Frank_R

Karma: 183

Frank_R 16 Feb 2022 13:09 UTC
19 points
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in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: Elon Musk donates $5.7 Billion, will work with Igor Kurganov [Crosspost]
In my opinion “the most controversial billionaire” is either Peter Thiel or Donald Trump. Otherwise, I agree with what you have written.

Frank_R 7 May 2021 8:39 UTC
18 points
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on: Open Thread: May 2021
Hello! As long as I can remember, I have been interested in the long term future and have asked myself if there is any possibility to direct the future of humankind in a positive direction. Every once in a while I searched the internet for a community of like-minded people. A few month ago I discovered that many effective altruists are interested in longtermism.
Since then, I often take a look at this forum and have read ‘The Precipice’ by Toby Ord. I am not quite sure if I agree with every belief that is common among EAs. Nevertheless, I think that we can agree on many things.
My highest priorities are avoiding existential risks and improving decision making. Moreover, I think about the consequences of technological stagnation and the question if there are possible events far in the future that can only be influenced positively if we start working soon. At the moment my time is very constrained, but I hope that I will be able to participate in the discussion.

Frank_R 16 Feb 2022 9:12 UTC
12 points
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on: Cost Effectiveness of Climate Change Interventions
Thank you for writing this post. I want to point out that your conclusions are highly dependent on your ethical and empirical assumptions. Here are some thoughts about what could change your conclusion:
- If you donate to the top charities that are recommended by Founders Pledge, you can probably do much better than 30$/ton. I have not been able to find the precise numbers quickly, but if I remember correctly, 1$/ton is possible under reasonable assumptions. This would change your average estimate to $25,000 per life saved.
- Let us assume that the maximal number of happy human beings that could live on earth is reduced by 1 billion by rising sea levels, loss of agricultural land area etc. Let us further assume that this consequences of global warming persist for 100,000 years and that there is a probability of 1% that no game-changing technology such as advanced geo-engineering will be developed. This would mean that 10^12 QALYs are lost and the effectiveness of a dollar would rise. Of course, this argument relies on your rate of temporal accounting.
- Climate change could also increase other existential risks. For example, there could be a war about ressources that is fought by nuclear weapons, synthetic pathogens or malevolent AIs.
The message I want to send is not that your analysis is wrong, but that evaluating longtermist interventions is a huge mess since different reasonable assumptions lead to wildly diverging answers.

Frank_R 16 Jun 2022 6:28 UTC
10 points
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on: A central AI alignment problem: capabilities generalization, and the sharp left turn
In my opinion there is a probability of >10% that you are right, which means AGI will be developed soon and you have to solve some of the hard problems mentioned above. Do you have any reading suggestions for people who want to find out if they are able to make progress on these questions? On the MIRI website there is a lot of material. Something like “You should read this first.”, “This is intermediate important stuff.” and “This is cutting edge research.” would be nice.

Frank_R 8 Nov 2021 9:47 UTC
10 points
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on: Frank_R’s Shortform
There is a short piece on longtermism in Spiegel Online, which is probably the biggest news site in Germany:
Longtermism: Was ist das—Rettung oder Gefahr? - Kolumne—DER SPIEGEL
Google Translate:
Longtermism: Was ist das—Rettung oder Gefahr? - Kolumne—DER SPIEGEL (www-spiegel-de.translate.goog)
As far as I know, this is the first time that longtermism is mentioned in a mayor German news outlet. The author mentions some key ideas and acknowledges that shorttime thinking is a big problem in society, but he is rather critical of the longtermist movement. For example, he thinks that climate change is neglected within longtermism and he cites Phil Torres article on Aeon.
I probably will not find the time to comment each of the points in the article and I do not know if this would be the most productive thing to do, but maybe some of you find the article interesting.

Frank_R 28 Jul 2021 9:04 UTC
8 points
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on: Digital People Would Be An Even Bigger Deal
You mention that the ability to create digital people could lead to dystopian outcomes or a Malthusian race to the bottom. In my humble opinion bad outcomes could only be avoided if there is a world government that monitors what happens on every computer that is capable to run digital people. Of course, such a powerful governerment is a risk of its own.
Moreover I think that a benevolent world goverment can be realised only several centuries in the future, while mind uploading could be possible at the end of this century. Therefore I believe that bad outcomes are much more likely than good ones. I would be glad to hear if you have some arguments why this line of reasoning could be wrong.

