I am an Economist working at the Financial Risk Department of Banco de España (Spanish Central Bank). I was born in 1977 and I have recently finished my PhD Thesis (See ORCID webpage: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1623-0957 ).
Arturo Macias
Karma: −23
If you are right for a while we have the recipe for population stabilization. Too good to be true!
In the long run, of course, Darwin always bring back Malthus.
Do we have a curve of the stress intensity of stress of mother cows after separation from the calf (at least by age of calf). I would try to identify neural indicators of stress (you need to map stress signals between humans and cows), and graph them under different circuntances.
More generally, a full predictive model of bovine stress could be useful to assess what can be done to measure and improve the cow conditions (how better is a free range vs. a farmed cow).
In my perspective, there exists a significant disparity between “intensive animal farming” and other forms of animal utilization. Animals enduring their lives in stressful, overcrowded, and unsanitary environments, often subjected to mutilation and neglect, represent a distinct horror that humanity has introduced to the world. EA utilitarian perspective allows for graduated animalism (see here).
Farmers in the animalist coalition
I simply cannot understand how some people considers the 2024 a “normal” election.
Here I put the abstract: the post was a little bit too long:
On the contrary, the effective proposal for the high corporate owner’s aristocracy is: i) the preservation of their own existence with a sustainable birth rate, a sense of social purpose and focus on wealth preservation, ii) support for a republican corporate governance inclusive of all stakeholders, and in the case of platforms, designed to foster a competitive ecology, iii) genuine altruism in the use of political influence, iv) the use of business surplus more for conspicuous (and effective!) altruism than for conspicuous consumption or display. Let it be clear, however, that utilitarianism recommends moderation, never asceticism.
I wrote this thinking in a case like yours. I hope it can be useful to you:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/z8H7q3fgY4gCqnpTJ/jeff-bezos-wealth
This post has been more commented in Less Wrong:
The agenda setting problem in my view is imposible to solve. Read the second paper (the ssrn pre print “the ideal political workflow”.
As long as voting in arbitrary “words” spaces is allowed, all our mathematical models are simply treading water.
My opinion on SV-PAYW, is that as a voting system is more or less as good as anything can be. But the structuring of voting spaces is more important than the voting system.
Storable Votes with a Pay as you win mechanism: a contribution for institutional design
The American Hegemony is the best geopolitical arragement in World history. America is “the last, best hope” of Mankind, and universal Pax Democratica is the only possible way out of Nuclear Risk, apart from being ruled by a benevolent AGI.
Fascinanting work, while I think that too much work is spent on nuclear winter, and not enough in the far more likely (and far more tractable) problem of the impact of Electromagnetic Pulses. Nuclear Winter scenarios probably would imply such breakdown of social order that not much can be done
On the other hand, if EMPs are devastating enough, even a small nuclear war can leave a good percentage of our infrastructure destroyed. EMP is a supercatastrophic (but non existential risk) that in my view has the best cost-benefit ratio in the entire spectrum of Global risks. It is also a risk specially suited for engineers, because you need a deep understanding of electromagnetism and electric technology.
Well, I hope philosophers are aware of how much ideas are super-structure of the productive forces and the social relations! I am far from being a Marxist, but I suppose this is a commonplace on modern Western historiography...
There is a case against the notion of moral progress: while the moral circle as a general rule expands with the general empowerment of Mankind, we also become more efficient at oppression. The XVII century Europeans created the Reform and the Glorious Revolution, and the same time their expanded capacities allowed for the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
In my view, the European expansion was net negative until around the end of the XIX century, and while currently human progress is undeniable, when you consider animals, probably we are worse than ever. I am not a radical animalist: I have doubts on the sentience of even birds, but the expansion of animal farming of large vertebrates perhaps has undo in “total” moral terms the undeniable (and massive) human progress.
If you realistic about your plans, no matter how extreme are your ideas or preferences, your actions will be inevitably moderate. Reality impose so narrow limits to what can be attained that you always end up in moderate action of failure.
Dear Joe,
I am reading the series, and I want to point out that to some extent there was a polar opposite to Lewis that was Olaf Stapledon. Lewis admired him and his Christinity was probably influenced by the perfect depiction of cosmic indifference that Stapledon gave us. For me “First and Last Men” is still an absolute masterpiece.
An additional comment is that I wrote a piece on freedom under naturalistic dualism that probably you could find interesting (still looking how to publish it in a more formal way).
Also posted in Progress Forum: https://progressforum.org/posts/w53TbzghGWFvK8g6K/electric-vehicles-and-renewable-electricity
Electric Vehicles and renewable electricity
Still, I would say my two posts linked above are not so difficult to read.
“The majority of farmed animals (85% in the UK, 99% in the US) are factory-farmed (i.e. raised in the most intensive conditions)”
But the majority of cows and sheep are not factory farmed. All chickens are factory farmed and they are many. On the other hand, ruminants are often raised from pastures, as anybody driving in the coutryside can check by herself.