Bob Jacobs 🔸

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 4 Sep 2024 7:26 UTC

  3 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Democ­racy be­yond majoritarianism

  Hi Arturo,

  You might be interested in this graph, from me and Jobst’s paper: “Should we vote in non-deterministic elections?”

  

  It visualizes the effective power groups of voters have in proportion to their percentage of the votes. So for most winner-takes-all systems (conventional voting systems) it is a step function; if you have 51% of the vote you have 100% of the power (blue line).
  Some voting systems try to ameliorate this by requiring a supermajority; e.g. to change the constitution you need 2/​3rds of the votes. This slows down legislation and also doesn’t really change the problem of proportionality.

  Our paper talks about non-deterministic voting systems, systems that incorporate an element of chance. The simplest version would be the “random ballot”; everyone sends in their ballot, then one is drawn at random. This system is perfectly proportional. A voting bloc with 49% of the votes is no longer in power 0% of the time, but is now in power 49% of the time (green line).

  Of course not all non-deterministic voting systems are as proportional as the random ballot. For example, say that instead of picking one ballot at random, we keep drawing ballots at random until we have two that pick the same candidate. Now you get something in between the random ballot and a conventional voting systems (red line).

  There are an infinite amount of non-deterministic voting systems so these are just two simple examples and are not the actual non-deterministic voting systems we endorse. For a more sophisticated non-deterministic voting system you can take a look at MaxParC.

  Also, as you may have noticed, EAs are mostly focused on individualistic interventions and are not that interested in this kind of systemic change (I don’t bother with my papers on this forum). If you want to discuss these types of ideas you might have more luck on the voting subreddit, the voting theory forum, or the electo wiki.

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 24 Jun 2024 13:07 UTC

  −2 points

  0 ∶ 2

  in reply to: David Mathers🔸’s comment on: Against the Guardian’s hit piece on Man­i­fest

  and they seem to be down on socialism, except maybe some non-mainstream market variants.

  I did try to find a survey for sociology, political science, and economics, not only today but also when I was writing my post on market socialism (I too wondered whether economists are more in favor of market socialism), but I couldn’t really find one. My guess is that the first two would be more pro-socialism and the last more anti, although it probably also differs from country to country depending on their history of academia (e.g. whether they had a red scare in academia or not).

  I feel like this is the kind of anti science/​empiricism arrogance that philosophers are often accused of

  This is probably partly because of the different things they’re researching. Economics tends to look at things that are easier to quantify, like GDP and material goods created, which capitalism is really good at, while philosophers tend to look at things that capitalism seems to be less good at, like alienation, which is harder to quantify (though proxies like depression, suicide and loneliness do seem to be increasing).

  Not to mention, they might agree on the data but disagree on what to value. Rust & Schwitzgebel (2013) did a survey of philosophy professors specializing in ethics, philosophy professors not specializing in ethics, and non-philosophy professors. 60% of ethicists felt eating meat was wrong, while just under 45% of non-ethicists agreed, and only 19.6% of non-philosophers thought so. I personally think one of the strongest arguments against capitalism is the existence of factory farms. With such numbers, it seems plausible that while an average economist might think of the meat industry as a positive, the average philosopher might think of it as a negative (thinking something akin to this post).

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 24 Jun 2024 6:02 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: AnonEALeftist’s comment on: Against the Guardian’s hit piece on Man­i­fest

  Let me try to steelman this:

  We want people to learn new things, so we have conferences where people can present their research. But who to invite? There are so many people, many of whom have never done any studies.
  Luckily for us, we have a body of people that spend their lives researching and checking each other’s research: Academia. Still, there are many academics, and there’s only so many time slots you can assign before you’re filled up; ideally, we’d be representative.
  So now the question becomes: why was the choice made to spend so many of the limited time slots on “scientific racists”, which is a position that’s virtually universally rejected by professional researchers, while topics like “socialism”, which has a ton of support in academia (e.g., the latest philpapers survey found that when asked about their politics, a majority of philosophers selected “socialism” and only a minority selected “capitalism” or “other”), tend to get little to no time allotted to them at these conferences?

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 24 Jun 2024 5:27 UTC

  4 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Lukas_Gloor’s comment on: Truth-seek­ing vs In­fluence-seek­ing—a nar­rower discussion

  For one thing, I’m not sure if I want to concede the point that it is the “maximally truth-seeking” thing to risk that a community evaporatively cools itself along the lines we’re discussing.

