I believe the situation is similar for harms to others. Acts that make you a non-Muslim are a much narrower set compared to sinful actions. A thief still remains a Muslim/āChristian/āJew as far as I know. Even murderers are still considered as believers depending on the denomination.
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I keep thinking about this. Even though Iām super sceptical about causal inferences that back into the past, one explanation for the decline of Mohism in China is that their insistence on frugality wasnāt popular among elites and they lost elite support.
I agree that nutrition science is not robust enough, but I have never been convinced by arguments against healthiness of a fully plant-based diet.
As you note, vegans live longer in observational studies.
Furthermore, trans fats and heavy metals are very likely to be bad for health. Consuming animal products exposes you to these. (A lot of) Saturated fat might also be bad for you and animal products have more of that. I agree that vegans might be missing out on some beneficial nutrients but there are also some harms avoided. Iām not sure which effect dominates.
Iām not sure what the right proportion of E2Gers should be. But I tend to think having thoughtful people who put their money where their mouth is and do not depend on EA financially is valuable for community epistemics. Iād like having more of them around.
Thank you, very interesting and much needed. Are any of the RCTs used in this meta-analysis public? What are their designs like?
This is a very important research area. Thank you. I especially liked the empirical testing approaches section.
The UK offers better access as a conference location for international participants compared to the US or the EU.
Iām being invited to conferences in different parts of the world as a Turkish citizen, and visa processes for the US and the EU have gotten a lot more difficult lately. Iām unable to even get a visa appointment for several European countries, and my appointment for the US visa was scheduled 16 months out. I believe the situation is similar for visa applicants from other countries. The UK currently offers the smoothest process with timelines of only a few weeks. Conference organizers that seek applications from all over the world could choose the UK over other options.
I wonder what can be done to make people more comfortable praising powerful people in EA without feeling like sycophants.
A while ago I saw Dustin Moskovitz commenting on the EA Forum. I thought about expressing my positive impressions of his presence and how incredible it was that he even engaged. I didnāt do that because it felt like sycophancy. The next day he deleted his account. I donāt think my comment would have changed anything in that instance, but I still regretted not commenting.
In general, writing criticism feels more virtuous than writing praise. I used to avoid praising people who had power over me, but now that attitude seems misguided to me. While Iām glad that EA provided an environment where I could feel comfortable criticising the leadership, Iām unhappy about ending up in a situation where occupying leadership positions in EA feels like a curse to potential candidates.
Many community members agree that there is a leadership vacuum in EA. That should lead us to believe people in leadership positions should be rewarded more than they currently are. Part of that reward could be encouragement and I am personally committing to comment on things I like about EA more often.
Iām confused how the following scenario is consistent with meeting the resolution criteria. The resolution criteria imply at least 50% decrease in AI company revenues:
Remmelt thinks there will likely be a crash by 2029, since AI companies are burning too much cash on data centers to run products undergoing commodification. He thinks itās most plausible though that the crash happens on the investment side, and that model subscription revenues could end up being mostly maintained.
I donāt think the current systems are able to pass the Turing test yet. Quoting from Metaculus admins:
āGiven evidence from previous Loebner prize transcripts ā specifically that the chatbots were asked Winograd schema questions ā we interpret the Loebner silver criteria to be an adversarial test conducted by reasonably well informed judges, as opposed to one featuring judges with no or very little domain knowledge.ā
Thank you for the detailed reply. Iām personally not satisfied by moral theories that attribute intrinsic moral significance to species-membership but I wonāt be available for further discussion.
Utilitarianism is one of the more āmoderateā views in the field because at the very least it admits that individual insects have less welfare capacity than typical humans. Unitarian rights-based theories claim that right to life is equally strong for all sentient beings, which make insects an even bigger priority. What is your view on moral patienthood?
Thank you for your research!
Setting aside general arguments about companiesā conflicts of interest regarding AI projections, I want to note that the revenue projections of these companies do not assume straight lines over trends.
Different sources suggest OpenAI does not expect to be profitable until 2029, and its revenue projection for 2029 is around $100-120 billion. Similarly, Anthropic expects $34.5 billion revenue in 2027. These are very significant numbers, but for comparison Microsoft has an annual revenue of $250 billion. When I see the headlines āAGI by 2027ā, I expect something far scarier than $34.5 billion annual revenue. Of course one can argue that business deployment of AI takes time, companies canāt capture all the value they produce and so on. Nonetheless, I think these numbers are helpful to keep things in perspective.
Thanks a lot for your comments Alex. I really appreciate it as I want to develop my thinking on topic. Thanks a lot for the suggestions as well.
There are some forms of agreements you can make with animals and there are some forms you cannot. I donāt see why they canāt intentionally coordinate based on understanding of our choices. A cow or a crow might move closer to someone giving them food and act kindly towards them later on, but they will refuse to move closer and cooperate if they realise that person has a history of deception.
There are also possible worlds in which animalsā intelligence can be enhanced even further. It could even happen during our lifetimes given a technology explosion. In those possible worlds animals will be able to meet any threshold you want them to pass.
I really struggle to see a consistent way to be respectful towards people in coma or babies without also respecting the animals. You need a very specific argument on why both of these are true:
Being uncooperative to animals is fine even though they might become agents(according to your threshold) with some additional technology.
Being uncooperative to babies is not fine because many of them will become agents in future.
I believe the only consistent way to disregard animal interests is to deny that animals have interests at all as Yudkowsky does. As long as animals have interests itās very difficult to explain why screwing them over wonāt send a signal of āI might screw over others if I can get away with itā.
