Hi, I’m Florian. I am enthusiastic about working on large scale problems that require me to learn new skills and extend my knowledge into new fields and subtopics. My main interests are climate change, existential risks, feminism, history, hydrology and food security.
FJehn
“can’t really draw much in the way of conclusions from this data” seems like a really strong claim to me. I would surely agree that this does not tell you everything there is to know about existential risk research and it especially does not tell you anything about x-risk research outside classic academia (like much of the work by Ajeya).
But it is based on the classifications of a lot of people on what they think is part of the field of existential risk studies and therefore I think gives a good proxy on what people in the field think what is part of their field. Also, this is not meant to tell you that this is the ultimate list, but as stated in the beginning of the post, as a way to give people an overview of what is going on.
Finally, I think that this surely tells you something about the participation of women in the field. 1 out of 25 is really, really unlikely to happen by chance.
Alright, that’s settled then. Also looking forward to resolution!
It seems like my post created more of a buzz than I anticipated. Many people seem to get the message from it: “we should only care about demographic diversity and nothing else”. I’m sorry that my wording was apparently so vague, as this is not really what I meant.
To create a fruitful discussion you not only need diversity, but also at least some value alignment and some knowledge about the topic that is being discussed. Given that some value alignment and some knowledge about the topic are present, diversity of perspectives is a powerful way to make sure that the knowledge and insight gained from such a discussion increases. It allows the participants in the discussion to detect each other’s blind spots and challenge their assumptions. And this is where demographic diversity comes into play. I think that you cannot easily (or even at all) measure your subconscious assumptions and biases, but I think that those assumptions and biases originate from the experiences that you have in your life. Those experiences are strongly shaped by demographic markers like age, gender, race, etc.. Therefore, we should make sure to have enough people from different subgroups to not miss out on perspectives that would challenge erroneous assumptions in our thinking.
Another post from the EA Forum which might have done a better job at highlighting a similar idea is “EA Diversity: Unpacking Pandora’s Box”, as it unpacks the different facets of diversity explicitly. Unfortunately, I only came across it after I had published my post.
The main point I took from video was that Abigail is kinda asking the question: “How can a movement that wants to change the world be so apolitical?” This is also a criticism I have of many EA structures and people. I even have come across people who view EA and themselves as not political, even as they are arguing for longtermism. The video also highlights this.
When you are quantifying something you don’t become objective all over sudden. You cannot quantify everything, so you have to make a choice on what you want to quantify. And this is a political choice. There is not objective source of truth that tells you that for example quality adjusted life years are the best objective measure. People choose what makes the most sense to them given their background. But you could easily switch it to something else. There is only your subjective choice on what you want to focus. And I would really appreciate if this would be highlighted more in EA.
Right now the vibe is often “We have objectively compared such and such and therefore the obvious choice is this intervention or cause.” But this just frames personal preferences on what is important as an objective truth about the world. Would be great if this subjectivity would be acknowledged more.
And one final point the video also hints at: In EA basically all modern philosophy outside of consequentialism is ignored. Even though much of that philosophy is explicitly developed to crticise pure reason and consequentialism. But if you read EA material you get the impression to only notable philosophers of the 20th century are Peter Singer and Derek Parfit.
I get your reasons and I hope I lose the 100 $. I also think the probable temperature for 2100 will continue to go down. However, we still have quite a long way to go to get to 2°C.
The IPCC does not really attach probabilities to temperatures. Therefore, it is not really possible to directly go for the IPCC reports as resolution. One possibility would be the Internationale Energy Agency. They regularly publish estimates of likely temperature trajectories. Their current estimate is that with currently (in 2021) stated policies we’ll get 2.6°C in 2100. We could use the median estimate for stated policies in their report for 2032.
As they have been around since 1974, it seems likely they will continue to exist in until 2032. However, they might chance the way they do their reporting, so I am not sure if this is a great way to resolve this.
Thanks for your comment. Unsurprisingly, I am less optimistic. While I also think that climate news gotten better over the last years, I still think there is a big chance we end up at over 2°C. The Twitter thread you linked to says “It finds that, if all the countries of the world fulfilled their climate commitments, the world would most likely limit climate change to just under 2 degrees C.” That’s quite a big if.
The post by John and Johannes mainly argues that extreme warming is not likely, which I also agree with. However, I see the research gap more in the range 2°-3.5°C.
Finally, even if our median trajectory would aim below 2 °C, we still should do more research above 2°C . Climate damage does increase considerably for higher temperatures and due to uncertainties in the climate sensitivity we still could end up there.