  Another way to frame it is through the concept of collective intelligence. What is good for developing individual intelligence may not be good for developing collective intelligence.

  Think, for example, of schools that pit students against each other and place a heavy emphasis on high-stakes testing to measure individual student performance. This certainly motivates people to personally develop their intellectual skills; just look at how much time, e.g. Chinese children are spending on school. But is this better for the collective intelligence?

  High-stakes testing often leads to a curriculum that is narrowly focused on intelligence-focused skills that are easily measurable by tests. This can limit the development of broader, harder-to-measure social skills that are vital for collective intelligence, such as communication, group brainstorming, deescalation, keeping your ego in check, empathy...

  And such a testing-focused environment can discourage collaborative learning experiences because the focus is on individual performance. This reduction in group learning opportunities and collaboration limits overall knowledge growth.

  It can exacerbate educational inequalities by disproportionately disadvantaging students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, who may have less access to test preparation resources or supportive learning environments. This can lead to a segmented education system where collective intelligence is stifled because not all members have equal opportunities to contribute and develop.

  And what about all the work that needs to be done that is not associated with high intelligence? Students who might not excel in what a given culture considers high-intelligence (such as the arts, practical skills, or caretaking work) may feel undervalued and disengage from contributing their unique perspectives. Worse, if they continue to pursue individual intelligence, you might end up with a workforce that has a bad division of labor, despite having people that theoretically could have taken up those niches. Like what’s happening in the US:

  

  If you want to have more truth-seeking, you first have to make sure that your society functions. (E.g. if everyone is a college professor, who’s making the food?)
  To have a collective be maximally truth-seeking in the long run, you have to not solely focus on truth-seeking.

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 21 Jun 2024 14:31 UTC

  5 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: RobertJMoore’s comment on: Bob Ja­cobs’s Shortform

  eventually SJP-EA morphs into bog-standard Ford Foundation philanthropy

  This seems unlikely to me for several reasons, foremost amongst them that they would lose interest in animal welfare. Do you think that progressives are not truly invested in it, and that it’s primarily championed by their skeptics? Because the data seems to indicate the opposite.

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 20 Jun 2024 22:34 UTC

  8 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: David T’s comment on: Bob Ja­cobs’s Shortform

  I appreciate what Rutger Bregman is trying to do, and his work has certainly had a big positive impact on the world, almost certainly larger than mine at least. But honestly, I think he could be more rigorous. I haven’t looked into his ‘school for moral ambition’ project, but I have read (the first half) of his book “humankind”, and despite vehemently agreeing with the conclusion, I would never recommend it to anyone, especially not anyone who has done any research before.

  There seems to be some sort of trade-off between wide reach and rigor. I noticed a similar thing with other EA public intellectuals, like for example with Sam Harris and his book “The Moral Landscape” (I haven’t read any of his other books, mostly because this one was just so riddled with sloppy errors), and Steven Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now” (Haven’t read any of his other books either, again because of errors in this book). (Also, I’ve seen some clips of them online, and while that’s not the best way to get information about someone, they didn’t raise my opinion of them, to say the least).

  Pretty annoying overall. At least Bregman is not prominently displayed on the EA People page like they are (even though what I read of his book was comparatively better). I would delete them off of it, but last time I removed SBF and Musk from it, that edit got downvoted and I had to ask a friend to upvote it (and this was after SBF was detained, so I don’t think a Harris or Pinker edit would fare much better). Pretty sad, because I think EA has much better people to display than a lot of individuals on that page. Especially considering some of them (like Harris and Pinker) currently don’t even identify as EA.
  

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 20 Jun 2024 19:01 UTC

  22 points

  7 ∶ 2

  in reply to: James Herbert’s comment on: Bob Ja­cobs’s Shortform

  A bit strong, but about right. The strategy the rationalists describe seems to stem from a desire to ensure their own intellectual development, which is, after all, the rationalist project. By disregarding social norms you can start conversing with lots of people about lots of stuff you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. Tempting, however, my own (intellectual) freedom is not my primary concern; my primary concern is the overall happiness (or feelings, if you will) of others, and certain social norms are there to protect that.

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 19 Jun 2024 23:24 UTC

  24 points

  6 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: My ex­pe­rience at the con­tro­ver­sial Man­i­fest 2024

  Here’s one data point; I was consistently in the top 25 on metaculus for a couple years. I would never attend a conference where a “scientific racist” gave a talk.
  

