce good ideas otherwise.
Also, cryonics has been discussed in the context of EA, one just has to follow the links in the post:
I wish we could finally strike off cryonics from the list. The most popular answers in the linked ‘Is there a hedonistic utilitarian case for Cryonics? (Discuss)’ essay seem to be essentially ‘no’.
The claim that ‘it might also divert money from wealthy people who would otherwise spend it on more selfish things’ gives no reason to suppose that spending money on yourself in this context is somehow unselfish.
As for ‘Further, cryonics might help people take long-term risks more seriously’. Sure. So might giving people better health, or, say, funding long-term risk outreach. At least equally as plausibly to me, constantly telling people that they don’t fear death enough and should sign up for cryonics seems likely to make people fear death more, which seems like a pretty miserable thing to inflict on them.
I just don’t see any positive case for this to be on the list. It seems to be a vestige of a cultural habit among Less Wrongers that has no place in the EA world.
The goal of this list was to be comprehensive, not opinionated. We’re thinking about ways of doing ranking/evaluation (particularly, with forecasting) going forward. I’d also encourage others to give it their own go, it’s a tricky problem.
One reason to lean towards comprehension is to make it more evident which causes are quite bad. I’m sure, given the number, that many of these causes are quite poor. Hopefully systematic analysis would both help identify these, and then make a strong case for their placement.
Then I would suggest being more clear about what it’s comprehensive of, ie by having clear criteria for inclusion.
The Cause Candidates tag has these criteria. You’ll note that Cryonics qualifies, as would e.g. each of kbog’s political proposals, even though I vehemently disagree with them. I think that the case for this is similar to the case in Rule Thinkers In, Not Out
Can you spell both of these points out for me? Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place, but I don’t see anything in that tag description that recommends criteria for cause candidates.
As for Scott’s post, I don’t see anything more than a superficial analogy. His argument is something like ‘the weight by which we improve our estimation of someone for their having a great idea should be much greater than the weight by which we downgrade our estimation of them for having a stupid idea’. Whether or not one agrees with this, what does it have to do with including on this list an expensive luxury that seemingly no-one has argued for on (effective) altruistic grounds?
Right, the criteria in the tag are almost maximally inclusive (“posts which specifically suggest, consider or present a cause area, cause, or intervention. This is independent of the quality of the suggestion, the community consensus about it, or the level of specificity”). This is because I want to distinguish between the gathering step and the evaluation step. I happen to agree that cryonics right now doesn’t feel that promising, but I’d still include it because some evaluation processes might judge it to be valuable after all. Incidentally, this has happened before for me, seeing an idea which struck me as really weird and then later coming to appreciate it (fish welfare)
Per Scott Alexander’s post, considering the N least promising cause candidates in my list would be like a box which has a low chance of producing a really good idea. It will fail most of the time, but produce good ideas otherwise.
Also, cryonics has been discussed in the context of EA, one just has to follow the links in the post:
https://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/07/cryonics-as-charity.html
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Q7PFyobNPwqBsma9g/effective-altruism-and-cryonics-contest-results