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
My semi-outsider perspective might be useful here:
On the one hand I feel like I can barely absorb any content from the EA forums because the posts are so technical and dry that I can barely get through any one of the many painstakingly crafted masterpieces that are posted here every day. I would learn and engage so much more from an increase in conversational writing and a decrease in formality/careful wording.
On the other hand I am deeply impressed that this forum exists at all. It is harboring so many high-quality, deep soliloquies and extensive rational discussions that I’m afraid to disturb whatever magic allowed this to place to grow. We so desperately need a place for this kind of dry discussion to be welcomed and where it can bear fruit. I don’t know anywhere else that is like here.
So my answer: The atmosphere would be risked with such a change, leading to bad odds. By all means write more engaging material, but put it everywhere else but here. =P
Epistemic status: dubious
Excellent work making the world a better place. Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed your piece!
Please do continue to write. This kind of explanation is so much more clear about the personal experience of what it feels like to communicate and share effectively. I haven’t been here long and am not a community builder, but the other posts I have seen about outreach—while accurate, admirably composed, and intellectually rigorous—have somehow lacked guidance. I read them and think: “Yeah! That’s perfect, I should do that!” But I knew in the day-to-day I would never remember the phrasing they so carefully calibrated unless I had several hours of practice by say, running an introduction to EA booth
Thinking about further posts of EA and the wider world:
EA is rightly working on what seems to be the most important cause areas. How do we reconcile that with people/groups who have no interest in doing that. Like say, a group dedicated to all things rock and roll. Convince them EA is also important? Do we help them to their own goal, to optimize rock ‘n roll? Encourage them to move on to the next most effective thing, whatever it is? Try to find ways rock ‘n roll can synergize with another EA project? (rock ’n roll with lyrics about EA?) Don’t waste time acknowledging a difference of opinion and moving on to find better low hanging fruit?I’m sure people have discussed this endlessly before, but that’s it’s what I’m currently thinking about.
- Is it possible for EA to remain nuanced and be more welcoming to newcomers? A distinction for discussions on topics like this one. by 15 Jul 2022 7:03 UTC; 35 points) (
- What is the journey to caring more about 1) others and 2) what is really true even if it is inconvenient? by 16 Jul 2022 11:31 UTC; 6 points) (
This was really insightful: I can definitely envision how creating a warm, cozy atmosphere is crucial as a demonstration that 1) its safe to be vulnerable 2) other people have done this and it’s not so hard 3) that’s what we do here and it’s understood how difficult it is to do 4) you won’t be attacked for being unskilled at it
And it also helps elucidate how having an open but critical atmosphere doesn’t work for first time folks, even very thoughtful, open, truth-seeking ones. They aren’t ready to defend themselves in friendly combat, even as a game / helpful search for truth in such a state of world-instability.
It was incredibly useful to be reminded of the obvious fact that rewriting a load-bearing belief is crazy. Doing it has had me in tumultuous staits that absolutely needed to be sorted out asap but I had no way forward and no way back.
Sometimes I have been uneasy for days trying to adjust to the new world. Sometimes it would make me feel like an imposter when I would talk to people about ordinary stuff. Incredibly uncomfortable experience that I do immediately forget.
Thank you so much. This is a concise synopsis of how net suffering/revealed preference nor reflective preference capture what seems to me to be optimal outcomes.
It seems self evident to me, but actually articulating that suffering is not the whole point, but neither is sentience, is proving tricky and making me question if I’m actually just Wrong About It. (Also I’m not very familiar with the philosophy in this area)
I’m not sure I understand number 2 - are humans imposing their human reflectance desires as surrogate for the non-humans? Or are humans attempting to interpret what the non-humans reflectance values would be, and imposing those? Saying reflective desires of humans made me initially interpret it as simply balancing human desires against non-human desires for cooperative living, but I no longer think that is the meaning you were intending to convey.
