ColdButtonIssues

• ColdButtonIssuesSep 5, 2022, 10:23 PM

  8 points

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  in reply to: Mau’s comment on: The Base Rate of Longter­mism Is Bad

  Thanks for the counterexamples!

  I’m trying to think of a way to get a fair example: Coding party manifestos by attention to long-term future and trying to rate their success in office? I’m really unsure.

• ColdButtonIssuesSep 5, 2022, 5:36 PM

  7 points

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  in reply to: Peter’s comment on: The Base Rate of Longter­mism Is Bad

  I do think Communism was on average a more longtermist movement than democratic revolutions. Maybe the typical revolutionary in all revolutions had similar goals, but Marx and many of his followers had a vision for how history was supposed to play out, and envisioned an intermediate form of society, between the revolution and an eventual classless society.

  In contrast, a lot of democratic revolutions were more like “King George bad.” I don’t think the American founding fathers were utopian in the same sense as a lot of Marxists.

The Base Rate of Longter­mism Is Bad

• ColdButtonIssuesSep 1, 2022, 6:37 PM

  19 points

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  on: EAs should recom­mend cost-effec­tive in­ter­ven­tions in more cause ar­eas (not just the most press­ing ones)

  “Imagine that every time there was a big crisis in the news, some EAs produced well-researched, sensible lists of the most plausibly-effective ways for people to help with that crisis. The lists would be produced voluntarily by EAs who were passionate about or informed about the cause, and shared widely by other EAs. ”

  I agree that working on LICAs can be a good idea for individuals EAs and I think your examples were well-chosen. I disagree that it is a good idea for the EA community or institutions to work on LICAs.

  I completely agree that addressing important, but “less important” issues can be a good use of time. If an individual EA could meaningfully improve US food bank management that seems really good, even if rich country food banks aren’t an EA cause overall.

  For EA institutions to work on these issues is a bad idea, IMO. If Open Phil staked out a position of abortion, for instance, it would alienate a lot of people. The only reason for EA orgs to work on divisive issues is because they are so important that the importance offsets the costs of division.

• ColdButtonIssuesSep 1, 2022, 3:44 PM

  1 point

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  on: ColdBut­tonIs­sues’s Shortform

  Aspiring EA researchers should consider taking a shot at winning federal bounties.

  A lot of EAs are relatively young and EA org jobs are competitive. Challenge.gov list prizes you can compete for by developing new products or proposing strategic plans. Options for engineers, social scientists, and communications type to build career capital, possibly win money, and make the US government better at its job.

  Current prizes include a ton of AI-related stuff but also market analysis for environmental technology and math education programs.

• ColdButtonIssuesAug 31, 2022, 12:21 PM

  5 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Gregory Lewis🔸’s comment on: Toby Ord’s The Scourge, Reviewed

  I just find the form of the argument really unconvincing. It reads as a general argument against demanding moral theories. He has the points that

  1. Valuing embryos would require a lot of work regarding spontaneous abortion and people don’t want to do what that entails.

  2. People don’t act like they value embryos.

  If this argument works, it also seems like we should say caring about animal welfare is absurd (how many people think we should modify the environment to help wild animals), caring about the far future is absurd, and so forth. I think in function this is a general anti-EA argument, although in practice Ord obviously did a lot to start and support EA and promote concern for the future.

• ColdButtonIssuesAug 31, 2022, 2:01 AM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Ramiro’s comment on: Toby Ord’s The Scourge, Reviewed

  I’m not making any claim about the moral value of embryos.

  I just think Ord’s claim that embryo valuers don’t care about embryos (in the right way, in all circumstances) says that their general view can be discarded is not convincing. I know tons of people who claim X, but don’t act on X. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong about X- they might be weak or hypocritical or bad at reasoning!

• ColdButtonIssuesAug 31, 2022, 1:39 AM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Guy Raveh’s comment on: Toby Ord’s The Scourge, Reviewed

  I’m not convinced of the act omission distinction, but I’m not ready to throw it away.

  I think one argument about wild animal suffering that might be true or might be rationalization is that there’s nothing we can do for now- but you can promote general compassion to animals through activism or veganism or something.

• ColdButtonIssuesAug 31, 2022, 1:38 AM

  12 points

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  in reply to: Ramiro’s comment on: Toby Ord’s The Scourge, Reviewed

  I genuinely think he wrote what turned out to be a decent anti-EA article.

  If most people follow their moral principles, they run into really challenging situations- like confronting millions of spontaneous abortions per year. One response is to bite the bullet (rare), one is to not think about the implications of your moral commitments (common), and another is to argue that the fact that nobody follows a principle fully, you can discard it (I dislike this approach), but it’s a possible conclusion.

  Instead, I think people should bite the bullet on moral reasoning, and not use arguments like “that’s weird” or “that’s too hard” and not conclude that if other people aren’t living out their claimed values, their values are wrong.

  Edited to add this: If you think people not following through on the implications of moral claim X, lets you reject X, you can easily reject EA. Almost nobody outside of EA follows through on a lot of central EA claims about the future, global poor, or wild animals. Few EAs fully follow through- but I don’t think that justifies indifference to those claims.

• ColdButtonIssuesAug 30, 2022, 10:27 PM

  6 points

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  in reply to: Guy Raveh’s comment on: Toby Ord’s The Scourge, Reviewed

  Thanks, I understand the distinction you’re making . I still disagree that we can reject their moral claims because they don’t take it care far enough- I think animal advocates are pretty sincere even though virtually none of them ever care about wild animals. But I still animal advocates make fair points.

