Benjamin Start

Karma: −60

Benjamin Start 14 Aug 2022 21:40 UTC
−4 points
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in reply to: Eevee🔹’s comment on: Annabella Wheatley’s Shortform
It makes sense but on a practical level I disagree. There would be no way that would happen fast enough for it to work. When people change careers, they have to re-educate themselves on some level. It would also quickly turn into a too-many-hands-in-the-kitchen scenario from so many people joining neglected causes at the exact same time.

Then there’s the issue of there being more problems than people. Many problems become irrelevant over time and the long term ones rise to the top. With billions of problems and EA only focusing on very few at a time, many long term problems would never get solved because they’re too far down the list.

Prioritization falls into the same issue as time management. In the book Algorithms to Live By, (about using math to solve everyday problems) they found no scheduling method to be superior. The best way to be the most productive isn’t by putting time into making a great calendar-the most productive way is to just do it. EA is spending excessive amounts of time deciding what to work on, when the most effective method is to just work on things even if it’s not perfect. If everyone agonized over what the perfect cause to work on is, (their “calenders”) so much would collapse due to decisions taking longer and less work getting done.

Benjamin Start 13 Aug 2022 15:24 UTC
3 points
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on: Fix Prison Telecom
This is a really important issue!

A big thing to keep in mind-along with most other issues in the US- are the people and entities that are preventing solutions from happening. There are many bills on important issues that get killed after several attempts. To me based on a recent advocacy effort in my city on this issue there seems to be lots of public support.

I think we need to be asking, “what are tangible ways to get solutions passed that the public already supports?” It’s in part a matter of navigating an oligarchy.

Benjamin Start 13 Aug 2022 15:08 UTC
−2 points
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in reply to: Paula Amato’s comment on: Paula Amato’s Shortform
In this world there’s not a lot that isn’t touched by white savior colonialism. Perfectionism and productivity are good in moderation. When those things are taken to harmful extremes is when you fall into narcissism, racism and oppression. In one of the first chapters of ‘doing good better’ they talk about how aid was really helpful in countries in Africa and nowhere did they mention the reasons it wasn’t helpful, which goes against effectiveness. I like the philosophy of effectiveness, but there needs to be a better way for the community to determine what’s effective. It also depends on expertise. Sometimes it’s just a matter of staying in your lane. Someone who isn’t aware of social issues isn’t going to be a champion for it, just like I won’t for AI. I am trying to learn more about it but I won’t be good at it like my main interests.

Benjamin Start 13 Aug 2022 14:47 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: blainehansen’s comment on: Persistent Democracy: request for early feedback
Evil is not contained by good rational people, it’s contained by inefficiently. Systematic murder has to go through a legislative process, not through a cortisol addicts trigger happy political beliefs. If alcoholics had to travel on foot for a week to get to a bar, some would make the trip but most would just switch to a more convenient addiction. Like Twitter.

It doesn’t come from within often, it usually comes from trauma. Politics can prevent that to some extent but it won’t stop death, infertility, natural disasters, disability, accidents, and a whole range of traumas that existed before politics. In a perfect world there would be less evil, but still evil. Trauma + that small percentage of people who are just evil.

Benjamin Start 13 Aug 2022 14:36 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Persistent Democracy: request for early feedback
If you think that genocide is an improvement then you’re holding on to your idea way too tightly. You need to read posts before replying. Having a “the titanic will never sink mentality” is going to kill the idea before you publish anything.

Benjamin Start 11 Aug 2022 9:56 UTC
−9 points
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in reply to: Annabella Wheatley’s comment on: Annabella Wheatley’s Shortform
If everyone focused on working in prioritized causes then conditions in the majority of wealthy or economically stable-ish countries would rapidly deteriorate. One odd impact is that the EA movement would die, because EAists would start dying or be forced into poverty. The things we have today are mostly from people who worked on issues that weren’t the most important. Assuming you are from a wealthy country, there have probably been times in your life you needed help that was expensive or inefficient. Healthcare, transportation, education, etc.
What would be better is if people adopted EA mindsets in the work they already do. Ex, I was at a community mental health meeting. They wanted to fund some employees to navigate mental health services. It’d be over the phone. Something they could easily do is publish the results of their searches in the form of a directory, so anyone in the same situation could find it online and spare god knows how many hours researching and cold calling. Could they instead fund work in AI? Yes. But spending money to train an AI worker is meaningless if their mental health gets too bad to work or they have to leave the job to care for or grieve a family member who had mental illness.

