Jeremy

Karma: 941

Jeremy Aug 31, 2022, 2:53 PM
3 points
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in reply to: Yonatan Cale’s comment on: Effective altruism is no longer the right name for the movement
This sounds like a great idea. Maybe the answer to the pitching Longtermism or pitching x-risk question is both?

Jeremy Aug 31, 2022, 2:48 PM
13 points
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on: Effective altruism is no longer the right name for the movement
But I sometimes have a fear in the back of my mind that some of the attendees who are intrigued by these ideas are later going to look up effective altruism, get the impression that the movement’s focus is just about existential risks these days, and feel duped. Since EA pitches don’t usually start with longtermist ideas, it can feel like a bait and switch.
Do you have any evidence that this is happening? Feeling duped just seems like a bit of a stretch here. Animal welfare and global health still make up a large part of the effectivealtrusim.org home page. Givewell still ranks their top charities and their funds raised more than doubled from 2020 to 2021.
My impression is that the movement does a pretty good job explaining that caring about the future doesn’t mean ignoring the present.
Assuming someone did feel duped, what are the range of results?
1. Perhaps they would get over it and read more about longtermisim and the feeling would subside.
2. Perhaps they wouldn’t and they’d just stick with whatever effective cause they would have otherwise donated to.
3. Perhaps some combination of the two over time (this was pretty much my trajectory).
4. Perhaps they’d think “These people are crazy, I’m gonna keep giving playpumps”
Kidding aside, the latter possibility seems like the least likely to me, and anyone in that bucket seems like a pretty bad candidate for EA in general.

Jeremy Aug 31, 2022, 2:16 PM
34 points
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on: Effective altruism is no longer the right name for the movement
William_MacAskill’s comment on the Scott Alexander post explains his rational for leading with longermism over x-risk. Pasting it below so people don’t have to click.
It’s a tough question, but leading with x-risk seems like it could turn off a lot of people who have (mostly rightly, up until recently) gotten into the habit of ignoring doomsayers. Longtermism comes at it from a more positive angle, which seems more inspiring to me (x-risk seems to be more promoting acting out of fear to me). Longtermism is just more interesting as an idea to me as well.
Is existential risk a more compelling intro meme than longtermism?
My main take is: What meme is good for which people is highly dependent on the person and the context (e.g., the best framing to use in a back-and-forth conversation may be different from one in a viral tweet). This favours diversity; having a toolkit of memes that we can use depending on what’s best in context.
I think it’s very hard to reason about which memes to promote, and easy to get it wrong from the armchair, for a bunch of reasons:
- It’s inherently unpredictable which memes do well.
- It’s incredibly context-dependent. To figure this out, the main thing is just about gathering lots of (qualitative and quantitative) data from the demographic you’re interacting with. The memes that resonate most with Ezra Klein podcast listeners are very different from those that resonant most with Tyler Cowen podcast listeners, even though their listeners are very similar people compared to the wider world. And even with respect to one idea, subtly different framings can have radically different audience reactions. (cf. “We care about future generations” vs “We care about the unborn.”)
- People vary a lot. Even within very similar demographics, some people can love one message while other people hate it.
- “Curse of knowledge”—when you’re really deep down the rabbit hole in a set of ideas, it’s really hard to imagine what it’s like being first exposed to those ideas.
Then, at least when we’re comparing (weak) longtermism with existential risk, it’s not obvious which resonates better in general. (If anything, it seems to me that (weak) longtermism does better.) A few reasons:
First, message testing from Rethink suggests that longtermism and existential risk have similarly-good reactions from the educated general public, and AI risk doesn’t do great. The three best-performing messages they tested were:
- “The current pandemic has shown that unforeseen events can have a devastating effect. It is imperative that we prepare both for pandemics and other risks which could threaten humanity’s long-term future.”
- “In any year, the risk from any given threat might be small—but the odds that your children or grandchildren will face one of them is uncomfortably high.”
- “It is important to ensure a good future not only for our children’s children, but also the children of their children.”
So people actually pretty like messages that are about unspecified, and not necessarily high-probability threats, to the (albeit nearer-term) future.
As terms to describe risk, “global catastrophic risk” and “long-term risk” did the best, coming out a fair amount better than “existential risk”.
They didn’t test a message about AI risk specifically. The related thing was how much the government should prepare for different risks (pandemics, nuclear, etc), and AI came out worst among about 10 (but I don’t think that tells us very much).
Second, most media reception of WWOTF has been pretty positive so far. This is based mainly on early reviews (esp trade reviews), podcast and journalistic interviews, and the recent profiles (although the New Yorker profile was mixed). Though there definitely has been some pushback (especially on Twitter), I think it’s overall been dwarfed by positive articles. And the pushback I have gotten is on the Elon endorsement, association between EA and billionaires, and on standard objections to utilitarianism — less so to the idea of longtemism itself.
Third, anecdotally at least, a lot of people just hate the idea of AI risk (cf Twitter), thinking of it as a tech bro issue, or doomsday cultism. This has been coming up in the twitter response to WWOTF, too, even though existential risk from AI takeover is only a small part of the book. And this is important, because I’d think that the median view among people working on x-risk (including me) is that the large majority of the risk comes from AI rather than bio or other sources. So “holy shit, x-risk” is mainly, “holy shit, AI risk”.