• ColdButtonIssuesAug 30, 2022, 10:06 PM

  7 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Guy Raveh’s comment on: Toby Ord’s The Scourge, Reviewed

  People who claim to care about embryos may oppose abortion or even support embryo adoption- does their failure to care about spontaneous abortions discredit them? They’re not doing all they can.

  People who care to claim about animals may be vegans- does their failure to become an animal rights advocate discredit them? They’re not doing all they can.

  People who claim to care about the global poor may donate money- but do they donate all their money? They’re not doing all they can.

  I reject the form of this argument. People are hypocrites and moral failures- they can still be correct in their claims.

Toby Ord’s The Scourge, Reviewed

• ColdButtonIssuesAug 18, 2022, 1:03 AM

  0 points

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  in reply to: Ember’s comment on: Go Repub­li­can, Young EA!

  Markets (and policymakers) have to make decisions all the time. They might not be perfect, but I’m not aware of a better gauge of nuclear risk- or a least a gauge I find more trustworthy. Another interpretation of Buiter’s article is that he’s just wrong.

  I think climate change is unlikely to rise to the level of a global catastrophic risk. But if it were, it would still leave open the question, what party an individual should enter to most improve the situation.

  As I wrote:”I would urge them to think on the margin. The more awesome the Democratic Party is on the issue you care about, the less value you bring by joining that party. If you managed to win a high position in Democratic politics, you’ll simply be displacing a person who might have been almost as good as you. The more odious you think the Republican Party is, the more uplifting your presence will be and the greater value you will contribute by rising within that party. Joining the Republican Party is great idea!”

  That said if someone really hates a party, it’s a bad idea to join it in practice, and also quite dishonest. But I think the expected value of an EA entering the GOP is much better than one entering the Democratic Party.

• ColdButtonIssuesAug 17, 2022, 11:09 PM

  −3 points

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  in reply to: Ember’s comment on: Go Repub­li­can, Young EA!

  “On the nuclear risk front, the republican party is also clearly horrific.”

  If the GOP was worse on nuclear risk, wouldn’t we expect property values in major cities to crash when a Republican is elected president (because risk of being nuked goes up) and soar when a Democratic is elected? Or wouldn’t we expect other countries to start shifting resources to fallout shelters and nuclear winter prep when a Republican is elected? I’ve never seen that happen.

  I’m not aware of any market response or other responses due to swings in nuclear war risk that would coincide with presidential elections according to your model. I don’t think there’s a predictable difference in nuclear war risk between the parties.

• ColdButtonIssues 17 Aug 2022 14:32 UTC

  2 points

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  on: Nu­clear Fine-Tun­ing: How Many Wor­lds Have Been De­stroyed?

  Great article. I had thought about similar reasoning in terms of X-risk, but thinking about how it applies to catastrophes that reduces the number of observers is important, too.

  Hadn’t thought about this in terms of nuclear risk, either.

• ColdButtonIssues 16 Aug 2022 22:27 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Ember’s comment on: The Cred­i­bil­ity of Apoca­lyp­tic Claims: A Cri­tique of Techno-Fu­tur­ism within Ex­is­ten­tial Risk

  Look forward to your next post!

• ColdButtonIssues 16 Aug 2022 20:38 UTC

  3 points

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  on: The Cred­i­bil­ity of Apoca­lyp­tic Claims: A Cri­tique of Techno-Fu­tur­ism within Ex­is­ten­tial Risk

  I think it’s an open question as to how much we can learn from failed apocalyptic predictions- https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​posts/​​2MjuJumEaG27u9kFd/​​don-t-be-comforted-by-failed-apocalypses

  Also with the possible exception of the earliest Christians who were hoping for an imminent second coming, I’m quite sure most Christians have not predicted an imminent apocalypse so we’re talking about specific sects and pastors (admittedly some quite influential). You do say you’re talking about early Christians at the start of the article, but I think the conclusion of your post makes it sound like religious people are constantly making apocalyptic predictions that fail to come true.

• ColdButtonIssues 16 Aug 2022 13:26 UTC

  10 points

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  on: Against pop­u­la­tion ethics

  “When I encounter questions like “is a world where we add X many people with Y level of happiness better or worse?” or “if we flatten the happiness of a population to its average, is that better or worse?”—my reaction is to reject the question.

  First, I can’t imagine a reasonable scenario in which I would ever have the power to choose between such worlds.”

  You’re a Senator. A policy analyst points out a new proposed tax reform will boost birth rates- good or bad?

  You’re an advice columnist- people write you questions about starting a family. All else equal, do you encourage them?

  You’re a pastor. A church member asks you: “Are children a blessing?”

  You’re a redditor. On AITA, someone asks: “Is it wrong to ask my children when they plan on starting a family?”

• ColdButtonIssues 10 Aug 2022 14:37 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Yelnats T.J.’s comment on: Against Loneli­ness: Cause Exploration

  “You start about by talking about Masons and Elks but later reference American fraternal organizations. I don’t know if you include sororities in this, but I would suggest bringing sororities to parity with the rules of fraternities.”

  These are not college fraternities, they are general fraternities which almost all accept men and women.

Against Loneli­ness: Cause Exploration