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 19 Jun 2024 18:30 UTC

  62 points

  19 ∶ 33

  on: Bob Ja­cobs’s Shortform

  I quit. I’m going to stop calling myself an EA, and I’m going to stop organizing EA Ghent, which, since I’m the only organizer, means that in practice it will stop existing.

  It’s not just because of Manifest; that was merely the straw that broke the camel’s back. In hindsight, I should have stopped after the Bostrom or FTX scandal. And it’s not just because they’re scandals; It’s because they highlight a much broader issue within the EA community regarding whom it chooses to support with money and attention, and whom it excludes.

  I’m not going to go to any EA conferences, at least not for a while, and I’m not going to give any money to the EA fund. I will continue working for my AI safety, animal rights, and effective giving orgs, but will no longer be doing so under an EA label. Consider this a data point on what choices repel which kinds of people, and whether that’s worth it.

  EDIT: This is not a solemn vow forswearing EA forever. If things change I would be more than happy to join again.

  EDIT 2: For those wondering what this quick-take is reacting to, here’s a good summary by David Thorstad.

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 12 Jun 2024 13:30 UTC

  5 points

  4 ∶ 3

  on: How to change the law to have a large-scale im­pact on an­i­mal welfare?

  Hi Melvin, wonderful work!

  Similar to you, I also want to bring about systemic change for animals (see e.g. animal welfare is now enshrined in the Belgian constitution). One problem people like us face is that the EA framework doesn’t really gel with it. My group couldn’t get any funding from EA, even though we have a decades long track record with things like:

  • Legal prohibition of the sale of dogs and cats in public marketplaces.


  • The closure of several markets where animals suffered routine and abject abuse (due to hidden camera investigations)


  • The prohibition of hunting stray cats in Wallonia and Flanders.


  • The prohibition of keeping wild animals in circuses in Belgium.


  • The decision of all Belgian supermarkets to stop selling eggs from battery hens. Now 90% of all fresh eggs sold in our country come from animal friendly farms (ground system, free range or organic).


  • The European ban on trade in seal products.


  • The Flemish and Walloon ban on slaughter without stunning.

  • 
The ban on fur farming and force feeding in Flanders.

  But the impact of changing the constitution is impossible to quantify. With things like medical interventions, we can run an RCT (which the EA framework loves), but the same cannot be done with constitutional changes since we don’t have a control country. The problem with RCTs is that they are expensive and measure narrow, direct, continuous effects, while they’re unpractical for broad, indirect, or discontinuous effects. Which means those RCT based interventions privilege the status-quo more. Systemic change advocates face an uphill battle in getting EA funding.

  But it’s more than that; the culture of EA is very anglo-sphere. It’s human nature to prefer your ingroup so it’s unsurprising that the big EA funders, mostly anglo-sphere entrepreneurs, prefer to give to other anglo-sphere entrepreneurs (plus other demographic data which you can probably guess). The Silicon Valley approach of starting a firm gets you more EA money and attention than lobbying the government for slow systemic change, and it helps a lot if you do it in the anglo-sphere. If you look at all the projects/​people EA gives funding/​attention to, you’ll see that it’s dominated by english-speaking/​anglo-sphere projects/​people to an absurd degree, like, much more than you would expect if you thought EA gave to maximum impact projects/​people indiscriminately. (And I’m not even going to talk about race and gender in EA, which really speaks for itself.)
  Take for example a look at: the individuals on the EA people page, the people that appear on EA podcasts, the AI people/​project funding landscape, the AI projects that get attention, the philosophers that get attention, longtermism people/​projects in general, all the people EA made famous, the people who work at EA organizations, the EA survey showing that EAs disproportionately move to the UK/​US, individual EA university chapters in the US/​UK being so well funded that they can throw regular pizza parties while our entire country can’t get a single community organizer despite being the center of EU-legislation, the EA forum having a tag for the US and UK but almost no other countries, the EA forum having a tag for UK policy and US policy but not for other countries… You get the point.

  So to get funding, I highly recommend you first get someone who knows a lot of insiders in the EA anglo-sphere, and who can speak/​present themselves as one of them (and, realistically, being white and male will probably also help).
  Secondly, throw some numbers around. In academia, it’s bad form to claim to be able to quantify unquantifiable things, but EA funders want numbers, even if they’re made up.
  Lastly, don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get funding, and don’t assume you’re not effective because the “effective altruists” funders don’t consider you to be. Again, we didn’t get any funding, and we did change the constitution, while just last week it came to light that EA funders did, e.g. give $100.000 to a video game that never got developed. Just because they call themselves effective doesn’t mean they are effective. Like other humans, they’re also very biased in favor of their in-group.

