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: 71
My favorite lesson here for EA is “don’t sell critical assets”.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/z8H7q3fgY4gCqnpTJ/jeff-bezos-wealth
I think that “low tech” solutions for very poor countries is probably the most neglected area of funding in the world. There have been an “african makers” movement, and the open source ecology project, that suggest the possibility of better low tech for the poorest.
Unfortunately I am not an engineer, so perhaps there is not neglect. But millions of african and probably even latin american farmers are still working almost in neolithical conditions.
Also in Progress Forum: https://progressforum.org/posts/oH4pZ2j5BtmsucjWS/chomsky-vs-pax-democratica
Insect welfare (unlike woke identitarian proliferation) is not a priori wrong. Consciouness is noumenal and consenquently you cannot rule it out from insects. But it looks obvious that conscienciousness is related to nervous system complexity, which depends on brain size.
And complexity grows far more than linearly with “interactions” among parts of a system. I would say that my iphone is as likely to be consciouss as a fly. A fruit fly has 150,000 neurons, a human 16,340,000,000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons
“Secondly, the argument for arthropod welfare is essentially exactly the same as your classic antispeciesist arguments”
That are right, but exagerated. I mean:
Fruit fly: 150,000
Dog: 885,460,000
Human: 16,340,000,000
Torturing animals that have a neuron count around 2-3% of yours is something to be concerned about. But the ratio Human-fruit fly is 0.0009%. And mathematical theories of consciousness suggest strong supperaditivity of conscience, so the ratios probably understate the moral weight difference.
It was accidental, but now… looks funny!
The same problem: arthropods welfare over farmed animals. EA has become some kind of reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism. But the good part of the movement is its portfolio structure. The classical effective altruism has not disapeared.
The Platonic/iconoclastic side will run out of steam in a few years, and the Aristotelian/Ecclesiastic will take over. This has happened before. Anabaptism and Quackerism was the infant illness of the Reformation, but at the end Presbyterians and Episcopalians will be dominant.
It is more than desirable, it is necessary:
As an intelectual, specially if you are a not a professional I really think this is the ideal.
But for the life in general You cannot abolish Game Theory for the same reason you cannot abolish gravity. Strategic behavior is unavoidable.
Your will has effects on the world, of course, but it is determined by a physical system.
I developed that position in the first reference of this post (Freedom under naturalistic dualism).
What are the alternatives? As long as you accept the autonomy of matter (this is physicalism) there are not degrees of freedom left.
I dont know what is the current majority, but physicalism is clearly majority for scientists, and once you are a physicalist either you are epiphenomenalist or eliminativist. Probably there is a majority of self reported eliminativists, but I take the charitable position of thinking that they don’t really understand the issue.
“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.
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).
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:
Absolutely. In my view, support for consociational democracy and institutional innovation is a more general cause, where activism can be effective. Participation in primaries, support for moderates, rank voting, welfare reform (vg. Unemployment benefits contingent on macroeconomic conditions).
PR parliamentarianism at a national level is distant goal in the context of a more comprehensive activism.