Thanks, I get it now
Lovely idea, lovely presentation, neglected area!
Quick impressions: Toggling the survival/extinction button wasn’t clear at first. I thought each branch was going to be a link to an end scenario, imagine my surprise when I clicked on one of the sustenance branches and was linked to the decimation of our civilization.
I opened this to make sure the length estimate was short, discovered it was short, and couldn’t help reading it.
I think I learned something.
- 31 Aug 2022 0:15 UTC; 2 points) 's comment on Be More Succinct by (
I was inspired to brainstorm by your list. 🙂
Tree of Possible Futures
Survival Tree
Survival Map
Our Future of Fire or Ashes
Branches of Light and Darkness
Branches of Life and Death
Map of Cliffs and Crossings
Tree of Paths Forward
Navigating the Future
Map of Futures
Possible Worlds Tree
(pun on Yggdrasil, the world tree)
The Choices Before Us
What Lies Ahead
The Branches Of Time
Our Branching Futures
Hopes and Endings
Tree of Tomorrows
Worthy goal.
I want there to be a lot more activity and discussion around this topic so I’m going to give some feedback and my guess as to why this post didn’t get more interaction:
I don’t see your current plans for coalition building resulting in making it a major part of the 2024 election cycle, nor creating a national conversation, much less requiring leaders to disarm.
I don’t see anything new in your methods or tactics. How do you propose to overcome the benefits countries see in the military advantage? What convincing arguments and diplomacy do you plan to use? Is there some kind of agreement that is about to be drafted/signed?
To be fair this will require political power, cultural power, and diplomacy so the solution is going to look like what you are doing. But I don’t understand why you think this will succeed when others have failed. Perhaps your swell of support is greater than it has ever been? I have no context to evaluate the long list of support you gave in your post. Forgive my ignorance, but is this a lot? Do they have a lot of power to control nuclear disarmament?
Just wanted to point out that the author rejects the Overton windows “if you’re worried about the Overton Window, most of the issues they’d run on (a complete abortion ban, abolition of all gun restrictions, huge tax cuts for the rich, no gay marriage) are pretty well placed in the GOP already. A few extra crazies won’t do anything”
I suspect you (and I) disagree that “a few extra crazies won’t do anything.”
I am glad you addressed my concern by going over the health effects of nicotine distinct from plant combustion/smoke. I particularly liked your line about “tobacco may be more analogous to tea or coffee than to alcohol.” But I am unconvinced that this addictive substance has a net positive effect on well being.
My impression is that, much like caffeine, the body acclimates and suffers withdrawal without regular doses. Additionally, to get the same effect, an increasing treadmill of doses is required. This withdrawal and dependence seems to leave the user worse off than they were before substance use, (jittery, anxious, irritable) unless the use is regulated and occasionally paused. This is exceptionally hard with addictive substances.
In the case of caffeine, I have heard it argued that even if you arrive at the same net outcome of awareness, productivity and happiness total, there is a lot of utility in being able to control when one is awake, productive, and happy. This makes sense to me. But I don’t think nicotine allows that same control except for a few abnormal individuals. Rather, I expect abuse and over-dependence to be the normal state of affairs. This seems net negative. Even if it had a neutral effect, people would still be spending money to maintain neutral utility.Non-addictive nicotine would change my mind, and I would be potentially interested to apply it in my own life.
Thanks for raising the discussion.
I think the enormous diplomatic incident that would result if someone found a stray nuke in their country is enough of a deterrent to make this not a realistic scenario. At least not until tensions are very very high.
How realistic are the optimistic views that technology will be able to deliver, fast enough, green energy, mitigate climate change, and bring us back under all the remaining planetary boundaries?
Predictions by International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook versus reality:How likely is it that we won’t run out of any crucial resource in the next century?
On a planet of finite resources, it doesn’t seem like we can continue growing indefinitely – Under business-as-usual, when would we reach plateau/collapse?
