Echoing Ian’s comment, I’d appreciate if you could share more information about your background. I understand that you want to remain anonymous but maybe you could share how you’re connected to folks on the transition team, potentially how influential you expect your recommendations to be, if there are any departments you have more or less influence in, etc. so folks can judge whether they want to expose all of this info to you.
atlasunshrugged
Karma: 243
Agreed, from the foreign policy folks I follow who focus on the region that one seems especially dangerous, especially if you care about stopping the usage of nuclear weapons which would be somewhat more likely in an India v. Pakistan conflict given it’s likely Pakistan would lose a war waged with purely conventional weaponry
Because of the likelihood of it occurring or because the potential for human/economic damage or both? It also is concerning to me given that India would probably be somewhat more inclined to use nuclear weapons in a China v. India conflict than America would be (although who knows with the current admin), especially if Pakistan started making moves at the same time as India was focused on China. But I’m not sure why China would really push a conflict, that means they have to move huge amounts of men and materials to the west and potentially leave an opening on their coasts, plus they import huge amounts of energy products that flow past India that would surely get massively disrupted in the case of a conflict and don’t have that strong of a blue water force projection capability as the US and others who would probably come to India’s aid
No worries, I was just curious—I’ve tried to find data on things like projections of lives lost in combat between the US and China and can’t find anything good (best I found was a Rand study from a few years ago but it didn’t really give projections of actual deaths) so was curious if you had gotten your hands on that data to make your projections. Sorry for the misunderstanding, I had assumed China/US conflict but makes sense—probably anyone with nuclear capabilities who gets into a serious foreign entanglement will create an extremely dangerous situation for the world.
For the author, please correct me if I’m wrong, but the reference to Great Power Conflict is most likely the U.S. vs. China—is that right (just inferring based on the Graham Allison recommendation)? I’m curious if you a more in depth rationale or data available for this? Mostly, I’m curious about some other outcomes and how harmful they are—for instance, what happens if we avoid great power conflict but in doing so allow China to become the dominant world power and spread their authoritarian governance model even further than they do today? What are the expected deaths and the level of economic destruction of a conflict with China today? If the likelihood of a conflict is significantly high and the level of potential destruction continues to rise as China gains more and more military and economic capabilities, is it better to initiate a conflict early?
In the first paragraph you say “Effective Altruists are often not leftist, because leftist politics may be incorrect.” Can you expand on what leftist politics are incorrect and how you judge what is correct or not?
Ditto on this—I went through the program and am working on tobacco policy, happy to chat with folks who want to ask about what it’s like
There’s an EA and Policy FB group https://www.facebook.com/groups/450247668487258/
I second this—really interesting post and I would love to hear much more about this!
Just wanted to write that I’ve seen your comment, I’m on the road and don’t have time to respond well now but will try in the next week or so.
Hi, when you say I don’t seem to take that into account, do you mean something on the blog post I shared? That’s not my research, just some of what I’m using as the basis for considering an intervention into taxation but happy to comment on what I can or at least link to other studies I’ve read that have been useful too if you’re interested.
It depends on your perspective I suppose, and if you think that regulating/taxing anything is paternalistic and believe that everyone is rational, not addicted, truly knows the health effects, etc. then I agree there would be a percentage of the population where consumer surplus would be taken into account and who enjoy smoking (although this population who says they enjoy smoking today may not say that X years later). But given how many people try to quit many times after starting, how many smokers say they wouldn’t mind taxes being increased, how many people wish they never started, etc., for this product in particular I think it’d be relatively low. For other products like alcohol, sugar, etc. for non heavy users I think it’s a less clear cut case.
On newer forms of tobacco consumption, again it depends. On an individual level it seems like vaping is net positive for health if you’re switching from smoking, but may be a net negative to the world if it leads many people who never would have started smoking to get addicted. But overall I’m a fan of innovation in the sector and much less pessimistic about things like vaping than it seems like the global health community is (I’m generalizing but from what I’ve seen the prevailing wisdom is that it isn’t worth the risk of 1) new smokers 2) unknown long term effects 3) playing ball with notoriously bad actors like the big tobacco companies who are offering products in this space as they try to diversify their product portfolio). I personally think probably the thing that would do the most good is a product that mimics the effects (social, chemical, etc.) of smoking but has none of the health risks and that could be sold as a replacement. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any such product out there, nor have I seen any research on something similar.
