Brian Wang

• Brian WangOct 30, 2016, 6:42 PM

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  in reply to: Owen Cotton-Barratt’s comment on: Ded­i­cated Donors May Not Want to Sign the Giv­ing What We Can Pledge

  This is a good point; however, I would also like to point out that it could be the case that a majority of “dedicated donors” don’t end up taking the pledge, without this becoming a norm. The norm instead could be “each individual should think through themselves, giving their own unique situations, whether or not taking the pledge is likely to be valuable,” which could lead to a situation where “dedicated donors” tend not to take the pledge, but not necessarily to a situation where, if you are a “dedicated donor,” you are expected not to take the pledge.

  (I am highly uncertain as to whether or not this is how norms work; that is to say, whether norms connecting a group of people and a certain action could refrain from developing even though a majority of that group of people take that action.)

• Brian WangOct 6, 2016, 6:52 AM

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  in reply to: CarlShulman’s comment on: Two Strange Things About AI Safety Policy

  I guess the argument is that, if it takes (say) the same amount of effort/​resources to speed up AI safety research by 1000% and to slow down general AI research by 1% via spreading norms of safety/​caution, then plausibly the latter is more valuable due to the sheer volume of general AI research being done (with the assumption that slowing down general AI research is a good thing, which as you pointed out in your original point (1) may not be the case). The tradeoff might be more like going from $1 million to $10 million in safety research, vs. going from $10 billion to $9.9 billion in general research.

  This does seem to assume that absolute size in difference is more important than proportions. I’m not sure how to think about whether or not this is the case.

• Brian WangOct 6, 2016, 2:54 AM

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  in reply to: CarlShulman’s comment on: Two Strange Things About AI Safety Policy

  Regarding your point (2), couldn’t this count as an argument for trying to slow down AI research? I.e., given that the amount of general AI research done is so enormous, even changing community norms around safety a little bit could result in dramatically narrowing the gap between the rates of general AI research and AI safety research?

• Brian WangAug 13, 2016, 4:56 PM

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  on: Ideas for Fu­ture Effec­tive Altru­ism Con­fer­ences: Open Thread

  Quick feedback forms for workshops/​discussion groups would be nice; I think most of the workshops I attended didn’t allow any opportunity for feedback, and I would have had comments for them.

• Brian WangAug 13, 2016, 4:53 PM

  6 points

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  on: Ideas for Fu­ture Effec­tive Altru­ism Con­fer­ences: Open Thread

  A guarantee that all the talks/​panels will be recorded.

  The booklet this year stated that “almost” all the talks would be recorded, which left me worried that, if I missed a talk, I wouldn’t be able to watch it in the future (this might just be me). I probably would have skipped more talks and talked to more people if I had a guarantee that all the talks would be recorded.

  Also, it would be nice to have a set schedule that didn’t change so much during the conference. The online schedule was pretty convenient and was (for the most part) up to date, but people using the physical booklet may have been confused.

• Brian WangMay 18, 2016, 7:33 PM

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  on: GiveWell’s Char­ity Recom­men­da­tions Re­quire Tak­ing a Con­tro­ver­sial Stance on Pop­u­la­tion Ethics

  I think that adopting your first resolution, in addition to the assumption by commenters that being a child with malaria is a net negative experience, can rescue some of the value of AMF. Say in situation 1, a family has a child, Afiya, who eventually gets malaria and dies, and thus has a net negative experience. Because of this, the family decides to have a second child, Brian, who does not get malaria and lives a full and healthy life. In situation 2, where AMF is taken to have a contribution, a family has just one child, Afiya, who is prevented from getting malaria and lives a full and healthy life. The family does not decide to have a second child. Only taking into account the utility of the people directly affected by malaria, and not the family, it seems to me that situation 1 is worse than situation 2 by an amount equivalent to Afiya’s net negative experience of getting malaria; the reverse of this could be said to be AMF’s contribution. So while this is not the same as 35 QALY’s, it still seems like a net positive.

  EDIT: Note of clarification: The above is in particular a response to the statement, “Because AMF hardly changes humans’ lifespans, it does not have a clear beneficial effect for humans,” which was stated as a problem for Givewell with adopting the first resolution.

• Brian WangOct 11, 2015, 3:08 AM

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  on: EA Open Thread: October

  I have a question for those who donate to meta-charities like Charity Science or REG to take advantage of their multiplier effect (these charities typically raise ~$5-10 per dollar of expenditure). Do you donate directly towards the operations expenses of these meta-charities? For example, REG’s donations page has the default split of your donations as 80% towards object-level charities (and other meta-charities), while 20% is towards REG’s operating expenses, which include the fundraising efforts that the multiplier presumably is coming from. It seems to me that in order to get the best multiplier for your donation, you would donate 100% towards operating expenses, since any dollar not spent on operating expenses wouldn’t have any multiplier. Is this right?