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Deborah W.A. Foulkes
Karma: 68
Impactful animal welfare charity worthy of your donations: FRAME—Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments
Hi Siao Si, thanks for your detailed response. I’ll try to address some of your points, though not in the order you state them.
Firstly, it is necessary to treat the issues of carrying capacity and optimum human population differently; they are not the same. It is also incorrect to say that many agree that 10 billion is the carrying capacity. The estimate of how many humans earth can support is in flux: on the one hand, technological developments e.g. to improve distribution of resources could extend carrying capacity; on the other hand, the accelerating ecological degradation of the planet (including but not solely due to the climate crisis) is resulting in a shrinkage of the land area able to support crop production and we are currently on a trajectory of collapse in ocean fisheries due to unsustainable fishing practices.
Secondly, there is huge variation in experts’ estimates of the optimum human population, enabling abundance and flourishing for all—some go as low as only 100,000 humans.
See here for different scenarios:
People as paperclip maximisers (or bacteria in a petri dish)
Humans, the human species, operating unconsciously along the lines of their biological imperative—to reproduce, reproduce, reproduce—while providing so-called ‘rational’ justifications for that primitive imperative, like in this post, are essentially no different to Bostrom’s paperclip maximiser: planetary resources and energy shovelled in at one end, humans (and their attendant domesticated animals and crops) popping endlessly out at the other, until nothing else is left. Our DNA is like that badly designed AI algorithm. Or, to use a different metaphor: we are no better than bacteria, multiplying explosively on their petri dish, until all the food is gone and they drown in the poisonous sea of their own excretions. So we need to consciously evolve to change this mindless imperative if we are to BOTH preserve the planet for future generations AND expand into the stars. (The two are not mutually exclusive.)
See here for some interesting ideas on human cultural evolution:
https://timwaring.info/2024/03/05/in-defense-of-octavia-butlers-earthseed-destiny/
and here for a more academic treatment:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.0259
Can’t find the EA Gather Town via this link or on the Gather app. Can you give its exact handle/label? Thanks.
Correct. Thank you. Was mixing it up with the other charity he founded with his wife—Turquoise Mountain. He’s now an advisor for Give Directly: https://www.givedirectly.org/team/
His bio there: Rory is an advisor at GiveDirectly. Previously, he was the UK Secretary of State for International Development, Minister of State for Justice, Minister of State in Foreign Office and DFID (covering Africa, Middle East, and Asia), Minister for the Environment and Chair of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee. After a brief period as an infantry officer he joined the UK Diplomatic Service, serving overseas in Jakarta, as British representative to Montenegro in the wake of the Kosovo crisis, and as the coalition Deputy-Governor of two provinces of Southern Iraq following the intervention of 2003. He left the diplomatic service to undertake a two-year walk across Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal. In 2005, he established the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in Kabul, working to restore a section of the old city, establish a clinic, primary school, and Arts Institute, and bring Afghan crafts to international markets. In 2008, he became the Ryan Professor of Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School and Director for the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy. He is a Visiting Fellow at The Jackson Institute at Yale University. Speaking & Press Requests: If you are interested in Rory speaking at an event or making a press appearance please email press@givedirectly.org. He’s on Twitter at @RoryStewartUK.
Agree. If this person is still employed by an EA organisation they should be told to apologise to him.
Whether something is perceived as rude or not is a subjective assessment. Given that Stewart was reporting on his own interaction with a person at the Future Fund and obviously thought them to be extremely rude, it is not correct to say it was likely that ‘it was less rude than the podcast made it sound’. The podcast is not a third party, interpreting events reported to it. Stewart’s assessment of the rudeness must be accepted, since he himelf was the affected party.
His incredulity at being treated like that was audible. And perfectly understandable, since he was approaching them as the co-founder of the charity Give Directly (https://www.givedirectly.org/), which rigorously assesses the effectiveness of its own giving. Stewart even appears to have himself been influenced by the principles and philosophy of effective altruism, so for him to have been rebuffed in so coarse a manner is doubly inexcusable.
There’s a saying, ‘the fish stinks from the head down’ and it seems that the hubris and arrogance of SBF himself had indeed rubbed off on whoever it was talking down their nose to Rory Stewart—author of several best-selling non-fiction political books and memoir, former UK government minister, diplomat, governor of a wartorn middle eastern region, Yale professor and Conservative leadership contender. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rory_Stewart)
At the very least, the unnamed Future Fund person should have recognised the common ground between Stewart’s charity and the effective altruism movement, and been friendly to him. Snubbing and alienating potential friends and allies is not only respectless but also quite simply stupid. I sincerely hope whoever it was is no longer employed by any EA organisation.
Deadline of 31 March 2024 has been extended, submissions still being accepted.
Please provide arguments for your disagreement if possible James. Thank you :-).
