I like this post, there are many points I agree with:
Some aspects of work in global health and development may come at the cost of increased factory farming, harming animal welfare goals.
I think longtermist EAs ignore animals too much.
This is very important, there are conflicting goals and objectives between EA causes, and it’s important to recognize that. Basically, given how things currently work, promoting economic growth means a continuation of factory farming, at least for the coming decades. This is a very important point.
19.) I think longtermists / x-risk scenario thinking ignores too much the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence
I just wrote a post about that, that came to the conclusion that space colonization is really unlikely because of limits on energy (this would be an answer to the Fermi paradox). This would apply to extraterrestrial civilizations as well (probably a good news).
The post also describes another limit (that could be added to the list), which is that EAs tend to assume that current trends of economic and material growth will continue, despite the fact that materials and fossil fuels are finite, and that replacing them by renewable sources is extremely difficult.
Of course, there are arguments that we can grow GDP without growing materials and energy, but for the last 50 years there has been a strong correlation between GDP and energy use. To paraphrase you, I feel common counters are a bit like “Yeah but we can just grow with less energy and less material”. But then nothing actually change. I’d like a strong rebuttal to this.
I like this post, there are many points I agree with:
This is very important, there are conflicting goals and objectives between EA causes, and it’s important to recognize that. Basically, given how things currently work, promoting economic growth means a continuation of factory farming, at least for the coming decades. This is a very important point.
I just wrote a post about that, that came to the conclusion that space colonization is really unlikely because of limits on energy (this would be an answer to the Fermi paradox). This would apply to extraterrestrial civilizations as well (probably a good news).
The post also describes another limit (that could be added to the list), which is that EAs tend to assume that current trends of economic and material growth will continue, despite the fact that materials and fossil fuels are finite, and that replacing them by renewable sources is extremely difficult.
Of course, there are arguments that we can grow GDP without growing materials and energy, but for the last 50 years there has been a strong correlation between GDP and energy use. To paraphrase you, I feel common counters are a bit like “Yeah but we can just grow with less energy and less material”. But then nothing actually change. I’d like a strong rebuttal to this.