Disenangling “nature.”
It is my favorite thing, but I want to know its actual value.
Is it replaceable. Is it useful. Is it morally repugnant. Is it our responsibility. Is it valuable.
“I asked my questions. And then I discovered a whole world I never knew. That’s my trouble with questions. I still don’t know how to take them back.”
EcologyInterventions
Karma: 270
I can’t figure out why this didn’t get more traction. This post seems extremely relevant and brought up well considered points that I’m surprised I’ve never encountered before. This subject seems fundamental to life changing career decisions, and highly relevant to both EA earning to give and EA career impacts. I also can’t spot any surface level presentation reasons it might have gotten overlooked or prematurely dismissed.
Edit: Ah, I think what happened is it was evaluated by the suggested actions when scrolling to see the outcomes/results. I am also much less positive these are good approaches to addressing the problem. They are offered without much evidence, and transparently acknowledged as such, but it’s potentially the posts biggest most obvious fault.
Excellent post.
I love the disagree votes happening here.
I look forward to reading your post!
I’m not very involved with EA/politics but I’d be interested in hearing discussion about how to improve decision making and institution design. For example—a fundamental problem with government bodies is they seem to function well early on, when they are made up of people who believe in the goal and there is a strong unified culture. But suffer from malaise as years pass and both people and systems get entrenched to the point that the goal is secondary. Incentive alignment decays and becomes virtually nonexistent in many governmental bodies.
Of course I also have a special interest in how the government can address wrong incentives caused by externalities.
What about more political experiments—stronger states rights, charter cities, special economic zones, as a way to move forward, and demonstrate effectiveness/ineffectiveness without trying to go through the disfunction we currently see in federal government?
And solving vetocracy at local levels through things like quadratic voting, systems that prevent gerrymandering, street votes, etc.
Anything else I haven’t heard of that seems a promising way to improve political outcomes!
This is great, thank you. Honestly it feels a little telling that this has barely been explored? Despite being THE x-risk? I get that the intervention point happens before it gets to this point, but knowing the problem is pretty core to prevention.
A force smarter/more powerful than us is scary, no matter what form it takes. But we (EA) feels a little swept up in one particular vision of AI timelines that doesn’t feel terribly grounded. I understand its important to assume the worst, but its also important to imagine what would be realistic and then intermingle the two. Maybe this is why the EA approach to AI risk feels blinkered to me. So much focus is on the worst possible outcome and far less on the most plausible outcome?
(or maybe I’m just outside the circles and all this is ground being trodden, I’m just not privy to it)
I suggest adding your anki deck to the EA anki deck list!
(I took the liberty of adding your link but didn’t feel qualified to fully add an entry—please add it!)
What We Owe the Future: A Flashcard Summary
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1539708817
(Not my deck, but definitely an EA anki deck!)
More information here.
Everyone wants to live in a better world, but it’s very difficult to know how. Some people will tell you the problem is greed, we don’t help our neighbors, or are obsessed with materialism. But other people will tell you spirituality is part of the problem, local problems are a distraction from the big picture, and desiring things is what drives us to improve the world.
Getting everyone to believe one thing is impossible with all these different ideas of what is the right way to a better world. Everyone uniting on one belief is not even a good idea: if we all focus on one problem and one solution, we will suffer from all the other problems we left in order to focus on this one.
We have to try our best to navigate all these conflicting problems and solutions, and EA is a very good method at doing that. Trying harder to do right isn’t enough. (Most people already are trying to do right!) Maybe we could convince them to try harder. I want people to care more, and do more to make the world a better place, but I’m worried it’s hard to convince people to change their lives. I think a bigger problem is even when people try to do right, they don’t actually help achieve the things they want to.
Thank you for sharing, this is useful to my current research goals!
Since I actually did this work myself (in the US) I am going to go into too much information about my experience. Read the bolded bits if you want the summary of important points without the juicy mosquito-abatement details.
