Iām a first-year PhD student at UC Berkeley researching cognitive biases in forecasting/ārisk communication (~80% of my time) and human-AI interaction, especially peopleās attitudes about digital sentience (~20% of my time). I also work part-time at the Forecasting Research Institute.
carter allenšø
Karma: 147
InĀtroĀducĀing WAIT to Save Humanity
Many global health interventions plausibly have negative effects on animal welfare (e.g., increasing factory farming). The inverse doesnāt seem as true.
Due to their neglectedness (and the lack of animal participation in markets) animal interventions are also probably more efficient at converting $$ ā utils
This post pushed me to write a letter. Thanks!
I was imagining you could use the tools to assess peopleās views about cause prioritization! In particular, Iām not sure whether you record usersā responses when they use either tool, but Iād be interested in seeing these data. It may also be valuable to recruit a more representative sample to see how most people react to moral uncertainty or otherwise engage with the tools.
Of course, I think a limitation in both these cases is that most people are pretty unfamiliar with moral uncertainty, and so a) probably a lot of people who use both tools are simply testing assumptions out and not necessarily expressing their true views, and b) Iām not sure whether recruiting people without a philosophical background would yield high-quality data. These might mean itās not worth the effort, but Iām curious what the teamās thoughts are!
Do you plan to conduct empirical work on either of the tools youāve released recently? Interested to hear any reasons you think this would or wouldnāt be especially valuable!
InĀcreasĀing ConĀcern for DigiĀtal BeĀings Through LLM Persuasion
For future debate weeks, it might be nice if we could select comments that changed our view! I often find comments more informative than posts.
carter allenās Quick takes
A ReĀsearch Agenda for PsyĀcholĀogy and AI
Are we probĀaĀbly in the midĀdle of huĀmanĀity? (Five anĀthropĀics thought exĀperĀiĀments)
I want someone to write a post on bets as insurance. Sometimes, placing monetary bets against your own interests may help make worst-case scenarios less bad. For example, if one thinks Trump is an existential threat, they might bet money on Trump winning so they have more resources to deal with the fallout in the event that he does win. One could also bet against good news, e.g., last year I bet real money against the room-temperature superconductor stuff being legit, which ensured that either it was legit, or Iād make a bunch of money; I thought this guaranteed net good news in either case.
Someone could think through the risks and benefits of this approach and/āor create a larger list of promising insurance-bets.
Agree with everything here.
But the argument isnāt that people should spend the money theyād otherwise donate to charity on themselves/āflying business class, itās that they should use it to further whatever their particular path to impact is.
Longview Emerging Challenges Fund, LessWrong, Wild Animal Initiative