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: 70
What about Temistocles (for the Greek victory against the Persians), the Stadtholder King William III (for defeating the reactionary absolutism of Luis XIV and James II), Washington and Madison (for creating the United States), or Churchill for stopping Hitler?
Who shall we praise, those in the past that had the purest intentions, or those who brougth more progress? Some of the people I have selected have biographies full of cruel ambition and large scale crime. All of them were the architects of moral and material progress (mostly defeding the statu quo against reactionary forces).
Too much praise for Altruism, because it gets universal sympathy. But what about Effectiveness?
First of all, thanks for the suggestion. I will post this in the “Voting Theory Forum” (for papers I am also a participant in the “Decision Theory Forum”), and probably in electo wiki (the reddit looks too entropic).
I will read your paper and contact (by mail) you and Dr. Heitzig, including the gated version of my paper and some additional material and probably I will consult you on my next steps.
In any case, as commented before, in my view there is a massive difference between static voting and dynamic voting. With a single vote, Arrow is inevitable. When you vote many times in the i.i.d framework, you can communicate preference intensities, and the Arrow problem can be addressed. Unfortunately, when decisions interact, policy coordination by simple (sequential) voting looks intractable to me.
Thank you very much for your comment,
Arturo
The entire EMP problem is massively under researched and under funded. And there are both natural (Carrington Event) and man made (nuclear detonation) scenarios leading to it.
Both Lions and mosquitoes are enemies. As long as they are contained, I can tolerate them. Mosquitoes are not contained, so I want to nuke them from orbit.
In fact, my whole point is that while chosing is a very real concept, and it is important for ethical reasoning, we really don’t chose in the sense “I could have done otherwise” in this physicalist universe.
The fact that lions and mosquitoes can not change goes against them. The more determined is your hostility, more reasons I have to answer in kind.
Really I wanted to avoid goint into details (because I dont want to take insect sentience too seriously: that would be a defeat!), but this time is impossible:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nY7oAdy5odfGqE7mQ/freedom-under-naturalistic-dualism
:-)
If they are conscious they “chose” to do what they do. If not, they have not moral value.
The moralist question about what the mosquito chose while in surface is almost comical, points out to the serious problem of any extension of the moral circle to non reciprocating individuals.
In this case, it is totally unlikely the mosquito is conscious at all, but even if it is, how much should you accommodate its dangerous predation ?
But if they “don’t chose” how much do they “feel”? There is some tension in giving personhood but not responsability.
They are our worst enemy, killing us by the billions. Flying syringes.
https://www.amazon.com/Mosquito-Human-History-Deadliest-Predator/dp/1524743410
I would nuke them from orbit, no matter the consequences .
The core of EA is to provide tools for optimizing the marginal impact of altruistic individual efforts given a large array of preferences and beliefs.
The most natural application is selecting optimal recipients of donations for any possible worldview.
Chaos (as much as the second principle of thermodynamics and the efficient market hypothesis) is mostly a negative result. It is a wall, that the scientist has to face, not a tool.
It is not very surprising that there are not “applications”. More generally, principles about complex systems are useful in a fuzzy way.
What are the applications of Darwin evolution? Perhaps all modern biology, perhaps only genetic optimization algorithms. Difficult to say: it is huge and fuzzy.
The field equations describing the universe as a dynamic system (plus randomness from the Born rule) leave no room for anything else than epiphenomenal conscience. Of course, when you “want” your arm to move, it moves because the system that creates the “will” and the system that “moves” the arm are intertwined, so you can describe the movement both in purely materialistic terms (as the Laplace demon would do) or in terms of a cascade of “conscient decisions”. But the whole point of the epiphenomenism is that being the matter autonomous, the materialistic description is consistent and sufficient by itself to describe and predict the events.
I totally disagree with the argument. Probably consciousness is super-additive, so bigger animals are massively more conscious:
On the other hand, our treatment of Ruminants (that are feed on pasture) is far better than pigs and chickens. This is a good argument to reshuffle consumption from pigs and chicken to either dairy or ruminants meat (cows and sheep).
Vaclav Smil. I would ask him what is the best intervention to improve global welfare, what are the largest risk, etc. A guy that truly has the biosphere in his brain.
We shall prepare for electromagnetic pulse events and for cooling events because additionally to the natural risk, they are consequences of a potential nuclear war.
Absolutely great! Lots of talk about human capital, but this is a precisely how to use the concept!
Yes, absolutely. All in with portfolio theory for all aplications!
This is only necessary for funds obtained by compulsion or for large indivisible expenditures that need coordination.
For voluntary contributions, direct allocation of individual funds work as a (probably optimal!) moral parliament, doesn’t it?
You can pay people on ideology and community prestige, the sweetest currency. That is precisely what EA can issue, and for the most valuable professionals in our time.
First of all, thank you for the work. I hope a peer reviewed version will be available. I find nuclear war modelling a most neglected research field. I have 3 comments:
We really need to understand how likely are different nuclear war scenarios. After some review, I have found this reference, as a relatively comprehensive primer, but for the US I am sure there is a lot of information available and discussion on nuclear war scenarios.
What about the Electromagnetic Pulse? For all scenarios different from the full Russia—NATO exchange, it looks an important non-blast effect. Some people says that the electric grid is lost for months! Do we lose also chips, and everything depending on them?
What about radioactive elements in the food chain? I remember much discussion in the 80s, including Sajarov estimates on cancer increases, but now it is not considered.
I really think thay comprehensive nuclear war modelling is a something we shall spend between hundreds of millions and billions, but the field is almost a desert. Nuclear winter is almost the only issue extensively commented. I would be very happy to help with any development, but I really don’t know who is working on this.
In terms of extinction I will not challenge your estimates, but in terms of “going back to the Middle Age with not clear road to recovery”, in my view nuclear war is massively above the rest. I wrote this two pieces that also explore how “AI” is perhaps the only strategy two avoid nuclear war (one and two).
William III began his career very probably by killing the de Witt brothers, and was always a very dry and extremely arrogant character. In Ireland probably he is still hated (by the Catholics).
But probably he and Newton are the most important persons of the Modern Era.
This is the dark side of Christianity (either religious or secular): salvation is only about ethics, so the rest or accomplishment is at most secondary, often suspicious.