andrew_richardson

• andrew_richardsonApr 5, 2022, 9:42 PM

  3 points

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  on: EA and Global Poverty. Let’s Gather Evidence

  Can you elaborate on your endnote that “this discussion won’t work”? What would success look like?

• andrew_richardsonMar 23, 2022, 3:59 PM

  1 point

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  on: an­drew_richard­son’s Shortform

  Effective Alternatives to Street Protests in Russia

  The War in Ukraine has led many people to protest in the streets. In the west, this slightly affects the world by showing support for the war. But within Russia and Belarus, protesters are often arrested, and it’s not clear that they affect public opinion very much.

  This seems like a lost opportunity, because people living in Russia need to be involved in any successful liberalization of the country’s government, which affects the rest of the world through the threat of nuclear war.

  It’s clear that there’s a large number of people who live under a repressive government, who want to change it, and who have gotten the message that marching in the streets with a sign is a good way to do that. They’re willing to risk arrest and imprisonment to do it.

  Assuming that there are more impactful things that those people can do, it would be good if someone figured out what those were and wrote them down clearly, ideally in Russian.

  I don’t know what the answer is, which is why this is filed under Shortform. I don’t have the background to answer a social question like this well.

  EA ideas suggest that most people who go to street protests on the weekend could better serve their goals by pursuing an impactful career, and street dissidents in Russia are probably no exception.

an­drew_richard­son’s Quick takes

• andrew_richardsonFeb 17, 2022, 5:48 AM

  1 point

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  in reply to: DannyBressler’s comment on: Cost Effec­tive­ness of Cli­mate Change Interventions

  Thank you for your responses! I added edits to the essay to reflect this.

  Overall, as I noted in the edits, this exercise has made me shift from being skeptical about all climate change interventions to considering shifting some donations from global poverty to climate change interventions. Not entirely convinced, but it seems a lot more plausibly effective than I first suspected.

  Some things I don’t understand though:

  It makes sense that with a convex harms curve, marginal harms will be worse than this back of the envelope linear calculation suggests. But it’s surprising that they’re 10 times higher. I guess it’s just very nonlinear, as you say, but that’s surprising to me.

  The $1/​ton estimate comes from CATF, which is a lobbying organization. Their cost effectiveness calculations account for money they spend lobbying, but not deadweight loss caused by taxes and regulations. How reasonable is it accept that sort of accounting?

• andrew_richardsonFeb 16, 2022, 9:36 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: DannyBressler’s comment on: Cost Effec­tive­ness of Cli­mate Change Interventions

  Thank you for commenting! I felt like I was relying on your paper without fully understanding it. I’m afraid that much of my post is just an attempt to reinterpret your work.

  It’s encouraging that Founder’s Pledge thinks they can get such a low price on carbon! Interventions at that price really might be effective.

  One major question I had about your paper is; what’s the breakdown of harms between direct deaths, economic harms, and other losses (like non-fatal hunger)? When the WHO estimates 250,000 deaths each year from 2030-2050, should I interpret a multiplier on that to account for other harms like productivity lost from sickness?

  I knew I was making a bad linearity assumption, but I think I might have underestimated how much error it was introducing. If I use my naive model to match your work, I get 50,000 tons/​death, which is an order of magnitude off from your estimate. Is that because of an improper linearity assumption?

  (50,000 tons/​life) = (2 Tt/​°C) * (2.5°C/​AGW) /​ (100 million lives /​ AGW)

  When I have time later, I’ll edit the post to include some of your feedback.

• andrew_richardsonFeb 16, 2022, 3:35 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Frank_R’s comment on: Cost Effec­tive­ness of Cli­mate Change Interventions

  I’m glad they’re looking for charities in the sub $10/​ton range! I suspect there is limited room for funding at that value, but it’s still marginally good. Finding cheaper climate interventions is really the only part of this equation we can control.

  I disagree with your 10^12 QALYs analysis. First, I need a citation on the assumption that livable space will be reduced by 1 billion. Second, the earth isn’t at maximum capacity, and I’m not sure population trends are expected to peak above capacity. Third, you shouldn’t project out 100,000 years without temporal discounting because our ability to predict the far future is bad and we should use temporal discounting to avoid overconfidence there. For example, it’s hard to predict what technology will arise in the future, and assuming a 1% chance that we’ll never develop geo-engineering over such a long timespan is a bad assumption.

  I agree about existential risks. If climate change causes geopolitical stress that increases the chance of nuclear war by even a small amount, that’s obviously bad. I included an x-risk model where we assume climate change kills all humans, but I understand that x-risk would be bad above and beyond the tragic loss of all currently living individuals, so cashing that risk out into dollars per life is maybe incorrect.

  About longtermism in general, I basically think EAs are super overconfident about long term predictions, and don’t apply exponential discounting nearly enough. Even this analysis going out 100 years is probably overconfident because so much is going to change over that time.

Cost Effec­tive­ness of Cli­mate Change Interventions

• andrew_richardsonFeb 26, 2021, 3:56 AM

  17 points

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  on: Why I find longter­mism hard, and what keeps me motivated

  I appreciate how this essay acknowledges a missing mood that I have often felt about long-termist interventions. It makes it hard for me consider the possibility of shifting donations from global poverty to long-termism because that feels like taking something away from people who need it right now. I don’t always find long-termist arguments persuasive, but hearing that you struggle with that feeling but prefer long-term interventions anyway makes it easier to consider them.