Giles

• GilesJul 21, 2015, 8:03 PM

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  on: Ia­son Gabriel writes: What’s Wrong with Effec­tive Altruism

  One thing I find interesting about all the thought experiments is that they assume a one donor, many recipient model. That is, the morality of each situation is analyzed as if a single agent is making the decision.

  Reality is many donors, many recipients and I think this affects the analysis of the examples. Firstly because donors influence each others’ behaviour, and secondly because moral goods may aggregate on the donor end even if they don’t aggregate on the recipient end. I’ll try and explain with some examples:

  Two villages (a): each village currently receives 50% of the donations from other donors. Enough of the other donors care about equality that this number will stay at 50% whichever one you donate to (because they’ll donate to whichever village receives less than 50% of the funds). So whether you care about equality or not, as a single donor your decision doesn’t matter either way.

  Two villages (b): each village currently receives 50% of the donations from other donors, but this time it’s because the other donors are donating carelessly. Moral philosophers have decided that the correct allocation (balancing equality with overall benefit) is for one village to receive 60% of donations and the other to receive 40%. As a relatively small donor, your moral duty then is to give all your money to one village, to try and nudge that number up as close to 60% as you can.

  Medicine (a): Philosophers have decided the ideal distribution is 90% condoms and 10% ARVs. Depending what the actual distribution is, it might be best to put all your money into funding condoms, or all your money into funding ARVs, and only if it’s already right on the mark should you favour a ⁹⁰⁄₁₀ split.

  I don’t think the Ultrapoverty, Sweatshop and Participation examples are affected by this particular way of thinking though.

  I just get the feeling that something like consequentialism will emerge, even if you start off with very different premises, once you take into account other donors giving to overlapping causes but with different agendas. Or at least, that this would be so for as long as people identifying with EA remain a tiny minority.

Ia­son Gabriel writes: What’s Wrong with Effec­tive Altruism

• GilesJul 19, 2015, 8:48 PM

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  on: Prevent­ing hu­man extinction

  I have a minor philosophical nitpick.

  No sane person would say, “Well, the risk of a nuclear meltdown at this reactor is only 1 in 1000

  There are (checks Wikipedia) 400ish nuclear reactors, which means if everyone followed this reasoning, the risk of a nuclear meltdown would be pretty high.

  Existential risks with low probabilities don’t add up in the same way. It’s my belief that the magnitude of a risk equals the badness times the probability (which for xrisk comes out to very, very bad) but not everyone might agree with me, and I’m not sure the nuclear reactor example would convince them.

Meetup : Toronto: Is ex­is­ten­tial risk re­duc­tion a good use of re­sources?

• GilesFeb 3, 2015, 2:07 PM

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  in reply to: Gentzel’s comment on: Should your choice of char­ity change based on how much money you have?

  some of the Gates Foundation work is higher impact than GiveWell top charities

  Hasn’t GiveWell also said that large orgs tend to do so many different things that some end up being effective and others not? Does this criticism apply to the Gates Foundation?

• GilesJan 27, 2015, 2:59 AM

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  in reply to: Bitton’s comment on: Stuck? Talk to an EA Buddy!

  I’ve got 16 people on the list and nominally made 5 pairings. In a while I’ll prod people to see if they’re actually talking to each other.

Meetup : The most good you can do in 5 minutes

• GilesJan 24, 2015, 5:33 PM

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  in reply to: Evan_Gaensbauer’s comment on: Jan­uary Open Thread

  I think you’re imagining a scenario where every organization either:

  • is not seriously addressing existential risk, or

  • has run out of room for more funding

  One reason this could happen would be organizational: organizations lose their sense of direction or initiative, perhaps by becoming bloated on money or dragged away from their core purpose by pushy donors. This doesn’t feel stable, as you can always start new organizations, but there may be a lag of a few years between noticing that existing orgs have become rubbish and getting new ones to do useful stuff.

  Another reason this could happen would be more strategic: that humanity actually can’t think of any things it can do that will reduce existential risk. Perhaps there’s a fear that meddling will make things worse? Orgs like FHI certainly put resources into strategizing, so this setup wouldn’t be a result of a lack of creative thinking. It might be something more fundamental to do with ensuring the stability of a system as complex as today’s technological world being a Really Hard Problem.

