Jeremy

• Jeremy 13 May 2019 15:10 UTC

  9 points

  in reply to: aarongertler's comment on: Is EA ig­nor­ing sig­nifi­cant pos­si­bil­ities for im­pact?

  Fan­tas­tic stuff Aaron. Even as some­one who has fol­lowed EA fo­rum/​newslet­ters/​blogs for 2-3 years, there were quite a few things I didn’t know about. Thanks!

Ac­tivism to Make Kid­ney Sales Legal

• Jeremy 9 Apr 2019 18:05 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: aarongertler's comment on: Ac­tivism to Make Kid­ney Sales Legal

  Ex­cel­lent crit­i­cisms thanks. I do, oc­ca­sion­ally, have ideas like this that seem worth post­ing, but that I am un­likely to ever get around to if I wait un­til I have time to give them the full re­search treat­ment. I sup­pose it would make sense to note that in the origi­nal post.

  It also oc­curs to me that, while the idea that or­gan sales should be le­gal seems like a pretty main­stream view in EA cir­cles, there are likely some mem­bers of the fo­rum that dis­agree with that. Per­haps that could be some­one’s rea­son for down­vot­ing.

• Jeremy 9 Apr 2019 17:57 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: dmolling's comment on: Ac­tivism to Make Kid­ney Sales Legal

  Yes that makes sense for sure. Thanks for the feed­back.

• Jeremy 8 Apr 2019 14:40 UTC

  3 points

  on: Ac­tivism to Make Kid­ney Sales Legal

  Would the peo­ple who down-voted this be will­ing to give a brief note about why?

• Jeremy 7 Apr 2019 14:36 UTC

  1 point

  on: Ac­tivism to Make Kid­ney Sales Legal

  Or maybe a bet­ter idea. A “black mar­ket non-profit” that vets donors and pur­chases kid­neys in or­der to start dona­tion chains with them (rather than benefit a spe­cific per­son). As long as it op­er­ates, it saves a lot of lives. If it gets into le­gal trou­ble, it’s a pretty good story to get press cov­er­age, and to help shift pub­lic opinion.

• Jeremy 7 Apr 2019 12:55 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Aidan O'Gara's comment on: Ac­tivism to Make Kid­ney Sales Legal

  You mean be­cause it was $1 or be­cause it’s not usu­ally en­forced? The $1 part doesn’t seem es­sen­tial. Could make it $100k.

• Jeremy 26 Mar 2019 15:47 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: DavidNash's comment on: Should You Offer to Send Copies of Do­ing Good Bet­ter to Your Friends on So­cial Me­dia?

  Yes, I had con­sid­ered do­ing an­other post, but I guess I was think­ing prob­a­bly not. It would cer­tainly be diminish­ing re­turns, yeah. I, and I’m sure many oth­ers, wouldn’t want to start seem­ing spammy about it. Maybe af­ter a cou­ple of years.

• Jeremy 26 Mar 2019 15:44 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Davidmanheim's comment on: Should You Offer to Send Copies of Do­ing Good Bet­ter to Your Friends on So­cial Me­dia?

  @David­man­heim I am not sure if they are still do­ing it, but I know they were do­ing a sur­vey. It is linked to in the Google Doc of their sum­mary that I linked to above.

• Jeremy 26 Mar 2019 15:41 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Davidmanheim's comment on: Should You Offer to Send Copies of Do­ing Good Bet­ter to Your Friends on So­cial Me­dia?

  Thanks David! Great sug­ges­tions. I am just back from a trip, but I will dig in more deeply this week and make some re­vi­sions and re­ply to you in more depth—ei­ther here or via email. Thanks again!

• Jeremy 21 Mar 2019 20:02 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: weeatquince's comment on: Should You Offer to Send Copies of Do­ing Good Bet­ter to Your Friends on So­cial Me­dia?

  Good idea. I will definitely do that.

• Jeremy 21 Mar 2019 15:15 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: aarongertler's comment on: Should You Offer to Send Copies of Do­ing Good Bet­ter to Your Friends on So­cial Me­dia?

  I see what you’re say­ing, but I (in­ten­tion­ally) didn’t ask about fu­ture plans so I’m not sure if that part works. While I definitely don’t want it to be high pres­sure, I do want to some­how em­pha­size the im­por­tance of track­ing fu­ture ac­tions. I won­der if this strikes a bal­ance.

  Thank you for tak­ing the time to share what you have done. In or­der to help us un­der­stand the longer-term im­pact of the book, would you mind if we fol­lowed up with an­other short sur­vey a year from now? If that’s alright, please en­ter your email ad­dress be­low—it will not be shared with any­one, or used for any other pur­pose.

  I re­ally ap­pre­ci­ate you tak­ing the time to back-and-forth with me about this!

• Jeremy 20 Mar 2019 14:03 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: aarongertler's comment on: Should You Offer to Send Copies of Do­ing Good Bet­ter to Your Friends on So­cial Me­dia?