Do neartermists and longtermists agree on what’s best to do?
Here I want to say: maybe. (I personally don’t think so, but YMMV.) But even if you do believe that, I think that’s a very fragile state of affairs, which could easily change as more money and attention flows into x-risk work, or if our evidence changes, and I don’t want to place a lot of weight on it. (I do strongly believe that global catastrophic risk is enormously important even in the near term, and a sane world would be doing far, far better on it, even if everyone only cared about the next 20 years.)
More generally, I get nervous about any plan that isn’t about promoting what we fundamentally believe or care about (or a weaker version of what we fundamentally believe or care about, which is “on track” to the things we do fundamentally believe or care about).
What I mean by “promoting what we fundamentally believe or care about”:
- Promoting goals rather than means. This means that (i) if the environment changes (e.g. some new transformative tech comes along, or the political environment changes dramatically, like war breaks out) or (ii) if our knowledge changes (e.g. about the time until transformative AIs, or about what actions to take), then we’ll take different means to pursue our goals. I think this is particularly important for something like AI, but also true more generally.
- Promoting the ideas that you believe most robustly—i.e. that you think you are least likely to change in the coming 10 years. Ideally these things aren’t highly conjunctive or relying on speculative premises. This makes it less likely that you will realise that you’ve been wasting your time or done active harm by promoting wrong ideas in ten years’ time. (Of course, this will vary from person to person. I think that (weak) longtermism is really robustly true and neglected, and I feel bullish about promoting it. For others, the thing that might feel really robustly true is “TAI is a BFD and we’re not thinking about it enough”—I suspect that many people feel they more robustly believe this than longtermism.)
Examples of people promoting means rather than goals, and this going wrong:
- “Eat less meat because it’s good for your health” → people (potentially) eat less beef and more chicken.
- “Stop nuclear power” (in the 70s) → environmentalists hate nuclear power, even though it’s one of the best bits of clean tech we have.
Examples of how this could go wrong by promoting “holy shit x-risk”:
- We miss out on non-x-risk ways of promoting a good long-run future:
  E.g. the risk that we solve the alignment problem but AI is used to lock in highly suboptimal values. (Personally, I think a large % of future expected value is lost in this way.)
- We highlight the importance of AI to people who are not longtermist. They realise how transformatively good it could be for them and for the present generation (a digital immortality of bliss!) if AI is aligned, and they think the risk of misalignment is small compared to the benefits. They become AI-accelerationists (a common view among Silicon Valley types).
- AI progress slows considerably in the next 10 years, and actually near-term x-risk doesn’t seem so high. Rather than doing whatever the next-best longtermist thing is, the people who came in via “holy shit x-risk” people just do whatever instead, and the people who promoted the “holy shit x-risk” meme get a bad reputation.
So, overall my take is:
- “Existential risk” and “longtermism” are both important ideas that deserve greater recognition in the world.
- My inclination is to prefer promoting “longtermism” because that’s closer to what I fundamentally believe (in the sense I explain above), and it’s nonobvious to me which plays better PR-wise, and it’s probably highly context-dependent.
- Let’s try promoting them both, and see how they each catch on.