Just wanted to mention that I also think that improving political institutions and wisdom (and general capacity building) is quite interesting. I think policy in general is a semi-neglected EA area that could be highly valuable. Everything from advocating for known high impact policies to be put in place where they aren’t (ex. tobacco taxation) to examining new policies that could be implemented (ex. novel ways of stopping illicit financial outflows from developing countries). I think GiveWell has also been looking into this field so I’m sure they have some thoughts here. I’ve been researching tobacco tax policy mainly in LMICs (and tobacco policies more broadly as a byproduct of that research) and am happy to chat about that if it’s helpful, but I’m a relative novice in the field.
I’m not sure if it would fall into your wheelhouse but some of the folks at Charity Entrepreneurship (including myself) are looking into effective taxation models starting with tobacco and I’m sure we could find a place for some econ help. Happy to chat at joelburke2014@gmail.com—more info about tobacco taxation and why it’s effective here http://www.charityentrepreneurship.com/blog/tobacco-taxation
The HN thread was definitely interesting, since the pivot of Open AI to a limited for profit company occurred, I am certainly concerned about whether they’re going to be allocating as many resources for safety as they were and will be much more focused on commercial application development (which I think is a fair, and probably correct, thing to do when you have shareholders who have invested in you for a potential return rather than as a donor to a specific mission)
A note—you can easily find Greg Brockman (the Cofounder and CTO of Open AI) in the thread by his username gdb. One of the more interesting things that he mentions is that they may keep more tech private or for commercial use, and gives a very soft maybe on being able to possibly eventually publish it.
I’m biased as I was part of the Estonian delegation that attended the latest EAGxNordics event but I have to say that all of this was very useful for me. It was the second EA conference I’ve attended but I’ve attended many other conferences and I think that all of these points also hold true for them too.
I especially second the idea of creating goals before the event, finding people who you want to speak with from the attendee list, and contacting them and setting up a time to chat even before the event starts in order to make sure you are getting value even if you don’t attend a single talk.
I really like the second proposal in particular, the work charity entrepreneurship does is phenomenal and I think there is room for companies (not just nonprofits) to be launched that have a focus on generating returns that can be funneled into EA causes or just that have sustainable business models that can be run as for profit entities that do good while making money, employing other EAs, etc.
Hey Kit,
Thanks for the thoughtful response! Yes, I wholeheartedly agree the success of a fund like this is dependent on having someone experienced (and with a lot of connections) running it. I’ve worked for a YC/Andreessen startup from seed to Series B, Rocket Internet, and at a VC firm so I have a base level of understanding and network but I’d definitely either want to have someone more experienced managing it or have a killer group of advisors/partners around supporting.
As for your second question, how valuable is it to actually do this, that’s a fair point and I haven’t been able to quantify it. My thought was that as it’s focused on the seed stage it would be a long term play to engage new groups into becoming EA’s or involved in it (namely top founders, LPs, foundations) that wouldn’t normally be interacting with EA in this way. This way even if there isn’t a great immediate return with a company we’ve invested in, we could get the founder involved in EA and take the Founders Pledge which they may carry to their next company even if we don’t invest, we would get a seat at the table when they’re making strategic decisions and try to navigate them to focus on high impact areas we see or if they have giving programs later, direct funds from that, etc.
When you say that counterfactuals are quite bad at impact investing do you mean something like the scenario where a company like Google/Facebook has money thrown at it by VCs and others because they see it’s going to be wildly successful? I totally agree with that but think there are areas that get spurned, not because they’d have a bad return but because they’re not sexy or obvious to VCs (The story about how difficult it was for Airbnb to raise money in the beginning comes to mind). The startups I was thinking of would be of those sort, or ones in fields like Nuclear that nobody has invested in recently except for Gates and a few others.
I’ll reread the Founders Pledge report and incorporate any ideas from there, thanks for reminding me about that!
I also think that the priority paths probably would lead to a higher impact (in fact they’ve helped dictate a good portion of my career, I’m currently working for the Estonian govt on a digital project to get experience in the govt world so I can get into something high impact in policy or fund allocation hopefully soon) but I was thinking this would be something someone(s) could do in their spare time or that a professional VC could tack on alongside their current fund and responsibilities
Cheers,
Joel
Not sure if you considered it as a potential benefit but my understanding is that right now the government and health care systems/insurers spend an inordinate amount of money mainly to extend life for the last 5-10 years of an elderly person now. This imposes broad costs on state run health systems and private insurers which need to charge people more from younger ages to cover these expected costs. It’s possible that more elderly people are inclined to engage in cryopreservation just before they enter this “sickly period” (for lack of a better term) if they believe in the future they could be revived helping to spare a huge amount of costs on medical systems today.
P.S. Great writeup; I’ve thought occasionally about trying to build a business in the space focused on longevity and making cryo more approachable for the average person. I know some folks in Germany started a startup around it which gives me some hope that it isn’t too crazy an idea for venture funders and has some potential for returns.