  Thanks Aaron. Glad to hear you might try it.

  Good point about that sur­vey ques­tion. I was re­ally try­ing to get across the im­por­tance of track­ing fu­ture ac­tions, but I agree that it could come across off-putting. What do you think of this?

  Thank you for tak­ing the time to tell us about what you’ve done. We’d love to hear about what you may still do as well. If you think you might make fu­ture dona­tions or changes in line with the prin­ci­ples of Effec­tive Altru­ism, can we send you a sin­gle, short fol­low-up sur­vey a year from now? If so, please en­ter your email ad­dress be­low—it will not be shared with any­one, or used for any other pur­pose.

I’ll Fund You to Give Away ‘Do­ing Good Bet­ter’ - Sur­pris­ingly Effec­tive?

• Jeremy 11 Mar 2019 14:30 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Larks's comment on: EA/​X-risk/​AI Align­ment Cover­age in Journalism

  It seems like there are 3 pos­si­ble out­comes.

  1) AI risk is as­so­ci­ated with and cov­ered pri­mar­ily by one side of the poli­ti­cal spec­trum.

  2) AI risk is as­so­ci­ated with and cov­ered by both sides more or less evenly.

  3) AI risk is as­so­ci­ated with and cov­ered in a neu­tral way.

  In­tu­itively, 3 seems like the best-case sce­nario, but that horse may already have left the barn (as it seems like it does with most causes).

  1 prob­a­bly seems bad—though I be­lieve Rob did point out that if it be­comes a part of one party’s plat­form, then maybe it’s eas­ier to im­ple­ment policy when that party is in power. Ob­vi­ously, that’s a bit of a gam­ble.

  2 seems like the best re­main­ing op­tion then, but ob­vi­ously with some risks—per­haps along the lines of what you are hint­ing at. I don’t see why there would need to be a right wing cause to as­so­ci­ate it with though. I mean, if both sides are cov­er­ing it, the cov­er­age could turn into a back and forth, pro/​con on the most con­tro­ver­sial as­pects of it (a less col­le­gial ver­sion of the dis­cus­sion you linked to), which also seems not that great. Per­haps hav­ing both sides be philan­thropy-funded and not de­pen­dent on gen­er­at­ing con­tro­versy for ad­ver­tis­ing/​clicks could help with that.

EA/​X-risk/​AI Align­ment Cover­age in Journalism

• Jeremy 22 Feb 2019 18:32 UTC

  15 points

  on: Bounty: Guide To Switch­ing From Farmed Fish To Wild-Caught Fish

  En­thu­si­as­tic +1 here. I’d also be will­ing to con­tribute to the bounty if there were an easy way to do that.

• Jeremy 5 Feb 2019 12:28 UTC

  2 points

  on: Are there more pa­pers on dung bee­tles than hu­man ex­tinc­tion?

  What I am won­der­ing is, of dung bee­tles are a par­tic­u­larly hot re­search topic among an­i­mals/​in­sects. They are pretty cool, but would this graph look less ex­treme with some­thing like an­telope or sea urchin in there—or the av­er­age num­ber of re­search pa­pers on a par­tic­u­lar an­i­mal.

  Though I guess X-Risk is more or less an en­tire field, so maybe the more apt com­par­i­son is with pa­pers about an­i­mals or biol­ogy pa­pers—in which case I’m sure it looks much worse

• Jeremy 30 Jan 2019 4:37 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: kbog's comment on: Vox’s “Fu­ture Perfect” column fre­quently has flawed journalism

  Great dis­cus­sion here. I’m try­ing to imag­ine how most peo­ple con­sume these ar­ti­cles. Linked from the Vox home page? Shared on Face­book or Twit­ter? Do they re­al­ize they aren’t just a stan­dard Vox ar­ti­cle? Some prob­a­bly barely know what Vox is. Cer­tainly, we are all aware of the con­nec­tion to EA, but I bet most read­ers are pretty oblivi­ous.

  In that case, maybe these tan­gen­tially re­lated or un­re­lated ar­ti­cles don’t mat­ter too much. Con­versely, the bet­ter ar­ti­cles may spark an in­ter­est that leads a few peo­ple to­wards find­ing out more about EA and be­com­ing in­volved.

• Jeremy 26 Jan 2019 13:35 UTC

  17 points

  on: Vox’s “Fu­ture Perfect” column fre­quently has flawed journalism

  I agree gen­er­ally with your crit­i­cisms. It’s not par­tic­u­larly sur­pris­ing given the fre­quency with which they pub­lish and the vari­a­tion in qual­ity if Vox’s re­port­ing in gen­eral.

  I would say your ad­vice to read and check the over­all sound­ness of the mes­sage be­fore shar­ing could prob­a­bly be broadly ap­plied—and strikes me as a bit self-ev­i­dent. Do you feel like these poor qual­ity FP ar­ti­cles are get­ting shared widely? Do you have rea­son to be­lieve it is be­ing done with­out the sharer read­ing them?