Jeremy Aug 17, 2022, 11:01 AM
1 point
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in reply to: Leo’s comment on: LW4EA: Epistemic Legibility
Ah thanks. I should remember to check for that.

Jeremy Aug 7, 2022, 7:24 PM
5 points
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on: Reasons Not to Trade Money for Time
Good things to consider for sure. Everything here seems to imply that figuring out many hours you can be productive in a day is very important, so you can work towards being at your desk for that amount of time.

1a seems true, but with essential stuff like eating, showering, etc. it seems unlikely that I, personally, would ever face a true deficit this kind of time.

1b Again, without some truly absurd level of reduction in chores (live-in housekeeper or something), basic cleaning up after myself and taking care of myself seems to offer plenty of this recharge time for me.

Concerning Uber vs. public transportation, the most value I think I’ve gotten out of choosing the former is usually when it will allow me to get more sleep and be more productive the following day. Otherwise, I find there are often many ways to be productive on public transportation.

Jeremy Aug 4, 2022, 8:53 PM
3 points
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in reply to: Jeremy’s comment on: Some updates in EA communications
Some examples of resources that have inspired people to get involved in effective (but don’t necessarily represent its current form) include:
From the “What resources have inspired people to get involved with effective altruism in the past?” FAQ, I think the above is missing the word “altruism.” It seems like it should be ”...get involved in effective altruism (but don’t...”

Jeremy Aug 4, 2022, 8:48 PM
1 point
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in reply to: Jeremy’s comment on: Some updates in EA communications
I think this is put very eloquently in the “What is the definition of effective altruism?” FAQ below “Effective altruism, defined in this way, doesn’t say anything about how much someone should give. What matters is that they use the time and money they want to give as effectively as possible.”

Jeremy Aug 4, 2022, 8:46 PM
3 points
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in reply to: Jeremy’s comment on: Some updates in EA communications
You can apply effective altruism no matter how much you want to focus on doing good – what matters is that, no matter how much you want to give, your efforts are driven by the four values above, and you try to make your efforts as effective as possible.
Typically, this involves trying to identify big and neglected global problems, the most effective solutions to those problems, and ways you can contribute to those solutions, using whatever you’re willing to give. By doing this, it’s possible for anyone to do far more to help others.
The use of the word “give” in these two paragraphs makes me worry people will interpret it as exclusively giving money. In the first paragraph, you’ve also gotten a little far down the page from the four values by this point. Perhaps this could be simplified to ”...no matter how much you contribute, you try to make your efforts as effective as possible.”
And in the second paragraph,
″...using whatever resources (time, money, etc.) you are willing to give”

Jeremy Aug 4, 2022, 8:34 PM
1 point
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in reply to: Jeremy’s comment on: Some updates in EA communications
See a longer list of ways to take action.
This doesn’t seem like it should be a bullet point (maybe just a sentence that follows) since it is not a way people apply the ideas in their lives.

Jeremy Aug 4, 2022, 8:32 PM
1 point
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in reply to: Jeremy’s comment on: Some updates in EA communications
Donating to carefully chosen charities, such as by using research from GiveWell or Giving What We Can.
Would “using research from GiveWell or taking the Giving What We Can pledge.” make more sense? Does GWWC do their own charity research?