  What links here?

  • Bob Jacobs 🔸's comment on Bob Ja­cobs’s Quick takes by Bob Jacobs 🔸 (19 Jun 2024 18:30 UTC; 62 points)

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 8 Jun 2024 11:32 UTC

  32 points

  3 ∶ 0

  on: Bob Ja­cobs’s Shortform

  For those voting in the EU election and general elections in Belgium, here’s an overview of the party positions when it comes to animal welfare:

  (For more details, click this link)

  ✅ means more in favor ❌ means more against

  Federal election (Flanders):

  policy proposal	PVDA 🔴	GROEN ❇️	VOORUIT 🔺	Open-VLD 🔵	CD&V 🔶	N-VA 🔆	VB ⬛️
  VAT rate reduction on veterinary care and pet food	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅
  A ban on traditional fireworks	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅

  Federal election (Walloon):

  policy proposal	PTB 🔴	ECOLO ❇️	PS 🔺	LE 🐬	Défi 🌸	MR 🔵
  VAT rate reduction on veterinary care and pet food	✅	❌	✅	❌	❌	✅
  A ban on traditional fireworks	✅	❌	✅	❌	❌	✅

  Flanders election:

  policy proposal	PVDA 🔴	GROEN ❇️	VOORUIT 🔺	Open-VLD 🔵	CD&V 🔶	N-VA 🔆	VB ⬛️
  Better living conditions for broiler chickens in Flanders	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅
  A ban on live cooking and cutting lobsters in half	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
  A phasing out plan of Boudewijn Seapark	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅
  A ban on the painful surgical castration of piglets	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌
  A ban on chick killing	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅
  Stricter legislation around the dog and cat trade	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅
  A duty of care for horses, dogs, cats and rabbits	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅
  The development of cultured meat in Flanders	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌
  Animal testing: for an animal-free strategy in Flanders	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅
  A Flemish ban on the sale of products that harm animal welfare	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌
  Animal welfare as a criterion in environmental permit procedure	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌
  A punishment of animal abuse through GAS fines	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅
  total score	11⁄12	12⁄12	8⁄12	3⁄12	0⁄12	11⁄12	7⁄12
  Highest score		✅

  Walloon election:

  	PTB 🔴	ECOLO ❇️	PS 🔺	LE 🐬	Défi 🌸	MR 🔵
  Total score	12⁄13	11⁄13	8⁄13	10⁄13	6⁄13	5⁄13
  Highest score	✅

  EU election (Flanders):

  	PVDA 🔴	GROEN ❇️	VOORUIT 🔺	Open-VLD 🔵	CD&V 🔶	N-VA 🔆	VB ⬛️
  Total score	9⁄10	10⁄10	10⁄10	8⁄10	0⁄10	10⁄10	0⁄10
  Highest score		✅	✅			✅

  EU election (Walloon):

  	PTB 🔴	ECOLO ❇️	PS 🔺	LE 🐬	Défi 🌸	MR 🔵
  Total score	9⁄10	9⁄10	7⁄10	9⁄10	6⁄10	7⁄10
  Highest score	✅	✅		✅

  Brussels election:

  PVDA 🔴

  ECOLO ❇️

  GROEN ❇️

  PS 🔺

  VOORUIT 🔺

  LE 🐬

  Défi 🌸

  MR 🔵

  O-VLD 🔵

  CD&V 🔶

  N-VA 🔆

  VB ⬛️

  Score

  5⁄6

  5⁄6

  6⁄6

  4⁄6

  6⁄6

  5⁄6

  5⁄6

  4⁄6

  3⁄6

  0⁄6

  6⁄6

  5⁄6

  Highest score

  ✅

  ✅

  ✅

  Highest score Federal election (Flanders): PVDA, GROEN, VB

  Highest score Federal election (Walloon): PTB, PS, MS

  Highest score Flanders election: GROEN

  Highest score Walloon election: PTB

  Highest score EU election (Flanders): GROEN, Vooruit, N-VA

  Highest score EU election (Walloon): PTB, Ecolo, LE

  Highest score Brussels election: GROEN, Vooruit, N-VA

  TLDR: Just like my post on the topic pointed out, the leftwing parties tend to be best for animal welfare, but the far-right can often be better than the center-right

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 10 May 2024 16:33 UTC

  17 points

  6 ∶ 3

  in reply to: Quadratic Reciprocity’s comment on: Bob Ja­cobs’s Shortform

  *A million pounds if we round down, not to mention it could’ve been much more if it was invested.
  The venue is not the biggest cost of those EAG events, since you also need to pay for things like travel grants, catering, equipment… This also doesn’t establish that buying it is better than renting. Not that it matters, the only thing listed on the Wytham Abbey website is a grand total of eleven workshops.
  Even if you don’t want to give the money to animals or the developing world, and even if you don’t want to invest the money to have more to give later, and even if you don’t want to invest it into community building in poor countries but rather in rich countries, then this money still could’ve been spent better.

