Thanks Toby. The winning topic was, “Countering democratic backsliding is now a more urgent issue than more traditional longtermist concerns”?
I feel like this doesn’t violate your rules, because it’s discussing something “directly connected to cause EA areas”. Democracy isn’t a top three cause area, but it’s not not a cause area. In any case, in my opinion the rules are obviously well-intentioned and mostly helpful, but at the end of the day it would be fine to bend them here.
Hey Vasco, thanks. I have also thought about this but don’t have a clear answer. Each credible grant opportunity will get a shallow dive but it’s hard to reliably estimate a total time budget before we have a good sense how many people will apply. Happy to share post-hoc reflections afterwards.
Thanks for the reply. I agree with your specific point but I think it’s worth being more careful with your phrasing. How much we earn is an ethically-charged thing, and it’s not a good thing if EA’s relationship with AI companies gives us a permission structure to lose sight of this.
Edit: to be clear, I agree that “it’s probably not much more than he could earn elsewhere” but disagree that “Eliezer isn’t necessarily out of line in drawing $600k”
$235K is not very much money. […] $600K is also not much money.
Thanks Jim, very interesting. I also feel conflicted, but lean towards taking A.[1]
Here’s how I feel about that:
Bracketing feels strange when it asks us to be led by consequences which are small in the grand scheme (e.g., +/- $1; Emily’s shoulder), and set aside consequences which are fairly proximate and which clearly dominate the stakes (e.g., +/- <=$1000; killing the terrorist/kid). It doesn’t feel so strange when our decision procedure calls on us to set aside consequences which dominate the stakes but don’t feel so proximate (e.g., longtermist concerns).
When I look at very specific cases, I can find it hard to tell when I’m dealing with standard expected value under uncertainty, and when I’ve run into Knightian uncertainty, cluelessness, etc. I’m bracketing out +/- <=$1000 when I say I take A, but I do feel drawn to treating this as a normal distribution around $0.
Ways in which it’s disaalogous to animals that might be important:
Animal welfare isn’t a one-shot problem. I think the best things we can do for animals involve calculated bets that integrate concern for their welfare into our decision-making more consistently, and teach us about improving their welfare more reliably.
I’m not sure we should be risk-neutral maximisers for animal welfare.
Conditional on being a risk neutral maximiser who values money linearly. In the real world, I’d shy away from A due to ambiguity aversion and because, to me, -$1000 matters more than +$1000.
This is great! Really exciting
Look forward to reading this blog, Mark!
Great stuff! How much of the chickens money went to broilers, and how much to hens? It’s mostly cage-free, right?
Thanks Daniel. This looks incredibly important. Huge kudos to AWL for setting up this website and coordinating a response.
When I click “email now”, the mailto: function doesn’t work for me. (I think this is an issue with my computer settings, not the website). Can you send me the suggested text?
Also, how helpful is it for people outside Africa to write in? I imagine it’s still helpful, especially for animal welfare experts, but I want to sense-check that with you.
Yeah, I think that’s reasonable. I also think they’re very different
Alternative proteins don’t seem like an overwhelmingly good bet. How much will the marginal $ to R&D bring forward the development of cost-competitive cultivated chicken? What’s the trade off between the broiler lives prevented, and the broiler lives improved if we spent that marginal $ on broiler welfare advocacy instead? If cost-competitive cultivated chicken is developed, will that really displace all chicken meat (and how quickly)? (I mostly mean these questions rhetorically, and just mean that it’s hard to answer to answer them confidently)
But also: even the best intervention might not be the best to fund at the margin. Not every marginal resource is fungible. And going all-in on one theory of change might take us to odd places for movement dynamics.
As I understand it (and I’m not anything like an expert), the political lesbians rejected heterosexual sex, and perhaps relationships with men more broadly, as (a) a way to challenge the patriarchy, and (b) a way to cultivate feminist values within themselves. To me, this seems somewhat similar to vegans who reject meat consumption as (a) a way to challenge speciest norms, and (b) a way to cultivate anti-speciesism within themselves. Both philosophies create a political critique of personal desire.
Of course, it’s an imperfect comparison, and there are important criticisms of political lesbianism.
We should present veganism as commendable, and offsetting as a legitimate stopping point for individual supporters.
The pro-animal movement should be a bigger tent than veganism. We should welcome different ways of being pro-animal including donations and civic engagement, like attending a protest or voting for a pro-animal candidate.
I’m tentatively excited about “offsetting” as a specific instance of donating, but I’m cautious about presenting offsetting as enough.
Veganism will remain an important part of many people’s political identity, including mine. (I like the priestly class comparison; it’s also sort of like political lesbianism). In my experience, veganism has helped me see animals as fellow creatures and unlearn my speciesism.
I don’t want to put anybody off experimenting with veganism, especially because I want the committed “priestly” class to be as big and strong as possible.
I don’t think we should spend an overwhelming majority of our resources on any one theory of change. We should spread our bets.
One reason a comprehensive version of this would be difficult for insect welfare is that a couple of projects are ‘undercover’. Rethink Priorities have guidance on donating to insects, shrimp and wild animals that might be relevant.
Separately, I understand @JordanStone has a pretty comprehensive sense of who’s who in space governance, and would be a good person to contact if you’re thinking about getting into this field.
I’m not at all familiar with Chinese self-driving cars, but just read a NYT article on this topic. Here’s a gift link, and a few relevant paragraphs:
China’s regulators finally gave the go-ahead last week to only two of the nine automakers that had submitted plans to sell self-driving cars. And the approvals by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology were narrowly tailored to allow little more than further testing, not mass production.
Beijing Automotive Group and Changan Automobile in Chongqing will be allowed to operate self-driving taxis on three stretches of highway in each company’s hometown, the ministry said, and the taxis will not be allowed to change lanes while under computer control. On any other road, the taxis will need to be under the control of a driver.
The limited programs represent a recognition by the Chinese government that objectives set nearly five years ago, to begin mass production for sale to the general public by the end of this year, were too ambitious.
China’s regulators began to pull back after a crash of a Xiaomi SU7 in late March killed three women, all university students. News of previous accidents involving assisted driving had been suppressed by China’s censors. But news of the crash in March, on a highway in central China’s Anhui Province, spread quickly and widely.
Thanks for your support!
I can imagine some of these forecasts influencing funding and advocacy decisions, especially on neglected species/regions and meat consumption. I’m an animal welfare researcher/advocate (currently, I work for Animal Ask and I’m co-founding the Center for Wild Animal Welfare). Sorry for a late reply!
N.B. We’ve updated the original post to give more info on how supporters can make tax deductible donations.
In short, we can also accept tax deductible donations from the Netherlands, and above a certain threshold from Canada, Germany and Switzerland. Supporters would need to donate to Rethink Priorities through a supporting org (Giving What We Can in UK/NL; Effektiv Spenden in Germany/Switzerland), then forward their recept to development@rethinkpriorities.org and team@wildanimalwelfare.org and request that the gift is restricted for CWAW. We might be able to facilitate tax deductible donations from other countries too.
If anybody has further questions about this, please reach out :)
That’s a really interesting blog, Vasco. Worth its own post.