Jeremy Aug 4, 2022, 8:31 PM
5 points
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in reply to: Jeremy’s comment on: Some updates in EA communications
Choosing careers that help tackle pressing problems, such as by using advice from 80,000 Hours, or by finding ways to use their existing skills to contribute to these problems.
This sentence doesn’t quite make sense to me, When I get to “such as”, I am expecting an example of a career to follow. Maybe ”...such as those recommended by 80,000 Hours...”
“or by finding ways to use their existing skills...” doesn’t seem to quite work either. Why isn’t someone who chooses a career based on 80k advice also using their existing skills?
Lastly, I think you mean ” to contribute to solutions to these problems”, obviously not contribute to the problems themselves :)

Jeremy Aug 4, 2022, 8:25 PM
1 point
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in reply to: Jeremy’s comment on: Some updates in EA communications
The scientific method is based on simple ideas – e.g. that you should test your beliefs – but it leads to a radically different picture of the world (e.g. quantum mechanics).
It’s not really clear what “different” refers to here. Different than what?

Jeremy Aug 4, 2022, 8:13 PM
1 point
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in reply to: Jeremy’s comment on: Some updates in EA communications
an entirely vegan burger that tastes like meat, and is now sold in Burger King.
I love that Impossible Burgers exist and that they reduce meat consumption. I even think they taste fine, but they do not taste much like meat to me. I am sure they do to some people, but I would say this is not a fact and should not be stated like it’s a fact. It might seem like a small point, but when I imagine being introduced to new ideas by an article like this, small details that seem wrong to me can really reduce how credible I find the rest of it. I think something as simple as “approaches the taste and texture of meat” would resolve my issue with it.

Jeremy Aug 4, 2022, 8:03 PM
1 point
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in reply to: Jeremy’s comment on: Some updates in EA communications
founded The Center for Human-Compatible AI at UC Berkeley. This research institute aims to develop a new paradigm of “human-compatible” AI development.
Repeating “human-compatible” feels a bit weird/redundant here.

Jeremy Aug 4, 2022, 8:01 PM
1 point
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in reply to: Jeremy’s comment on: Some updates in EA communications
Unable to govern beings with capabilities far greater than our own...
Referring to an AI system as a “being” might be a bit alienating or confusing to people coming to EA for the first time, and the background discussion/explanation seems a bit out of scope for an intro article.

Jeremy Aug 4, 2022, 7:55 PM
1 point
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in reply to: Jeremy’s comment on: Some updates in EA communications
...nothing to rule out a disease that’s more infectious than the omicron variant, but that’s as deadly as smallpox.
Minor point, but using omicron variant as an example might seem dated once we get to the next variant or two in 6 months or a year. Perhaps Measles would be a better choice?

Jeremy Aug 4, 2022, 7:51 PM
1 point
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in reply to: Jeremy’s comment on: Some updates in EA communications
Effective altruism was formalized by scholars at Oxford University...
My understanding is that EAs origins are a bit broader than just Oxford and this sort of gives the impression that they aren’t. It also might be off-putting to some, depending on their views of academia (though others might be impressed by it). The word “formalized” gives the impression that things are a bit more set in stone and feels a bit contradictory to the truthseeking/updating beliefs stuff.

Jeremy Aug 4, 2022, 7:42 PM
1 point
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on: Some updates in EA communications
The new intro article is excellent. I appreciate all the work that must have gone into it. Reading with a critical eye, there were a few things I might consider changing. I’ll post each below as a reply to this so people can upvote/downvote agreement or disagreement.

Jeremy Jul 16, 2022, 12:45 AM
1 point
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in reply to: Ann Garth 🔸’s comment on: Idea: call-your-representative newsletter
The forum will send emails for tags you are subscribed to if you set it up that way in the settings. I think I would prefer the idea of getting the bills to call about one at a time (a big list could be imposing), and having the option to discuss, but it might be too much friction getting people to set that up though (and I guess some might not have forum accounts).

Jeremy Jul 15, 2022, 12:13 AM
5 points
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on: Idea: call-your-representative newsletter
I like the idea. Why not do it on the forum though? It could be a tag and you could do individual posts for each piece of legislation. People who are willing to call could subscribe to the tag and would be notified when there was a new post with the tag. People could also discuss in the comments if someone disagreed that it was something EAs should support.