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 10 May 2024 10:27 UTC

  9 points

  6 ∶ 3

  on: Bob Ja­cobs’s Shortform

  Inside Wytham Abbey, the £15 Million Castle Effective Altruism Must Sell [Bloomberg]

  From the article:

  Effective Ventures has since come to a settlement with the FTX estate and paid back the $26.8 million given to it by FTX Foundation. [...] It’s amid such turmoil that Wytham Abbey is being listed on the open market for £15 million [...]

  Adjusted for inflation, the purchase price of the house two years ago now equals £16.2 million. [...] The listing comes as homes on the UK’s once-hot country market are taking longer to sell, forcing some owners to offer discounts.

  I still think the intangible reputational damage is worse, but a loss of a million pounds (that could’ve been spent on malaria bed nets) would be nothing to sneeze at either.

  (archive link)

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 26 Apr 2024 22:37 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Yarrow B.’s comment on: “Cap­i­tal­ism”: talk­ing past each other

  But how is public ownership of firms compatible with ownership of firms being exchanged on markets?

  Because governments can trade. E.g., if the governments of the Netherlands and Germany are looking to sell some firms they own, and the governments of Belgium and Luxembourg are giving competing offers to buy those firms, we have a market without the firms being privately owned.

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 22 Apr 2024 17:18 UTC

  48 points

  11 ∶ 0

  on: Pri­ors and Prejudice

  Good post.

  Economics is completely bankrupt as a science

  His thesis still irritates me. Lukeprog claims philosophers are doing shoddy work, and he can e.g. solve meta-ethics all by himself. He starts writing his meta-ethics sequence and it has just the basic intro stuff, but nonetheless since he claimed he could solve it, it gets promoted to one of the few curated sequences on Less Wrong. And then he just...stops, he never gets even close to solving meta-ethics and it remains in the Less Wrong curated sequences. It’s been 6 years since the last post Lukeprog, where is the solution to meta-ethics?

  My early intellectual influences were rationalists or free-market leaning economists, such as Scott Alexander and Robin Hanson. When I take a sincere look at the evidence today and try my very hardest to discern what is actually true from false, I conclude they mostly are getting things right.

  I think the difference with star-craft is that with altruistic interventions there is less of a blatant self interest to believe a certain thing, which means it’s easier to shift over time. I started out also reading Scott Alexander etc (and still do) but over time also added academic texts and my beliefs shifted to the left, even though I don’t have a strong self interested reason to believe in either of them. If academia was also split into equal factions like the star-craft community we would have to be more worried that interventions from each faction would cancel each other out (like your pro-charter city anti-charter city example), instead we see that academia mostly converges on leftwing ideas, even across different countries, different demographics and different generations. If everyone switches to one ‘concession’ intervention the smaller group (in this case the rightwing) benefits more.

  Maybe instead we can match people up, so the large general group has an equal number of people donating to ‘concession’ interventions as there are in the non-general group, who all give to ‘concession’. If there is a lot of convergence there is little concession, if academia is almost perfectly split there’s almost only concessions.

  The real problem is that people like you, me, and academics (researchers) are not really the people with the power to decide which interventions get money. That’s mostly decided by non-researchers who spend their lives focussing on accruing political or economic capital, rather than knowledge about altruistic interventions. We can make cooperation mechanisms to match our donations all we want, but a random billionaire can just decide to donate billions of dollars, more money than we will ever see, to the museum next to his house. It may be wise to do this kind of monetary coordination at the federal level aka taxes and subsidies.

  To minimize the chance of statistical noise or incorrect inference polluting our conclusions, we create experiments with randomly chosen intervention and control groups, so we are sure the intervention is causally connected to the outcome.

