Diego_Caleiro

Karma: 177

Diego_Caleiro Jan 9, 2016, 8:40 AM
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on: The EA Newsletter & Open Thread—January 2016
Ok, so this doubles as an open thread?

I would like some light from the EA hivemind. For a while now I have been mostly undecided about what to do with my 2016-2017 period.

Roxanne and I even created a spreadsheet so I could evaluate my potential projects and drop most of them, mid-2015. My goals are basically an oscillating mixture of

1)Making the world better by the most effective means possible.

2)Continuing to live in Berkeley

3)Receive more funding

4)Not stop PHD

5)Use my knowledge and background to do (1).

This has proven an extremely hard decision to make. Here are the things I dropped because they were incompatible with time, or goals other than 1, but still think other EAs, who share goal 1, should carry on:

(1) Moral Economics: From when it started, Moral Econ is an attempt to install a different mindset in individuals, my goal has always been to have other people pick it up and take it forwards. I currently expect this to be done, and will go back to it only if it seems like it will fall apart.

(2) Effective Giving Pledge: This is a simple idea I applied to EA ventures with, though I actually want someone else to do it. The idea is simply to copy the Gates giving pledge website for an Effective Giving Pledge, which says that the wealthy benefactors will donate according to impact, tractability and neglectedness. If 3 or 4 signatories of the original pledge signed it, it would be the biggest shift in resource allocation from the non EA-money pool to the EA-money pool in history.

(3) Stuart Russell AI-safety course: I was going to spend some time helping Stuart to make an official Berkeley AI-safety course. His book is used in 1500+ Universities, so the if the trend caught, this would be a substantial win for the AI safety community. There was a non-credit course offered last semester in which some MIRI researchers, Katja, Paul, me and others were going to present. However it was very poorly attended and was not official, and it seems to me that the relevant metric is probability that this would become a trend.

(4) X-risk dominant paper: What are the things that would dominate our priority space on top of X-risk if they were true? Me and Daniel Kokotajlo began examining that question, but considered it to be too socially costly to publish anything about it, since many scenarios are too weird and could put off non-philosophers.

These are the things I dropped for reasons other than the EA goal 1. If you are interested in carrying on any of them, let me know and I’ll help you if I can.

In the comment below, by contrast are the things between which I am still undecided the ones I want help in deciding:

Diego_Caleiro Dec 15, 2015, 8:51 PM
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in reply to: Lila’s comment on: My Coming of Age as an EA: 12 Problems with Effective Altruism
That sounds about right :)

I like your sincerity. The verbosity is something I actually like and quite praised in the human sciences I was raised in, I don’t aim for the condensed information writing style. The nascissism I dislike and tried to fix before, but it’s hard, it’s a mix of a rigid personality trait with a discomfort from having been in the EA movement since long before it was an actual thing, having spent many years giving time resources and attention, and seeing new EAs who don’t have knowledge or competence being rewarded (especially financially) by EA organizations that clearly don’t deserve it. It also bugs me that people don’t distinguish the much higher value of EAs who are not taking money from the EA sphere from those who have a salary, and to some extent are just part of the economic engine, like anyone with a normal NGO job that is just instantiating the economy.

I don’t actually see any problem with people talking about what changed their lives or whether they are more like Ross than like Chandler. I usually like hearing about transformative experiences of others because it enlarges my possibility scope. Don’t you?

This particular text was written for myself, but I think the editing tips also hold for the ones I write for others, so thanks! And yes, you do write like asshole sometimes on facebook. But so what, if that is your thing, good for you, life isn’t fair.

Diego_Caleiro Dec 2, 2015, 3:24 AM
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in reply to: Tom_Ash’s comment on: My Coming of Age as an EA: 12 Problems with Effective Altruism
My experience on Lesswrong indicates that though well intentioned, this would be a terrible policy. The best predictor on Lesswrong if texts of mine would be upvoted or downvoted was wheter someone, in particular username Shminux, would give reasons for their downvote.

There is nothing I dislike or fear more, when I write on Lesswrong than Shminux giving reasons why he’s downvoting this time.

Don’t get me wrong, write a whole dissertation about what in the content is wrong, or bad, or unformatted, do anything else, but don’t say, for instance “Downvoted because X”

It is a nightmare.

Having reasons for downvotes visible induces people to downvote, and we seldom do the mirror thing, writing down reasons for the upvote.

I have no doubt, none, after posting dozens of texts about all sort of things, on Lesswrong and EA forum, that having a policy of explaining downvotes is the worse possible thing from the writer’s perspective.

Remember that death is the second biggest fear people have, the first one is speaking in public. Now think about the role of posts explaining downvotes, it would be a total emotional shutdown, specially for new posters who are still getting the gist of it.