I was checking weekly anywhere we historically found mosquito larvae, including adding new locations any time another location was found—much the same as this program does: using a tablet, satellite map, and gps locations.
I witnessed the larvae populations reducing in response in many places and in other places maintaining a high number of larvae (but no further development stages). It did prevent there from being pupae except if returned to the site late. Pupae are the next stage ( 7-10 days) when the mosquito baby quits eating to morph (and BTI no longer works). As you can see this happens so rapidly that it is important to return to sites weekly and not a day late. Fortunately pupae can also be killed in an environmentally friendly fashion with mineral oil[1] although I rarely (twice per week over ~60? weekly sites in a 7mi, 35hr a week with recordkeeping, car travel, etc) needed to resort to that.
As mentioned, the biggest obstacle is finding every transient water body, from large to small, and getting people to let you treat their puddles, ditches, water troughs, etc etc etc. I did not scout for new locations although I was encouraged by my employers to ask around for new problem locations. Having an updated map is really helpful but eradication seems unlikely. Another issue is that mosquitoes can fly up to 2 miles (iirc) so if they aren’t breeding nearby they still might by flying in.
Regarding missed locations: I myself skipped some waterbodies when I was scared to trespass. Also water appears and disappears sometimes without much discernable cause, which made it annoyingly important to check empty sites repeatedly. Also obstacles like barb wire fences, and uh… when you are totally alone cattle are really big and I didn’t want to find out if they would suddenly decide to charge me. Instead I kept hoping the next day they wouldn’t be on that side of the pasture.
We loaded up on equipment once every couple of weeks when we ran out of supplies, but I would scan/travel/work closer to 80% of my time. I figured out the faster routes to locations and how I preferred to chain them together through the season. (Although the water does keep moving around as water appears or dries up.) Recording was a simple paper datasheet of larvae/pupae seen and how much treatment I used. I would take a picture at the end of the week to submit so I never had to go visit a central office. And the tablet would track my movements if I might be lying about actually visiting locations. No one ever checked, I’m pretty sure, but if there was a complaint they could. And when working alone it is reallllly tempting to eat 2 hour lunches and skip long, hot, slogs that end in a mostly-dried-up tiny puddle.
They mentioned having much better results when hiring undergrads. I suspect its because undergrads believe they have to be thorough much more than mid-career hires. Also the biology knowledge helps. Honestly I wish they had checked our work more, because I at the end of the season I found out I had been deploying double the treatment what everyone else was. By accident. It was still within permitted doses, but… uh… oops.
In summary: It was highly cheap and effective in the spots I was active. The main issue is coverage of transient water and returning weekly.
- ^
Pupae still need to breath. BVA Mineral oil (only a few drops) makes the surface tension at the top too strong for the pupae to break the surface to breath, for about 2-5 minutes. Long enough for them to suffocate. I assume other tiny air breathing species would die too, but not the critters that don’t need air or the slightly-larger critters who can survive longer without air. These are mostly temporary standing-water areas with temporary populations so its likely to be easily repopulated after a suffocation event.
The oil naturally breaks down (from sunlight I think?) and disappears. There was no build up. It looked bad to see shiny oil across natural water but it dissipated in an hour or so, and left no residue. What really convinced me was encountering natural oils in the water from cattails that looked a lot worse than the mineral oil I was using. Oil is a natural thing too, sometimes.
Oil doesn’t work for large bodies of water or flowing water, because the choppy water breaks the oil surface sheet. But mosquitoes don’t live there because they need still water to breed for some reason. Oil is still used in water around the edges of ponds where vegetation keeps the surface still.
- ^
Hi! I worked with BTI distribution and mineral oil as a solution to reducing mosquito populations in some environmentally-sensitive parts of the USA. These areas were hit badly with West Nile and started this mosquito reduction program in response. This was my first question too! As a field tech I was given biased information, but my online research agreed with the lines my environmentally-friendly company fed me:
BTI is a bacteria that only mosquitoes and 1 species of midges (in my part of the world) eat and are harmed by. The BTI ruptures their stomach and they die. Very targeted, used widely and safely for years. In my case, it was distributed in a pellet mostly made of corncob so it could be cast into water and dissolve. There are other containment media that exist, but my point is its easy and cheap to make reasonable distribution methods.