Many advocates try to practice non-violent communication by merely criticising actions instead of individuals. But non-violent communication is stricter than that. Hereās one example from āNon Violent Communication: A Language of Lifeā. The anecdote starts with a cab driver making an antisemitic remark:
MBR: āYou know, when you first started to talk, I felt a lot of anger, a lot of frustration, sadness and discouragement, because Iāve had very different experiences with Jews than youāve had, and I was wanting you to have much more the kind of experiences Iāve had. Can you tell me what you heard me say?ā
Man: āOh, Iām not saying theyāre all . . . ā
MBR: āExcuse me, hold on, hold it. Can you tell me what you heard me say?Man: āWhat are you talking about?ā
MBR: āLet me repeat what Iām trying to say. I really want you to just hear the pain I felt when I heard your words. Itās really important to me that you hear that. I was saying I felt a real sense of sadness because my experiences with Jewish people have been very different. I was just wishing that you had had some experiences that were different from the ones you were describing. Can you tell me what you heard me say?āMan: āYouāre saying I have no right to talk the way I did.ā
MBR: āNo, I would like you to hear me differently. I really donāt want to blame you. I have no desire to blame you.ā
In this section many advocates would not be happy with correcting the expression āYouāre saying I have no right to talk the way I did.ā.
In general, I think the language used for rights based theories is in continuity with religious ethics in which actions are divided into āpositive/āneutral/ānegativeā categories. When you do negative actions you incur some kind of debt and that debt should and will be repaid in terms of punishment in hell. Forbidden actions are forbidden because God backs them up with authority. He exercises punishment when people disregard his authority.
I think given the history and culture itās very difficult to divorce āYou have no right to do thatā from āIt would be good if you were punishedā and āHey, people around, punish that guy and be happy when this guy gets punishedā.
To be fair, non-violent communication is pretty much against all morality statements. But I think welfarist language(makes happier, gives suffering, better things to do, worse things to do, results in worse/ābetter/ābest/āworst state of affairs) is less continuous with the religious tradition around debts and punishment.
You say:
āBut this assumes the other party can engage in the kind of reciprocal decision-making that grounds such rights. Most animalsā decision processes donāt mirror ours in the way needed for this kind of relationshipāthey canāt make or honor agreements, or intentionally retaliate based on understanding our choices. The question returns to welfare considerations: whether their lives are net positive.ā
Iām generally confused about this argument. If someone says āyou can break your promises and violate trust if your counterparty is never able to find out or retaliateā they will get the retort āno no no decision theory doesnāt work that wayā. If that person says ādonāt worry, I really picked out those that really are unable to retaliate. I will be super careful with folks who are able to retaliate.ā, they will get the response ānope, that doesnāt workā.
When you hurt those who might have interests but are in no position to exercise agency, donāt you send a similar signal that āif youāre unable to understand what Iām doing, then I might hurt youā. You might say ādonāt worry, I really picked out those that lack agency from birth, it will be fineā but Iām struggling to see a principled distinction.
I also think many animals have some capacity to communicate, understand promises, feel anger and spite over betrayal and hold grudges. Itās possible to lie to many mammals and itās also possible to trade with them.
Hereās what I personally think about using welfare vs. rights jargon in my advocacy. These are some unpolished thoughts that Iām hoping to explore further in the future.
Pro welfare:Some anti-incrementalist animal advocates try to gatekeep the term āanimal rightsā. They frequently complain when incrementalist folks use the expression āanimal rightsā. When I ask these advocates āWhat kind of empirical evidence would change your mindā sometimes I get the response āNo biased study in this speciesist world would make me sell out my principles. Just like no evidence could convince me there could be merits to torture, Iām never going to negotiate on the basic rights of animalsā. This makes me react āOk, in that case Iām not going to swear allegiance to your banner and I will grow what I believe to be goodā.
Existing animal advocacy is already heavy on rights. Focusing on welfare jargon allows me to raise a distinct banner, differentiate my brand and organise people who are more sympathetic towards welfarist thinking.
Iām happy with the philosophical welfarist tradition and their moral leadership on many issues. I want to signal continuity with that tradition.
Rights based jargon is in strong tension with non-violent communication. Rights based jargon invokes a frame in which some people are sinners and should be punished. Iām not sure how useful non-violent communication is. But if itās useful then itās better to avoid rights jargon.
When I look at the arguments themselves before taking peer disagreement into account, my first-order beliefs are very consequentialist. I think arguments against the significance of personal identity and arguments against the moral significance of act/āomission or intend/āforesee distinction are powerful and correct. As the main purpose of the communication is to make myself clear to the relevant stakeholders, welfare jargon is better equipped to make my beliefs clear.
Pro rights
Many people understand mere moral standing in terms of rights. Saying āanimals have rightsā is basically equivalent to saying āanimals have moral standingā for these people. So singling out animals by talking about āanimal welfareā when the whole world talks about āhuman rightsā might diminish perceived moral standing of animals.
In Turkish civil society, the term ārights basedā is used to differentiate organisations that play by the rules of international human rights framework. Iām a huge fan of these norms and Iām happy to play by that book. Refusing being ārights basedā because of my philosophical commitments would confuse people about where I stand in a political divide.
Since I take peer disagreement very seriously, I give significant credence to rights based theories and Iām not a welfarist. I also would like basic legal human rights to be extended to non-human animals. Avoiding rights terminology makes it harder to communicate this aspect of my thinking.
I want to maintain that incrementalist animal advocacy and wild animal welfare work are actually compatible with a rights based ethical theory. By avoiding rights language, I fear conceding this framework entirely to anti incrementalist advocates.
I agree!