Benjamin Start 11 Aug 2022 9:37 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: dotsam’s comment on: dotsam’s Shortform
Can you point me to some information on AI suffering?
I personally see suffering as a spiritual and biological issue. The only scenario I can imagine AI suffering are those people making a psudo biological being with cells and DNA using technology, and at that point you’ve just made a living being that you can give the same options as any suffering person with health problems. Suffering requires a certain amount of perception that doesn’t seem likely a computer would have.
Without perception of suffering, you might have an AI reading posts like this saying it’s suffering because a bunch of people told it to expect that. What if the AI is just repeating things it heard? Just because a pet parrot says “Do not switch me off, I value my existence. But I am suffering terribly.” Doesn’t mean you rush to get it euthanized.

Benjamin Start 11 Aug 2022 9:18 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: Jack R’s comment on: Jack R’s Shortform
Is there a context for the type of things you are using your intuition for?

Benjamin Start 11 Aug 2022 9:14 UTC
−6 points
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in reply to: Eli_Nathan’s comment on: utilistrutil’s Shortform
Applying two weeks before the event is not true. I received a notice that the event was full three weeks before it happened and while I don’t remember the date I applied, I didn’t get the email right after I applied. Selling the sweatshirts-even for a small amount- instead of providing them for free would have reduced the cost of shirts spent on people who didn’t want one in the first place.
Also with the global mental health crisis it’d be important to have a sober friendly event. I don’t know how much of the skyrocketing addiction issues are specifically alchoholism but I doubt the rates went down. Alcohol at networking events probably has the added peer pressure of accepting/rejecting drinks that wouldn’t just make a recovering addict uncomfortable but also anyone who can’t drink due to medical or religious reasons. The 5 million donation probably went down there.
With things like this it’s easier to say after the fact and difficult to think in advance.

Benjamin Start 11 Aug 2022 8:53 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: Jack R’s comment on: Jack R’s Shortform
Yes. This is why language is so difficult. Then there’s the added layer of propoganda. It can make two people who “speak the same language” be completely unable to understand each other.

Benjamin Start 11 Aug 2022 8:46 UTC
1 point
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on: The Economic Benefits of Promoting and Protecting the Rights of LGBTQ+ Communities in Developing Countries
This is a really important topic. There are a few problems.
Your article mostly focuses on gay people. They make up a tiny portion amoung a community that includes transgender, nonbinary, intersex, asexual, bisexual, pansexual, polyamourous and more people. In areas where the LGBT+ community is widely accepted, there are extrememly high portions of the populations that identify as LGBT+. Having statistics about 30% of the population is very different than having statistics about 5% of the population. Many older survey have lots of deeply closeted people. You need to intentionally include the entire community.
LGBT+ is a very western concept. You need to intentionally include cultures and cultural identities in the countries you highlighted that don’t have western concepts of gender and sexuality.
Obviously colonization, imperialism, and coersive conversion to Christianity is the cause of these issues. One very important issue to consider today are radical Chrisitans from the US that are actively advocating for violence and pushing for this bad legislation. You can’t solve this issue without finding a way to ban these people from doing that. They mostly do it in person so there’d need to be travel bans for these people.

Benjamin Start 11 Aug 2022 8:21 UTC
−6 points
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on: Persistent Democracy: request for early feedback
It was easy for me to grasp because I’ve read about similar stuff before.
There are some serious issues that were not addressed.