It would disappear the next week when I returned to check mosquito populations. I did not see buildup over the course of several months, which is notable for the small puddles of standing water I was dealing with. I don’t think the bacteria would survive or change the microbiome of the environment, but I also don’t expect people to research into that. But, as I was working in populated areas, it seems safe to say this would be really far down on the list of impacts on the microbiome. There are organic versions of BTI as well. (although I don’t ascribe to the benefits of organic)
For the record: Jonas did do that here.
Some ideas that come to mind: community organizer, community safety officer, sound system setup, or other tech support, interviewing applicants, recruiter, electronics engineer, building maintenance, air filtration system installer, bunker construction, distributing supplies in other countries, translator, earning to give, petri dish replicates, greenhouse lab tech (for drought/climate resistant crops).
It really depends on their skills, their interest area, and in what ways they can mitigate their disadvantages. For example, if they can text to speech easily, then research is still a potential. If they can’t work with numbers, then many of these suggestions might not work out. (unless a color labeling system was implemented or etc)
“I think the lack of discussion and materials and research is probably due to resource optimisation towards what people think is highest on the priority list(?).” I don’t think it’s as deliberate as you seem to think!
If you are talking about the forum, I think familiarity and precedent are a strong influence. (And a smidge popularity.) If you are talking about 8000h: I don’t know. Maybe fewer people on the team find it compelling so they never quite get around to it? Or they think it would have less of a positive impact since there are other resources around?
Edit: Please create a resource post on one or all of these. I have been trying to link people to some of the best EA thinking on these topics, and like you I didn’t find a ton of material.
I can’t say who they are, but I highly recommend this comment by them. ;)
(I suggest deleting this post if you find what you need.)
You might be interested in the theory that the evolution of morality in humans came from the invention of weapons and cooperative hunting promoting coordination and the ability of subordinates to oust unpopular leaders. (If you haven’t heard of it already)
The successful sociopolitical structure that ultimately replaced the ancestral social dominance hierarchy was an egalitarian political system in which lethal weapons made possible group control of leaders, and group success depended on the ability of leaders to persuade and of followers to contribute to a consensual decision process.
Creating and maintaining these conditions of 1) advantageous cooperation and 2) vulnerable leadership are important for healthy societies!
You might also be interested in ideas to promote democracy and prevent dictatorships.
Reducing tribalism, fighting exclusion.
And ideas around rational peaceful coexistence and moral progress.
Thank you for your thoughtful response!
1) I’m concerned with our lack of awareness, and obstacles to gaining awareness (our epistemic architecture). I am concerned with the deafening silence in science from many regions of the world. I am okay with EA restricting its views to those most likely to be universal, but this takes being humble and self-aware.
4) EA only backs this intervention because it performs well in peer-reviewed ‘measured outcomes’. In other words, it’s the difference between giving a community $1000 in solidarity with them and their own struggles, to spend as they see fit, versus giving the community $1000 because several scientific papers tell us that is most effective.
I am for reduced certainty in the face of so much unaccounted for, and far more respect for autonomy.
When it comes to relying on measured outcomes, I’m not sure what choice we have. I often hear that measured outcomes are illegitimate. “Incomplete” I can agree with. Values like equality, representation, evidence, fairness, and prosperity may be arbitrary and colonial, but they are tailored for contexts of populous intercultural conflicts concerning material things.* I’m honestly doubtful that other value systems are better in this context. (but looking for recommendations!) If we do not use measured outcomes, then what do we do instead?
*EA fails at fulfilling spiritual needs. I think this is because spiritual fulfillment does not transfer between contexts, but I am interested in finding more effective ways to improve spiritual fulfillment. It is highly likely it does not look like EA/colonial systems.