I’m happy to take on your second bet. Let me know how you want to implement that.
I’d also consider the first one depending on the implementation. However, betting is easier if you have lots of money, which I don’t.
Oh wow, did not really enter to win anything. I just participated because I thought the idea is really cool and it gave me a good opportunity diving into a variety of topics. A pleasant surprise :)
I am a bit surprised by how few people participated. If I remember correctly, 4⁄13 submissions were by me. I talked about this prize with several people and all seemed eager to participate, but apparently they didn’t. So, I am not sure if the lack of forecasters is due to too little promotion (though more would probably helped as well). Seems like there is a large gap between “I like the idea of this” and really sit down and participating.
However, I hope you do something like this again, as it helped me a lot to have a selection of meaningful questions to do forecasts on. Just opening Metaculus can be a bit overwhelming.
If this happens again, I’ll try to hold the people that like the idea accountable, so that they do a forecast and not only think about it.
Thank you for this article. I really like the idea of your model and how you highlight how it compares to the funnel model. I think it is a good idea for the EA community to focus more on the “middle” and how to keep people motivated who are not the most highly engaged. This is especially important as it is unclear what causes might be the most important in the future. Right now highest engagement is only really possible for people who are working in the currently most valued causes areas. However, those might change in the future and we might need people with different skills and perspectives and retaining those people is only possible if we offer everyone ways of participation and growth.
This is just another data point that the existential risk field (like most EA adjacent communities) has a problem when it comes to gender representation. It fits really well with other evidence we have. See, for example Gideon’s comment under this post here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QA9qefK7CbzBfRczY/the-25-researchers-who-have-published-the-largest-number-of?commentId=vt36xGasCctMecwgi
While on the other hand there seems to be no evidence for your “men just publish more, but worse papers” hypothesis.
I would say that there are several promising research directions when it comes to higher end warming:
Exploring in detail what the effects of higher end warming even are. E.g. what are the possible effects on crops, livestock, habitable zones for humans, but also the economy?
How could we cope with such possibly massive changes? Are there precedents in history where we had to undergo such massive changes and did it work?
Taking a deeper look into geo-engineering, especially the potentially very effective, but more out there approaches like e.g. Project Vesta
And those are just a few suggestions from the top of my head. Basically, it boils down to finding out what the effects might really be and how we could cope.
Just out of curiosity: Where is the word “schlep” originating from in the context of AI? Don’t think I ever came across it before reading this post.
Good point. Changed the title accordingly.
We settled on Wagner and Weitzman because it is well known and also because they were kind enough to provide us with their data and code. It is indeed true that other probability curves might paint a more optimistic picture. However, the differences are so large that I would be surprised if it would change the conclusion of our paper.
We looked at the complete IPCC reports, because we wanted to understand the overall focus of policy relevant research. But it is indeed true that the research gap differs between the working groups and the research gap is larger when it comes to the impact focused reports.
This podcast episode feels like something out of a different timeline after the rough time EA has gone through since then. Would be very curious to hear if the opinions of the things said in the podcast are considerably different now?
Thank you for the feedback.
When I was talking about academia I wasn’t imaging a student that is almost sure to steer a field, but more of a “regular” PhD student. For example I will be finishing a PhD in environmental science soonish. I think I am doing a good job there, but when I see who is applying for EA orgs it seems somewhat unlikely that I will get into one of the main EA orgs anytime soon (or ever^^). Therefore, trying to infuse EA ideas into the general discourse in my field might be one of the few things I can do while in academia.
Regarding what local groups could do, I am still a bit unsure what is the best approach (which is why I did not include it in the post). But a few ideas floating in my head are:
Creating more opportunities for people in local group become friends, as this ensures long time engagement:
Create additional events that are only meant for people to connect with each other
Push for more 1 on 1 talks in the group, so all people in the group know each other well
Using local groups as a support network:
Help each other finding meaningful jobs
Maybe even create something like a local group fund. So everyone in the group gives some money every month and when a member of the group needs financial leeway to create something EA related he/she can get money from that fund.
Creating a tighter network in your country:
Have more and longer coutry wide networking events
Basically all the things GEAN is trying to implement
Probably some of those ideas (or all?) are already included in the bigger EA groups. However, the smaller groups that I have met so far (in Germany) are not yet so sophisticated.