This post appears to be blind to the dire state of the biosphere and the existential risks we are creating for our species by pushing beyond the planetary boundaries. Rather than seeing it as a challenge, we should be glad human fertility is falling. We are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction, sometimes referred to as the species holocaust. Laws are being passed to stop ecocide. Humanity and its domesticated animals and pets has exploded its ecological niche so massively that the biomass of wild animals, birds, insects etc. is only a fraction of ours. We are bloated beyond recognition, in ecological terms. We are totally out of balance with the rest of life on this planet.
For a movement that professes to be concerned about animal welfare, many EAs’ ignorance about wild beings’ suffering, the currently unfolding mass extinction, which translates to the wiping out of certain life forms forever until the end of time, is unfathomable to me.
IMHO, if you really do love animals, one of the best things you can do as an effective altruist is to refrain from having children.
See e.g.
(1)
https://overpopulation-project.com/reconciling-human-demands-with-planetary-boundaries/
“To sum up, possible combinations are:
Large population and high human development → then we cannot be ecologically sustainable and this situation cannot last.
Large population and ecological sustainability → then a large part of the population cannot achieve a high level of human development.
High human development and ecological sustainability → then population needs to diminish.
The fourth combination – large population, ecological sustainability and high human development – is not an option on a finite planet.”
(2) The biomass distribution on Earth:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1711842115?doi=10.1073%2Fpnas.1711842115
(3) Leveraging deep change for a sustainable future in a world of overconsumption and overpopulation
(4) Breaking boundaries but not population taboos
https://www.whp-journals.co.uk/JPS/article/download/759/516
(5) Against ecocide: legal protection for the Earth
https://www.greattransition.org/images/Against-Ecocide.pdf
(6)
Overpopulation is a major cause of biodiversity loss and smaller human populations are necessary to preserve what is left
Author links open overlay panelPhilip Cafaro a, Pernilla Hansson b, Frank Götmark b Show more Share Cite https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2022.109646 Get rights and content Highlights
• Global biodiversity decline is driven in large part by excessive human populations.
• Population decline opens up important opportunities for ecological restoration.
• Further research is needed into how human demographic changes help or hinder conservation efforts.
• Conservation biologists should advocate for smaller populations, in both less developed and more developed nations.
Abstract
Global biodiversity decline is best understood as too many people consuming and producing too much and displacing other species. Wild landscapes and seascapes are replaced with people, our domestics and commensals, our economic support systems, and our trash. Conservation biologists have documented many of the ways that human activity drives global biodiversity loss, but they generally neglect the role of overpopulation. We summarize the evidence for how excessive human numbers destroy and degrade habitats for other species, and how population decrease opens possibilities for ecological restoration. We discuss opportunities for further research into how human demographic changes help or hinder conservation efforts. Finally, we encourage conservation biologists to advocate for smaller populations, through improved access to modern contraception and explicit promotion of small families. In the long term, smaller human populations are necessary to preserve biodiversity in both less developed and more developed parts of the world. Whether the goal is to save threatened species, create more protected areas, restore degraded landscapes, limit climate disruption, or any of the other objectives key to preserving biodiversity, reducing the size of the human population is necessary to achieve it.
https://www.soltechdesigns.com/sustainable/Overpopulation-and-biodiversty-loss(2022).pdf
Correct. Wasn’t aware of the difference between the two terms. Title changed.
The Fake Genius: A $30 billion fraud
The UK’s top political podcasters on Sam Bankman-Fried
I’m surprised by the vehemence of your response to my LinkedIn post on Zach Robinson’s SBF article. I don’t think that my additional personal experience example of betrayal by the Sortition Foundation was off-topic at all—quite the contrary. Do you not think that it was helpful to point out the similarity of SBF’s behaviour with that of the Sortition Foundation?
Additionally, can you not find room within your response to appreciate the fact that an EA organisation, 80,000 Hours, through its influence on me, has had a positive effect on humanity’s collective intelligence? Because without the decision, influenced by 80,000 hours, to leave a tenured post, I would not have had the time or brain power to devote to solving the problem of how to select participants for an instrument of collective intelligence fairly and legitimately.
Without my contribution of the missing puzzle piece, geospatial sortition, such a historic first, the world’s first global citizens’ assembly, could never have taken place. Where is your appreciation for that? EA’s influence on an individual EA resulted in demonstrably positive good for the world, but the EA concerned was betrayed and harmed by a predatory organisation, just as the EA movement was betrayed and harmed by a predatory individual.
Have your say on the future of AI regulation: Deadline approaching for your feedback on UN High-Level Advisory Body on AI Interim Report ‘Governing AI for Humanity’
Phew! It’s much harder to write an effective (no pun intended) headline than I thought! :-). Have changed it to include an actual quote, which I hope is sufficiently representative of the article’s content.
If you register with them you can view a number of articles for free.
See also what I wrote in my LinkedIn post on this topic:
Thanks for your feedback, text has been revised.