Think of how foolish it would have been to throttle energy/resource use 100 years ago to protect ourselves from running out at 100-years-ago levels of use. When we start to run out, we have many options: alternative resources, efficient use, dilution, recycling, etc. This will extend the clock many fold. Resources may be finite, but need for them is not constant. I am confident they will become outdated in time, as resources historically have thusfar.
There are lots of very concerning problems arising from overapplying GDP, capitalism, gerontocracy, and neglecting environmental issues. But the above particular points do not seem substantive to me.
Recent relevant question and answer.
Northeastern USA Wild Plant Identification
Corrections welcome: Yes, please correct my deck!
Comprehensiveness: I think I have 90% of the non-rare forbs. It will vary as it is across a large region. On the plus side it applies somewhat outside the intended region as well...
Quality: High for Anki! High for its intended personal use: identifying based on plants as encountered in the wild, e.g. without flowers. Medium for general use (cards definitely could use duplicate photos).
Plants are better learned opportunistically in the field with apps like Seek, but if you want a crash course in Anki—have at it.Experience: First real deck, and I didn’t realize you could have multiple answers. I’m sure there are more features I missed.
Reviews: Please review my deck!
Just want to circle back around and say that I appreciate your points and have updated to be more in line with your position. I am still unconvinced by your strongest claims, but agree with most of the base assertions. For example I think nicotine is a lot less addictive and abuse is much less harmful than I previously thought. Some minor points that contributed to causing me to re-evaluate:
All the users who had self control to stop due to cancer warnings/social stigma did stop; leaving those with worse self control to continue making cigarettes look much more addictive on average than they necessarily are.
Comparing the community of users with other communities: Highly addicted smoker’s lives are not falling apart, unlike other addictive substance users.
Now my support hinges on a complicated calculus over how many and how bad the most abusive users are, how good and general the positive use is, how cheap combustibles are versus cartridges, and other specifics. But in principle we now agree.
Total donations, total donors, number of positive articles written, number of ea adjacent orgs, number of organizations mentioning their dalys/qalys? I’m not sure, but those are some ideas.
Nice contribution to the contest! Its plot is really on topic with a couple of individuals making a difference, improving the future for all.
For the purpose of the contest it does not “get to the (EA) point quickly,” with most of the focus being on the relationship between the main characters. (I also personally think it’s a bad idea to encourage individuals geoengineering, so I wouldn’t endorse this entry)
But it was both a good story with a unique themes, plot, and protagonist. I enjoyed reading from George’s perspective. I thought it was well-written and realistic. It is not inherently emotionally compelling to dump iron sulfide in the ocean, but you made it dramatic and daring to take actions which do the most good for the planet. Well done!
The scene at the end seems unreasonable. I initially brushed it off as “they spent 7 years together” but he betrayed her; sabotaged everything that is meaningful to her; and she opts to leave her entire life behind in order to escape. That is not some paradise boat ride into the sunset, that is losing her friends, family, income, home, life’s-work, everything. I don’t think she would kiss him in that moment, especially when he hasn’t made any sacrifices or amends. Why does she like him now? Lacking another explanation, I am parsing it as wish-fulfillment for the reader. I am also reading her actions as a message to the audience to forgive him. Both of which I dislike. I do not know if these interpretations are what you intended.
I especially like the part where Lindsay is worried about the secondary effects of what they are doing (fires, floods). I thought it was a great lifelike application of EA values in a non-theoretical setting:
”If we hadn’t done what we’re doing, would the consequences be better or worse?”
“When a cost-benefit analysis tells you that the benefits outweigh the costs, you don’t lose sleep over the costs. [...] I guess she saw costs and benefits in a different currency to me.”
I’m new to the EA forums and not very familiar with the proper writing etiquette here, so apologies if I am responding improperly. I wanted to provide some feedback for this story since it obviously was written with care and has gotten a harsh reception thusfar without any explanation provided.