Well, I’ve actually sort of slipped into another argument about scale and relative harm, and got you to talk about that.
But that doesn’t respond to your original point, that businesses can do huge harm and EA needs to account for that. So that’s unfair to you.
Trying to answer your point, and using your view about explicitly weighing and balancing harms, there’s another point about “counterfactual harm” that responds to a lot of your concerns.
In the case of a crypto currency company:
If you make a new make crypto company, and become successful by operating a new exchange, even if you become the world’s biggest exchange, it’s unclear how much that actually caused any more mining (e.g. by increasing Bitcoin’s price).
There’s dozens of exchanges already, besides the one you created. So it’s not true that you can assign or attribute 20% or 50% of emissions to money, just from association.
In reality, I think it’s reasonable that the effect is small, so even if the top #1 trading platform wasn’t founded, almost the same amount of mining would occur. (If you track cryptocurrency prices, it seems plausible that no one cares that much about the quality of exchanges).
So the money that would have gone to your platform and been donated to charity, would buy yachts for someone else instead.
(By the way—as part of your crypto currency company, if you make and promote a new cryptocurrency that doesn’t mine, and “stakes” instead, then your cryptocurrency company might accelerate the transition to “staking”, which doesn’t produce greenhouse gasses like mining. Your contribution to greenhouse gasses is negative despite being a crypto company. But I share the sentiment that you can totally roll your eyes at this idea, let’s just leave this point here.)
You mentioned other concerns about other companies. I think it’s too difficult for me to respond, for reasons that aren’t related to the merit of the concern.
Well, I’ve actually sort of slipped into another argument about scale and relative harm, and got you to talk about that.
But that doesn’t respond to your original point, that businesses can do huge harm and EA needs to account for that. So that’s unfair to you.
Trying to answer your point, and using your view about explicitly weighing and balancing harms, there’s another point about “counterfactual harm” that responds to a lot of your concerns.
In the case of a crypto currency company:
If you make a new make crypto company, and become successful by operating a new exchange, even if you become the world’s biggest exchange, it’s unclear how much that actually caused any more mining (e.g. by increasing Bitcoin’s price).
There’s dozens of exchanges already, besides the one you created. So it’s not true that you can assign or attribute 20% or 50% of emissions to money, just from association.
In reality, I think it’s reasonable that the effect is small, so even if the top #1 trading platform wasn’t founded, almost the same amount of mining would occur. (If you track cryptocurrency prices, it seems plausible that no one cares that much about the quality of exchanges).
So the money that would have gone to your platform and been donated to charity, would buy yachts for someone else instead.
(By the way—as part of your crypto currency company, if you make and promote a new cryptocurrency that doesn’t mine, and “stakes” instead, then your cryptocurrency company might accelerate the transition to “staking”, which doesn’t produce greenhouse gasses like mining. Your contribution to greenhouse gasses is negative despite being a crypto company. But I share the sentiment that you can totally roll your eyes at this idea, let’s just leave this point here.)
You mentioned other concerns about other companies. I think it’s too difficult for me to respond, for reasons that aren’t related to the merit of the concern.