Yes, I am using my value system to legitimize my value system, but the obstacles remains even when following the resounding calls to listen more, transfer sovereignty, lift up etc. We are still using those value systems to legitimize themselves. Nor is it as simple as unconditionally accepting all value systems simultaneously. Assuming total ignorance is obviously worse: giving equally to powerful and powerless! Instead we must somehow average value systems together. I believe the colonialist science approach was built for the sake of attempting to do that neutrally. Now there might be a much better way to do it, (I think you are suggesting this!) and it would be insanely valuable to have a better method/set of methods. As of now, I’m not sure what it is. I can only heartily agree on the meta-level that we keep searching for something better. Averaging between value systems, trying to jump outside my own value system, looks like measured outcomes as far as I can tell, despite the colonial roots. (-?)
Recognizing our sizable ignorance is obviously correct; our best guess is almost certainly wrong! I think more “methods of comparison for different situations, depending on what is most important to protect or maximize in a given context (e.g., life, happiness, long-term health etc.)” is enormously good and I would say already a core part of most EA efforts! I think we attempt several in a sort of “insurance” against being wrong.
We ought to promote autonomy and sovereignty way more. I am realizing this more and more throughout this discussion.
*As a metaphor: if someone is putting their lives at risk when rock climbing, there are times it is right to intervene and there are times it is right to respect their autonomy. There are many points to consider in such complex decisions: your relationship, how well you know them, their age, their history of decisions, their joy from rock climbing, etc etc. I think this is the same with cultures. Sometimes it is right to briefly supersede their autonomy, but only in the most clearly egregious circumstances. Autonomy is so highly valuable as to supersede acting “for their sake” according to our own values of reducing self-harm. This is hard to see. Really hard to see. And I thank you for bring it up and pointing it out.
4) “This is because we are acting for the world, and all its cultures”. I find the paternalism and omniscience here disquieting, because it sets up a kind of god complex through which the EA community can believe it has a duty to know on behalf of everyone, and apply its methods universally, forgetting the positionality of the comparatively tiny community that developed its moral code.
I do not mean that EA knows best, quite the opposite! EA is only sure that it does not know, so it is trying to take the least assumptive actions which are most likely to be shared, most likely to be true for most people now and in the future. That we A) ought not to shirk the power we have to do good, B) must attempt to work for the sake of all, not just a few. I am not at all comfortable that EA is doing it right.
To summarize:
The unknown unknowns, the known unknowns, and the difficult-to-measure values are extremely important and neglected. We should do more to address that, even though it is hard.
Assuming ignorance and trying to act on values which are most likely to be shared and future-proof is highly important.
We must remain humble, critical of our methods, and incorporate ever more viewpoints so we may work as universally as possible.
There is not one method that works in all circumstances, but many methods for many different contexts.
Autonomy has great value that supersedes most other values.
This must be taken extremely seriously, even against generally “safe” values like saving lives and reducing disease.
I would like to hear why this was downvoted.
I enjoyed skimming your post, and appreciate many of your points.
One concept particularly struck me, “It’s worth noting that if longer human durations are unlikely, this also means larger human population sizes per century are also vanishingly unlikely. ”
I often hear the classic argument that “there is a possibility human populations are really really big in the future, and the future is so long that their wellbeing matters really quite a lot.” I’ve never played around with the idea that the is a lot of doubt over large populations for long times. Which must be accounted for and would lessen their importance for me taking action now.
Arguing “this is all the more reason to work harder to make their lives come to pass” strikes me as slightly dishonest, since the opposite is equally true: maybe we do our best make that giant future possible, and for some unforeseen reason people still don’t (want to?) proliferate.
Thank you for provoking some reflection on my assumptions, and thanks for such a comprehensive post with accessible bolded topic sentences.
Very useful and illustrative. I especially like how you manage to tie both the personal perspective and the group dynamics together. I was acquainted with this idea but your write up was definitely illuminating of aspects I missed. I expect this to be useful to me and others!