Diego_Caleiro Nov 30, 2015, 3:00 AM
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in reply to: AGB 🔸’s comment on: My Coming of Age as an EA: 12 Problems with Effective Altruism
I will write that post once I am finantially secure with some institutional attachment. I think it is too important for me to write while I expect to receive funding as an individual, and don’t want people to think “he’s saying that because he is not financed by an institution.” Also see this.

Diego_Caleiro Nov 29, 2015, 10:57 PM
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: My Coming of Age as an EA: 12 Problems with Effective Altruism
I think we are falling prey to the transparency fallacy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_transparency

, the double transparency fallacy,

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ki/double_illusion_of_transparency/

and that there are large inferential gaps in our conversation in both directions.

We could try to close the gaps writing to one another here, but then both of us would end up sometimes taking a defensive stance which could hinder discussion progress. My suggestion is that we do one of these

1) We talk via skype or hangouts to understand each other’s mind. 2) We wait organically for the inferential gaps to be filled and for both of us to grow as rationalists, and assume that we will converge more towards the future. 3) The third alternative—something I didn’t think about, but you think might be a good idea.

Diego_Caleiro Nov 29, 2015, 11:05 AM
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in reply to: Diego_Caleiro’s comment on: My Coming of Age as an EA: 12 Problems with Effective Altruism
9) I ended up replying how to on Lesswrong.

Diego_Caleiro Nov 29, 2015, 8:23 AM
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in reply to: Evan_Gaensbauer’s comment on: Direct Funding Between EAs—Moral Economics
Do you want to do this soon? You can help us get it done.

Diego_Caleiro Nov 29, 2015, 1:44 AM
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: My Coming of Age as an EA: 12 Problems with Effective Altruism
I’ll bite: 1) Transhumanism: The evidence is for the paucity of our knowledge. 2) Status: People are being valued not for the exp value they produce, but by the position they occupy. 3) Analogy: Jargon from Musk, meaning copying and tweaking someone else’s idea instead of thinking of a rocket, for instance, from the ground up—follow the chef and cook link. 4) Detonator: Key word was “cling to”, they stick with one they had to begin with, demonstrating lack of malleability. 5) Size: The size gives reason to doubt the value of action because to the extent you are moved by other forces (ethical or internal) the opportunity cost rises 6) Nature: Same as five. 7) Uncertainty: Same here, more uncertainty, more opportunity cost. 8) Macrostrategy: as with the items before, if you value anything else but aggregative consequentialism inddiferent to risk, the opportunity cost rises. 9)Probabilistic reasoning: No short summary, you’d have to search for reference class tennis, reference class, Bayes theorem, and reasoning by analogy to get it. I agree it is unfortunate that terms sometimes stand for whole articles, books, papers, or ideologies, I said this was a direct reflection of my thinking with myself. 10) Trust in Institutions: link. 11) Delusional: Some cling to ideas, some to heroes, some cling to optimistic expectations, all of them are not letting the truth destroy what can be destroyed by it. 12) I’d be curious to hear the countervailing possibilities. Many people who are examining the movement going forwards seem to agree this is a crucial issue.

Diego_Caleiro Oct 2, 2015, 6:24 PM
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on: Systematically under explored project areas?
This post is the sort of thing I would expect Crux—the Crucial Considerations Institute we are forming in a few months—to output on a regular basis.

Diego_Caleiro Sep 11, 2015, 12:52 PM
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on: Cause selection: a flowchart [link]
Continue thinking this is great work and new EAs should always be directed to this :)

Diego_Caleiro Aug 28, 2015, 8:27 PM
4 points
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on: Is there a hedonistic utilitarian case for Cryonics? (Discuss)
Arguing for Cryo as EA seems to be a bottom line reasoning for me.

I can imagine exceptions. For instance: 1) Mr E.A. is an effective altruist who is super productive and gets most enjoyment out of working, and rests by working even more. Expecting to be an emulation with high likelihood, Mr E. A. decided for cryopreservation to give himself a chance of becoming an emulation coalition which would control large fractions of the EM economy, and use these resources for the EA cause on which society has settled after long and careful thought.

2) Rey Cortzvail is a prominent technologists who fears death more than anything else. He received medals from many presidents, and invented many of the great technologies over the last few decades. To continue working well, it is fundamental for him to think he may get a chance to live a long life, so he signs up for cryonics to purchase peace of mind.

3) Neith Sorez wants to help the world’s mess, he wants it badly. He also is not on board with the whole people die thing, and to be fair, much of his perception of how screwed up things are comes from the clarity with which he envisions the grim reaper, and the awful brought by it. He’s convinced that AI matters and is pushing through to help AI be less dangerous and quite possibly help most people to get a chance to live long. He wears the necklace though as a reminder, to himself and others, and as a signal of allegiance to the many others who can see the scope of the horror that lies behind us, and the need to stop it from happening towards the future.