I do think that things like voting are dominated in their impact not by direct, but by indirect effects, which cannot really be captured in simple numbers. For example, if I vote I set a good example for my friends, which in turn makes them more likely to vote, which in turn makes their friends more likely to vote. Repeat this enough times and you have more stable democracy. I get that you could also model this in a relatively simple way, but my point is that there are a lot of interacting factors like this.
Making a only numbers based argument in such and similar cases gives the illusion of certainty, while actually you likely have not considered many important factors, which makes the number kinda random and not something that you can base solid decisions on. However, I think having such a number anchors you strongly, which makes it harder to change your opinion in the future, especially if the arguments are non-number based.
Surely, they are more modern than utilitarianism. Utilitarianism has been developed in the 19th century, while all the other ones mentioned are from the 20th century. And it is not their “novelty” which is interesting, but that they are a direct follow up and criticism of things like utilitarianism. Also, I don’t think that post above was an endorsement of using fascism, but instead a call to understand the idea why people even started with fascism in the first place.
The main contribution of the above mentioned fields of ideas to EA is that they highlight that reason is not a strong tool, as many EA think it is. You can easily bring yourself into bad situation, even if you follow reason all the way. Reason is not something objective, but born from your standpoint in the world and the culture you grow up in.
And if EA (or you) have considered things like existentialism, structuralism, post-structuralism I’d love to see those arguments why it is not important to EA. Never seen anything in this regard.
I don’t see how this contradicts with the paper above. It does not say we should focus on RCP8.5 or a warming of 4.3°C. The main takeaway is the IPCC reports now focus on lower temperatures as they did before. I think this implies a shift in research. If you have another explanation for this I’d be happy to hear it.
Thank you. I’ll probably won’t have the time to make a full post out of this, but this was strongly inspired by the series about 1848 in the Revolutions Podcast and especially this episode: https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/2017/08/707-the-hungry-forties-.html
So, if you are looking for additional information, you’ll likely find it there.
I’ll use this post to add some other potato related thoughts I had some time ago, as this chance might never come up again in the EA Forum:
Are the potato famine and the revolutions of 1848 an example for the fragility of the modern world?
Recently I came across the potato famine and how it contributed or even caused the revolutions of 1848. I wondered if this is an good example to show how cascading failures lead from an natural event to an agricultural crisis, to an economic crisis, to an financial crisis and finally resulting in a political crisis.
So what happened?
In the 19th century potatoes became a staple crop in Europe, because they were easy to plant and harvest, cheap and filled you up quite nicely. However, there were very few varieties at that time and this made them vulnerable to disease. In 1845 a new potato disease spread all over Europe and destroyed much of the yearly harvest. This was especially a problem in Ireland (because they almost exclusively used potatoes), but most parts of Central Europe were at least a bit affected. This basically left Europe without potatoes until new varieties could be developed.
In 1846 bad weather also affected the wheat and rye harvest. This lead to rising prices all over Central Europe, as now all major food crops had considerably lower yields. These food shortages forced people to kill most of their livestock, as they did not have any feed for it. But as many people slaughtered their animals at the same time, prices for meat plummeted (though they were still way to high for poor people).
This agricultural crisis lead to an economic crisis, as everybody had to use most of their money for food. Therefore, there wasn’t anything left to buy other consumer goods. This in turn increased unemployment considerably, as many people in the consumer goods industry lost their jobs. Especially in cities this was a problem, as many people had moved their in the last decades and could not find any jobs to sustain themselves.
So, after the agricultural crisis in 1845 and 1846 were followed with an economic crisis in 1846 and 1847, next came an financial crisis in 1847. The financial crisis was mainly driven by the bursting of a bubble around building railroads. In the 1830s and 1840s many railroad projects were started, but most were crap. The bubble burst in 1847 after states started to rise interest rates to consolidate their finances in the economic crisis. In addition, the food crisis diverted funds away from the railroads and this showed that most of the projects could only continue if they got more money continuously. When this did not happen they crashed and with them everyone who had invested their money. This again led to more unemployment as all the railroad companies closed and due to a lack of available loans many smaller businesses went bankrupt, making even more people lose their job.
So in 1848 you had a crashed economy, a debt crisis, still some famine and massive unemployment. Many people all over Europe faces several years of fear, hardship and poverty. They looked for someone to blame. This brought many people to politics. And finally in 1848 we can see revolutions in most states of Central Europe. Some being successful (France), while others failed (Germany). Still, it seems like an new potato disease basically started a chain of events that led to a drastic change of the political landscape in Central Europe.