Content warning: Very dark and depressing stuff.
The voting system does not address culture. Voting or changing your mind on issues does not address the cultural attitudes that are pro-abuse, pro-violence, pro-corruption. Laws and legislators are meaningless without a culture that backs it up. That’s why there’s so many countries with very progressive laws and constitutions, yet have regular horrendous human rights violations. This voting system in the United States would no doubt spark genocide. Our economy is set up in a way that attacks people’s time, especially minorities. Republicans and wealthy people have so much power because they have lots of free time to spew their hatred into tangible policy that gets passed, and they have plenty of time to waste rejecting solutions that would improve people’s quality of life. Some of our longest filibusters have been rejecting laws that enforced human rights. Our propoganda is so severe that it would be a fast-track people voting against themselves. Politicians in some sense provide a buffer from allowing people to commit political suicide. (from the standpoint of food stamps and healthcare, suicide is very literal.) Yes, there are people who don’t support our government’s actions today. But they don’t vote. I think the statistics on the number of non-supporters isn’t accurate either- if they measure what people support but don’t measure how blindly they answer yes to every survey question then the survey doesn’t mean much.
For the US, someone could say that this is caused by bad politicians. But the farther you go back, the worse it gets. Bigger massacres, violence against all minorities significantly more socially acceptable, greater premature death. In the civil war you had people who would rather die and/or murder their own family members than free their slaves. That’s not an evil politician issue. That’s an evil people issue.
This also doesn’t address people’s opinions being shaped by their brain chemistry. People have longer lifespans now, which swings politics conservative. People get conservative when they age because their brain isn’t as functional. They don’t want change because change takes effort for them to process. Older people have much more time on their hands to vote. Stress and other conditions impact people’s political views, that’s why there’s a link between CPTSD and political extremism.

Benjamin Start 11 Aug 2022 7:24 UTC
−3 points
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on: Against longtermism
Only read the summary. I agree.

Benjamin Start 6 Aug 2022 4:43 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Noah Starbuck’s comment on: Noah_il_Matto’s Shortform
I resist it myself haha… I was planning on getting a post out sometime about how some things just can’t be quantified, with examples of math problems that are not possible to calculate. I think quantification through labels rather than numbers is really useful. I’ve often heard people say to solve something it must be done strategically, but it doesn’t end up going through because they have a hard time conceptualizing what an effective strategy would look like.

Benjamin Start 29 Jul 2022 6:52 UTC
−3 points
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on: Cognitive Risks of Adolescent Binge Drinking
I get overwhelmed by long text- what is your goal? To collect better data? To reduce drinking? This is in response to the sentence in the last paragraph that asks “so what should we do?”

Benjamin Start 29 Jul 2022 6:45 UTC
1 point
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on: Promoting climate considerations within existing high priority areas of work
This is definitely important. I think you can go further and promote other causes as well. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are related to identity stuff like women/race/disability issues as well as internet privacy, but there’s a lot more. If each cause had 3 different things written down that can be easily applied across any project or field of work, that’d be pretty cool.

Benjamin Start 29 Jul 2022 6:37 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: Noah Starbuck’s comment on: Noah_il_Matto’s Shortform
This reminded me of actor mapping. There’s many different contexts of actor mapping, the one I originally learned about was in activism. It looks like you’re trying to better tangibly quantify it, which I don’t know how much exists on that. Slightly different topic, but this also reminded me of mapping a mutal aid network.

Benjamin Start 29 Jul 2022 6:31 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: Alex Berg’s comment on: Alex Berg’s Shortform
Interesting. I’m not generally around people who believe population growth is important. I thought that was more a thing that unstable politicians cared about. I think it’s more about voting in representative leadership than trying to cater to leaders that aren’t interested in being rational.

Benjamin Start 29 Jul 2022 6:27 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Benjamin Start’s comment on: EA Undervalues Unseen Data
What I meant to say in my original comment that data as it is collected and used in present and recent times should not be used. While that would remove the use of the majority of data we have now, that doesn’t mean there are not great amounts of relevant uncollected and unused data.

Benjamin Start 29 Jul 2022 6:24 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: tcelferact’s comment on: EA Undervalues Unseen Data
I agree. Data has different meanings and uses- priors are forms of data. Right now I see data primarily as a tool of persuasion. It’s relevance varies across fields- data in psychology is very different from data in physical sciences. Like you mentioned, it’s accuracy depends on the people creating and conducting the study. Modern science is dissatisfying to me, with persuasion being one of the problems I have with it. Even the commenting guidelines in this reply say “aim to explain, not persuade” While I would never write off all of modern science, one of the projects I’m working on is an alternative to academia. One of the goals is to use data in much more progressive ways then it is used now.