4) Miss E.A. has entered the EA community by going to cryonics meetings and noticing that these EA people seem to be pretty freaking awesome, and thinking there’s no reason to not join the team, learn all about EA. Within a year, she is very convinced of some particular set of actions and is an active and central EA, all of this came through the cryonics community and her friends there, so she decides to not drop out of cryonics, for historical, signalling, allegiance and friendship reasons.

These above don’t seem to me to be bottom line arguments.

But arguments of the form: “The best way to help the far future is to self preserve” through cryonics should definitely be dominated by “Paying for cryonics for whoever is the person you think is doing the best job who isn’t yet a cryonicist”.

Diego_Caleiro Aug 18, 2015, 9:21 PM
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on: Ethical Fourier Transform
Love it.

Diego_Caleiro Aug 17, 2015, 9:23 PM
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in reply to: Evan_Gaensbauer’s comment on: Moral Economics in Practice: Musing on Acausal Payments through Donations
Thumbs up for this. Creating a labor market for people who are willing to work for causes seems high value to me.

A few years ago, before I spend most, and while Brazil was doing well, I didn’t care about money, and as usual I was working and paying my own work out of pocket.

If it was an option then, I would have wanted to work on far future EA, and hedge my bets by asking other people to donate to near future causes on behalf of the work I was doing. I currently lean much more strongly towards far future though, so most of my eggs are in that basket. You can consider writing a post about indirect donations between EAs, in the spirit of Direct Funding Between EAs. I believe Rox Heston would be happy to help conceptually, and Matt Reyes would be happy to help editing. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/moraleconomics

Diego_Caleiro Jul 28, 2015, 9:39 PM
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in reply to: number42’s comment on: Direct Funding Between EAs—Moral Economics
Off the top of my mind and without consulting people:

Justin Shovelain, Oliver Habryka, Malcolm Ocean, Roxanne Heston, Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg, Steve Rayhawk, Gustavo Rosa, Stephen Frey, Gustavo Bicalho, Steven Kaas, Bastien Stern, Anne Wissemann, and many others.

If they had not received FLI funding: Kaj Sotala, Katja Grace.

If they needed to transition between institutions/countries: Most of the core EA community.

I have mentioned it as an option for a while, but personally waited for less conflict of interest to actually post about it (at the moment I’m receiving much less funding than I did before, and am receiving some funding through institutions, I wanted to make clear that my goal is not to have people disliking institutions, but to fix the labor market).

I think the greater point here is that this has not been considered so far because people did not even envision it being an option. But now they will.

Diego_Caleiro Jul 21, 2015, 1:20 AM
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on: Effective Altruism Global SF panel on AI: question submissions thread
Would it be valuable to develop a university level course on AI safety engineering to be implemented in hundreds of universities that use Russell’s book worldwide, to attract more talented minds to the field? Which are the steps that would cause this to happen?

Diego_Caleiro Jul 16, 2015, 4:51 AM
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in reply to: impala’s comment on: Introducing Moral Economics
Robin Hanson is not mainstream in any sense I can envision, he did take a look at it though :) I asked an economist friend to review, and an economy student reviewed it as well. Check below for the link for the complete google docs if you are an economist who happens to be reading this.

Diego_Caleiro Jul 14, 2015, 7:03 PM
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on: Introducing Moral Economics
If you are eager to see the other posts in the series, and would like to help them by commenting, feel free to comment in this google docs which contains all the posts in the series.

The posts are already finished, yet, I highly encourage other EAs to create more posts in that document, or suggest changes. I’m not an economist, I was struck by this idea while writing my book on Altruism, and already spent many hours learning more economics to develop it. The goal is to have actual economists carrying this on to distances I cannot.

Diego_Caleiro Jun 24, 2015, 9:28 PM
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in reply to: SydMartin’s comment on: Revamping Existing Charities
The question I would ask then is, if you want to influence larger organization, why not governmental organizations, which have the largest quantities of resources that can be flipped by one individual? If you get a technical position in a public policy related organization, you may be responsible for substantial changes in allocation of resources.

Diego_Caleiro Jun 24, 2015, 5:18 PM
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in reply to: mhpage’s comment on: Revamping Existing Charities
At the end of the day, the metric will always be the same. If you can make the entire red cross more effective, it may be that each unit of your effort was worth it. But if you anticipate more and more donations going to EA recommended charities, then making them even more effective may be more powerful.

See also DavidNash comment.

Diego_Caleiro Jun 24, 2015, 3:11 AM
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on: Revamping Existing Charities
Except for the purposes of obtaining more epistemic information later on, the general agreement within the EA crowd is that one should invest the vast majority of eggs in one basket, the best basket.

I just want to point out the exact same is the case here, where if someone wants to make a charity more effective, choosing oxfam or the red cross would be a terrible idea, but trying to make AMF, FHI, SCI etc more effective would be a great idea.

Effective altruism is a winners take all kind of thing, where the goal is to make the best better, not to make anyone else be as good as the best.