  The problem with RCT’s is that they are expensive and measure narrow, direct, continuous effects, while they’re unpractical for broad, indirect, or discontinuous effects. Which means those interventions privilege the status-quo. I don’t see why we should limit ourselves to only randomized controlled trials. Case-control studies are cheaper and can be done by individual researchers or small teams. The fact that they have less statistical power is irrelevant when we have literally zero studies about so many things. The same thing can be said for cohort studies. If we find an intervention with orders of magnitude more impact than others through a cohort study, I’m not going to wait for an RCT (If that would even happen because in practice not everything is measurable with RCTs) before I start donating.

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 22 Apr 2024 15:34 UTC

  4 points

  2 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Yarrow B.’s comment on: “Cap­i­tal­ism”: talk­ing past each other

  How do you have capital markets without private capital?

  
  If the capital is not privately owned (private property) but rather socially owned, for example public property (owned by a state entity), collective property (owned by a collective), cooperative property (owned by a co-op), etc...

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 19 Apr 2024 7:26 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: Sugges­tions for On­line EA Dis­cus­sion Norms

  Hi Vasco,

  Thanks for notifying me, it’s probably because the EA forum switched editors (and maybe also compression algorithm) a while back. I remember struggling with adding images to the forum in the beginning, and now it’s easy.

  I looked at some old posts and it seems like those that used .png and .jpg still displayed them, so people don’t need to check up on their old posts. I looked at older comments and both .jpg and .png still work from three years back. I also found an .png in a comment from five years back. Hopefully this helps the devs with debugging, and maybe people should check on their .jpg comments from four years ago or older (mine were jpegs). I reuploaded them and they were visible in another browser, so I think it should be good now.

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 11 Apr 2024 11:24 UTC

  9 points

  4 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ulrik Horn’s comment on: Should I donate my kid­ney or part of my liver?

  removing important parts of one’s body

  I mean it’s not an important body part, you can live perfectly well with only one kidney, which is why I’m giving it away. If by some cruel twist of fate I do end up needing another kidney, I’ll be on the top of the recipient list thanks to my donation.

  I think you might be influenced a lot by your feelings

  Of course I am, empathy is a feeling after all. I don’t see why this is a reason to not do it.

  wait a few years after you have graduated and you have a comfortable, stable income

  I will not do the procedure during the school year, and will take as long as I need to recover afterwards. I’d prefer to do it sooner rather than later, since earlier interventions are almost always better than later interventions due to the higher amount of knock on effects (e.g. if I convince someone to be vegan now it’s better than years in the future, since I’m saving the animals in the intervening years). Also I study ethics, so a “comfortable stable income” is probably not happening anyways :)

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 10 Apr 2024 23:19 UTC

  16 points

  2 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: Should I donate my kid­ney or part of my liver?

  • I don’t think we can just equate 15 QALY’s to 15 DALY’s, these are different metrics. I tried to find a converter online but it looks like there is no consensus on how to do that.

  • Additional benefits of making someone an EA include: doing part-time/​volunteer work (e.g. currently everyone at effectief geven is a volunteer), and them making other people EAs (spreading the generated expected QALY’s further).

  • Same things could be said for veganism, which is less likely with a one time donation since people don’t make that part of their identity. But the cost-effectiveness is a good point. Maybe many small donations over time could achieve those same things while being more cost-effective? But then again the funding landscape might change. I’ll think a bit more about this.

  • I think the recipient is much more likely than that to sign the pledge, since the average person who has heard of EA associates it with SBF-types while this person is a direct life-changing beneficiary.

  • I also noticed you didn’t add the ‘costly signal factor’ to your analysis. I think we EAs tend to fall for the McNamara trap of basing our decisions only on quantitative observations and ignoring the rest. A lot of the factors I’m pointing at, spreading the idea of EA, making it easier to win people over, making people change their identity/​attitudes, don’t have numbers attached to them but are nonetheless very impactful.

• Bob Jacobs 🔸 10 Apr 2024 18:03 UTC

  30 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ives Parr’s comment on: Should I donate my kid­ney or part of my liver?

  I already give everything, except what’s required for the bare living necessities, away. The analysis is warranted seeing as the cost-effectiveness is so high (see other comment) and analyzing which intervention is higher impact is just a general ethical/​EA practice, even when we aren’t talking about ~15 QALYs

  EDIT: This is not as impressive as it seems at first glance. I’m a student so I only buy cheap things anyways (which means I get a modest-proposal-esque thought every time e.g. This 30 dollar jacket costs as much as curing one person of blindness). We’ll see how I behave if I ever get some large amount of money.