Frank_R 14 Aug 2022 6:29 UTC
6 points
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on: Existential risk pessimism and the time of perils
I have thought about similar issues as in your article and I my conclusions are broadly the same. Unfortunately, I have not written anything down since thinking about longtermism is something I do beside my job and family. I have some quick remarks:
- Your conclusions in Section 6 are in my opinion pretty robust, even if you use a more general mathematical framework.
- It is very unclear if space colonization increases or decreases existential risk. The main reason is that it is probably technologically feasible to send advanced weapons across astronomical distances, while building trust across such distances is hard.
- Solving the AI alignment problem helps, but you need an exceptionally well aligned AI to realize the “time of perils”-scenario. If an AI does not “kill everyone immediately”, it is not clear if it is able to stick to positive human values for several million years and can coordinate with AIs in space colonies which may have different values.
Since I have seen so many positive reactions to your article, I am wondering if it has some impact if I try to find time to write more about my thoughts.

Frank_R 25 Sep 2021 7:54 UTC
5 points
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on: The problem of artificial suffering
I think that it is possible that whole brain emulation (WBE) will be developed before AGI and that there are s-risks associated with WBE. It seems to me that most people in the s-risk community work on AI risks.
Do you know of any research that deals specifically with the prevention of s-risks from WBE? Since an emulated mind should resemble the original person, it should be difficult to tweak the code of the emulation such that extreme suffering is impossible. Although this may work for AGI, you need probably a different strategy for emulated minds.

Frank_R 4 Jul 2021 11:59 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: Brendon Shapiro’s comment on: Open Thread: July 2021
Hi,
maybe you find this overview of longtermism interesting if you have not already found it:
Intro to Longtermism | Fin Moorhouse

Frank_R 20 May 2024 10:51 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: AndyMcKenzie’s comment on: Questioning assumptions: Why the EA community should lead in the debate on brain preservation
On the one hand, I am more concerned with learning AI safety than organizing my own cryoperservation or chemical brain preservation. This is mostly because I think it is more important to avoid the worst possible futures before planning to be alive in the future. On the other hand, I think life extension should receive much more funding (as long as you do not use AI with dangerous capabilities), I am against anti-natalism and I think that brain preservation should be available for those who wish. There is a certain tension between both statements. I do not know how to resolve that tension, but thank you for pointing out the problem with my worldview.

Frank_R 24 Oct 2022 7:22 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Brief evaluations of top-10 billionnaires
In my opinion, it is not clear if space colonization increases or decreases x-risk. See “Dark skies” from Daniel Deudney or the article “Space colonization and suffering risks: Reassessing the ‘maxipok rule’” by Torres for a negative view. Therefore, it is hard to say if SpaceX or Bezos Blue Origin are net-positive or negative.
Moreover, Google founded the life extension company Calico and Bezos invested in Unity Biotechnology. Although life extension is not a classical cause area of EA, it would be strange if the moral value of indefinite life extension was only a small positive or negative number.

Frank_R 27 Sep 2022 9:37 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: sjsjsj’s comment on: Ask Me Anything about parenting as an Effective Altruist
I want to add that sleep training is a hot-button issue among parents. There is some evidence that starting to sleep-train your baby too early can be traumatic. My advice is simply to gather evidence from different sources before making a choice.
Otherwise, I agree with Geoffrey Millers reply. Your working hours as a parent are usually shorter, but you learn how to set priorities and work more effectively.

Frank_R 7 Sep 2022 11:19 UTC
4 points
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on: A Case Against Strong Longtermism
Thank you for writing this post. I agree with many of your arguments and criticisms like yours deserve to get more attention. Nevertheless, I still call myself a longtermist; mainly for the following reasons:
- There exist longtermist interventions that are good with respect to a broad range of ethical theories and views about the far future, e.g. searching the waste water for unknown pathogens.
- Sometimes it is possible to gather further evidence for counter-intuitive claims. For example, you could experiment with existing large language models and search for signs of misaligned behaviour.
- There may exist unknown longtermist interventions that satisfy all of our criteria. Therefore, a certain amount of speculative thinking is OK as long as you keep in mind that most speculative theories will die.
All in all, you should keep the balance between too conservative and too speculative thinking.

