CB

Karma: 542

I’m living in Lyon, France. Learned about EA in 2018, found that great, digged a lot into the topic. The idea of “what in the world improves well-being or causes suffering the most, and what can we do” really influenced me a whole lot—especially when mixed with meditation that allowed me to be more active in my life.

I’m doing a lot of personal research on a whole lot of topics. I also co-wrote a book in French with a few recommendations on how to take action for a better world, and included a chapter on EA (the title is “Acting for a Sustainable World”, Éditions Jouvence). I’ve participated in a few conferences after that, it’s a good way to improve oral skills.

One of the most reliable thing I have found so far is helping animal charities : farmed animals are much more numerous than humans (and have much worse living conditions), and there absolutely is evidence that animal charities are getting some improvements (especially from The Humane League). I tried to donate a lot there.

Long-termism could also be important, but I think that we’ll hit energy limits before getting to an extinction event—I wrote an EA forum post for that here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wXzc75txE5hbHqYug/the-great-energy-descent-short-version-an-important-thing-ea

CB 17 Jun 2024 19:36 UTC
3 points
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on: Animal advocates should campaign to restrict AI precision livestock farming
I don’t have time to read all of it right now, but from what I’ve read (half of it) this seems a very compelling post !

I also strongly agree with your initial point : most of the impacts of future AI will be on animals, something I think has not been addressed enough in the AI safety field.

CB 8 Jun 2024 9:46 UTC
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in reply to: Kaleem’s comment on: Kaleem’s Shortform
Interesting, that might be worth exploring !

CB 8 Jun 2024 9:44 UTC
3 points
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on: How to change the law to have a large-scale impact on animal welfare?
Glad to see your theory of change on the forum !

CB 3 Jun 2024 21:59 UTC
1 point
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on: Addiction is largest cause of death and DALYs in the USA… and maybe worldwide?
Thanks for the post, these numbers are pretty big. I also wonder whether negative effects linked to an overuse of screen might be pretty big as well (competition with sports, sleep and going outside, negative effects on mental health...)

CB 5 May 2024 7:45 UTC
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on: Animal Welfare is now enshrined in the Belgian Constitution
Good news, thanks for the article !

CB 10 Apr 2024 7:08 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: huw’s comment on: Therapy without a therapist: Why unguided self-help might be a better intervention than guided
Thanks for the answer!

CB 9 Apr 2024 4:59 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: huw’s comment on: Therapy without a therapist: Why unguided self-help might be a better intervention than guided
Thanks for the answer ! So if I have some friends and contacts that have mental health issue, I guess it would be relevant to provide them these kind of apps (at least in complement)? Do you have in mind some apps that would be better than others ? (Thought Saver is there I guess)

CB 8 Apr 2024 9:11 UTC
6 points
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on: Therapy without a therapist: Why unguided self-help might be a better intervention than guided
Thanks for the post. This sounds worth exploring and quite promising, especially if it works.

It’s quite impressive that it may be about 60-70% as effective compared to guided therapy.

I was just wondering about one element that I think could be more clear. What kind of unguided self-help apps are you talking about? Are they already widespread? Are we talking about Thought Saver or Waking Up or something like that ? I think a little example of such an app and how it works at the beginning could provide a bit more clarity.

CB 8 Apr 2024 8:56 UTC
3 points
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on: Two tools for rethinking existential risk
Thanks for the calculator.

I was wondering about the welfare part of the equation, and it’s not obvious how people get their welfare estimates in the calculator, from what I see in the post.

Are we talking about the welfare of just humans ? Animals ? (Farmed or wild animals)? Artificial sentience ? How do we reconcile all of these when we’re not sure today whether global welfare is net positive ?

Of course, this depends on very important questions that are hard to assess. What are the consequences of bringing wild animals suffering to our planet? Is factory farming going to continue for a long time, especially as that long-termists are very optimistic about technology replacing all forms of animal farming, where it’s not so obvious? Are artificial sentience going to have lives worth living ? How are we going to impact animals on other planets ?

So overall, what should we include in the ‘welfare’ part of the calculator?

CB 29 Mar 2024 10:25 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: yanni kyriacos’s comment on: Killing the moths
My prior would be that unless you check extremely frequently, this sounds like a lot of suffering. But not sure about the other options.

CB 24 Mar 2024 20:17 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: David Mathers’s comment on: EA “Worldviews” Need Rethinking
I’m still kind of unconvinced. If we were talking only about human populations, sure then I’d agree, most efforts seem intended to provoke good things. But when you look at other species ? I think if you look at the things we do to factory farmed animals or wild animals or animals we just harm because of pollutions or climate change or deep see mining when it starts, we’d label all of that to be bad if it were done to humans.

I’m more interested in actual track record rather than intentions. Our intentions don’t match up super well with ‘overall good in the world increasing’.

One important reason we might do more bad than good in the future is because animals are far more numerous than humans, and most likely dominate from a moral standpoint (besides maybe artificial sentence). Most importantly, our goals are often opposed to theirs : finding more energy, using fossil fuels, using chemicals for making goods, eating meat, making silk, clearing a forest for agriculture and cities… So as we aggregate even more energy, it’s unlikely that our actions are going to be beneficial to animal’s goals given our own objectives.