Frank_R 30 Aug 2022 7:48 UTC
4 points
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on: The Nietzschean Challenge to Effective Altruism
In my opinion, the philosophy that you have outlined should not be simply dismissed since it contains several important points. Many people in EA, including me, want to avoid the repugnant conclusion and do not think that wireheading is a valueable thing. Moreover, more holistic ethical theories may also lead to important insights. Sometimes an entity has emergent properties that are not shared by its parts.
I agree that it is hard to reconcile animal suffering with a Nietzschian world view. Whats even worse is that it may lead to opinions like “It does not matter if there is a global catastrophe as long as the elite survives”.
It could be possible to develop a more balanced philosophy with help of moral uncertainty or if you simple state that avoiding suffering and excellence are both important values. Finally, you could point out that it is not plausible that humankind is able to flourish although many humans suffer. After all, you cannot be healthy if most of your organs are sick.

Frank_R 31 May 2022 14:41 UTC
4 points
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on: My list of effective altruism ideas that seem to be underexplored
Could you elaborate why we have to make choices before space colonisation if we want to survive beyond the end of the last stars? Until now, my opinion is that we can can “start solving heat death” a billion years in the future while we have to solve AI alignment in the next 50 − 1000 years.
Another thought of mine is that it is probably impossible to resurrect the dead by computing how the state of each neuron of a deceased person was at the time of her/his death. I think, you need to measure the state of each particle in the present with a very high precision and/or the computational requirements for a backward simulation are much too high. Unfortunately, I cannot provide a detailed mathematical argument. This would be an interesting research project; even if the only outcome is that a small group of people should change their cause area.

Frank_R 20 Apr 2022 11:36 UTC
4 points
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on: Hiring a mathematician to work on the learning-theoretic AI alignment agenda
How much knowledge about AI alignment apart from the right mathematical background is necessary for this position? If the job is suitable for candidates without prior involvment in x-risks / longtermism / Effective Altruism, it may be a good idea to announce it at places as mathjobs.org.

Frank_R 24 Mar 2022 8:22 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: AndyMcKenzie’s comment on: Brain preservation to prevent involuntary death: a possible cause area
I forgot to mention that you should be careful about how brain preservation increases or decreases the probability for suffering or existential risks. On the one hand, many patients waiting for whole brain emulation (WBE) could be a reason to push forward WBE without thinking about the possible negative effects deeply enough. On the other hand, if there are reasons to believe that some people alive today could live for millenia, this may ecourage longterm thinking. Since I cannot determine the sign of the risk, I am cautiously for brain preservation because of the positive nearterm effects.

Frank_R 24 Mar 2022 7:50 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: AndyMcKenzie’s comment on: Brain preservation to prevent involuntary death: a possible cause area
I don’t disagree with you. Although I think that existential and global catastrophic risks are the most important cause area, there are good project ideas in the life extension community without easy access to venture capital. Since biological aging is a major source of suffering, life extension and brain preservation are worthwhile cause areas.

Frank_R 23 Mar 2022 8:31 UTC
4 points
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on: Brain preservation to prevent involuntary death: a possible cause area
I have a few questions on the more practical side of brain preservation. Are there any organisations working on this problem with more room for funding? I know about the Brain Preservation Foundation and Nectome, but as an outsider it is hard to tell how active they are and what they could do with extra money.
In my opinion, it is very difficult for a company offering brain preservation to hit the market. At the beginning, there are possibly only a few customers scattered throughout the world. You will probably need a standby team at the bed of the terminally ill patient to ensure high quality preservation. This will make the costs skyrocket. The optimal solution would be if a hospital offers brain preservation as a part of their service. However, this seems to be unlikely since the topic is rather controversial. Do you have thoughts about this problems?

Frank_R 4 Oct 2021 14:15 UTC
4 points
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on: Robin Hanson on the Long Reflection
I think that it is not possible to delay technological progress if there are strong near-term and/or egoistical reasons to accelerate the development of new technologies.
As an example, let us assume that it is possible to stop biological aging within a timeframe of 100 years. Of course, you can argue that this is an irreversible change, which may or may not be good for humankinds longterm future. But I do not think that it is realistic to say “Let’s fund Alzheimer’s research and senolytics, but everything that prolongs life expectancy beyond 120 years will be forbidden for the next millenia until we have figured out if we want to have a society of ageless people.”
On the other hand my argument does not rule out that it is possible to delay technologies which are very expensive to develop and which have no clear value from an egoistic point of view.