CB 24 Mar 2024 16:20 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: David Mathers’s comment on: EA “Worldviews” Need Rethinking
I am not sure this is the case?
I mean, factory farming is in itself an obvious counterexample. It’s huge and growing.
I think you are putting too much value on intentions rather than consequences. A lot of harm happening in the world is the result of indifference than cruelty—most people do not actively animals to be harmed, but the most economical way to farm animals is by getting them in crowded conditions, so…
Poor incentives and competition are important here. A lot of suffering is even natural (e.g., a deer dying of hunger or a spider trapping an insect), and sometimes just unwanted (e.g. climate change).

CB 22 Mar 2024 10:57 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Richard Y Chappell’s comment on: EA “Worldviews” Need Rethinking
Yes, “prove” is too strong here, that’s not the term I should have used. And human life is not guaranteed to be net-negative.
But I often see the view that some people assume human action in the future to be net-positive, and I felt like adding a counterpoint to that, given the large uncertainties.

CB 20 Mar 2024 0:23 UTC
8 points
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in reply to: Richard Y Chappell’s comment on: EA “Worldviews” Need Rethinking
About point 1, you’d first need to prove that the expected value of the future is going to be positive, something which does not sound guaranteed, especially if factory farming were to continue in the future.
Regarding point 2, note that clean meat automatically winning in the long term is really not guaranteed either:
Longtermists tend to be super optimistic that alternative proteins and cultured meat will be more efficient and cheaper, baffling people working in animal welfare.
I recommend reading that post, Optimistic longtermist would be terrible for animals.

CB 13 Mar 2024 2:26 UTC
3 points
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on: Some (problematic) aesthetics of what constitutes good work in academia
Nice post, thanks !
I explains several elements that I find frustrating: science is supposed to provide useful knowledge we can use improve ourselves and the world, but wow, it’s so hard to actually extract readily usable knowledge out of a bunch scientific papers, since so much is written in a form not adequate to the human brain.
I really like this article on the topic :
Scientific production and communication cannot be seen as separate tasks: they are one and the same thing.
Science is, after all, a human enterprise and it has to be understood in human terms, otherwise it becomes a baroque accumulation of decorative items, just like gold in the paws of a dragon.
Henri Poincaré : “Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones. But an accumulation of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house”

CB 30 Jan 2024 15:48 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: Economic Growth—Donation suggestions and ideas
Well, I’m personally a bit sceptical of that, due to the fact that many things influence what we choose or not. We’re not that good at predicting what will make us happier, and a large amount of what people choose derives from several influences like marketing.
To take the Ferrari example—the marketing team at Ferrari has been very good at making this kind of car desirable, by associating it with status. But status is relative—in a world with no Ferrari we’d use other symbols (and we did). Marketing is pretty strong when it comes manipulation.
The fact that chasing one’s desires (or, more exactly, craving), does not contribute to happiness has been documented in many spiritualities, and I think this still applies today. I recommend this text : https://www.dhamma.org/en/about/art
(of course, this does not apply to basic stuff like eating, sleeping, etc.)
I don’t want to detail, but I have one example in mind : one survey looked at lottery winners (who presumably wanted to win it), and it turns out that one year later, they were less happy than before, on average. This is because they got used to their wealth, but the quality of their relationships with others (friends, family) declined, as people around them started seeing them differently.

CB 23 Jan 2024 10:15 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: Economic Growth—Donation suggestions and ideas
Let’s formulate this another way. Suppose I propose to give you a Ferrari. Would you accept?
Of course you would. However, will that really make you happier in the long term? Or will you just take the Ferrari for granted in 3 months?
Think of the last 3 items you bought on Amazon, or you received as a gift. Did they make you significantly happier compared to a universe where you didn’t receive them?
One aspect of having more money is that we get used to it. Fast! And we underestimate how fast we adapt to these kind of changes.

CB 19 Jan 2024 8:00 UTC
1 point
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on: Report on the Desirability of Science Given New Biotech Risks
Interesting Did you try looking at animal welfare when calculating for the overall utility of science? I except this could change substantially your results, especially when including the many ways technological progress has been used to boost factory farming (eg genetic sélection).

See this post on the topic “Global welfare may be net negative and declining” https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HDFxQwMwPp275J87r/net-global-welfare-may-be-negative-and-declining-1

CB 16 Jan 2024 10:58 UTC
1 point
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on: How to publish research in peer-reviewed journals
Thanks, very good article ! This might prove helpful in the future, who knows.

CB 14 Jan 2024 14:33 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Matthieu’s comment on: Do you know some promising French charities (which may or may not work globally) ?
Hi—I noticed I forgot to answer.
The EA France Slack link is here : https://www.altruismeefficacefrance.org/rejoindre-la-communaute
You can find the organisations here https://www.altruismeefficacefrance.org/organisations-recommandees
We also realised several cause areas pages in French, including one on the environment : https://www.altruismeefficacefrance.org/environnement