  Even if we don’t hit a complete wall, we might hit diminishing returns. If there turns out to be some moral or practical reason why xrisk is on parity with poverty and animals (in terms of importance) then EA would essentially be running out of stuff to do.

  Which we eventually want—but not while the world is full of danger and suffering.

• GilesJan 24, 2015, 4:56 AM

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  in reply to: davidc’s comment on: Jan­uary Open Thread

  My post is here.

• GilesJan 24, 2015, 4:41 AM

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  in reply to: RyanCarey’s comment on: Com­ments on Ernest Davis’s com­ments on Bostrom’s Superintelligence

  OK, finished draft done. Sorry for posting it by accident earlier!

• GilesJan 24, 2015, 4:41 AM

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  in reply to: davidc’s comment on: Com­ments on Ernest Davis’s com­ments on Bostrom’s Superintelligence

  You’re absolutely right. I’ve changed that bit in the final draft.

Com­ments on Ernest Davis’s com­ments on Bostrom’s Superintelligence

• GilesJan 22, 2015, 2:37 AM

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  in reply to: Evan_Gaensbauer’s comment on: Jan­uary Open Thread

  What Role Do Small-to-Medium Donors Play In the Future of Effective Altruism

  I think this fits into a bigger picture. To punch above your weight in terms of impact, you need to know something (or have a skill) that most other people don’t. Currently the thing you have to know is “there’s this thing called EA and earning to give”. As that meme spreads, you’d expect its impact to dwindle, assuming an upper bound on the total amount of good that can be done given current resources.

  The number of earning-to-givers * average good done by earning to give ⇐ total amount of good available to be done.

  The same equation applies to “knowing about everything that’s going on inside EA”, so creating better memes than earning to give doesn’t appear to solve the problem.

  What would help though, would be:

  • finding where my model of what’s going on is an oversimplification, and focussing some attention there (maybe with xrisk the amount of good to be done is so huge that we don’t hit a limit for a while)

  • increasing the “total amount of good that can be done given current resources”.

  The second one would seem to suggest increasing the total resources available to doing good—this isn’t quite the same as growing the economy, because many agents in the economy are selfish, but it feels related and probably involves an entrepeneurial spirit.

  I think the EA algorithm would look something like this:

  • Do what everyone else in EA is doing

  • Think of something new, and if it can be shown to be effective (in the sense of growing things, not just directing resources away from somewhere else even in an indirect sense) then roll it out to the rest of the EA movement.

  End ramble.

• GilesJan 22, 2015, 1:17 AM

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  in reply to: AnonymousFailure’s comment on: Jan­uary Open Thread

  Hi Anonymous,

  Really sorry to hear that you feel like that. I’m glad you find writing about it therapeutic. One thing you can try—it’s worked for me—is to write down a “toolbox” of things (such as writing) that allow you to feel better about yourself when you’re feeling bad.

  This could even include taking 1-2 hours to criticize yourself—if that’s what works for you. But having other options might help. Writing them down somewhere visible can help too.

  The reason I’m bringing this up is that—for me at least—the mindframe you describe isn’t helpful for making big decisions, or even for applying to jobs. So I think that knowing when you’re at your best and knowing some things you can try to help you return to that state, is great.

  Also really sorry to hear that you’re feeling low status on account of a successful role-model. I’ve felt that one too, although for me it wasn’t a parent but rather other members of the EA community who I saw as having accomplished more than I had. I’d love if there was some neat package of advice I could give here, but the only way out I know of involves a lot of grit—gradually learning to compare yourself to your own standards and finding success spirals.

  It’s really sweet and amazing that you’re not blaming anyone in the community for making you feel this way—I know it’s not anyone’s intention to get you to choose a career you’re not at all passionate about for EA reasons, but some of the advice can sometimes sound a bit like that.

  Also bear in mind that the career advice from 80,000 Hours isn’t to get it right first time, but to allow yourself room to explore and find new directions. Some high-profile EAs have done exactly that, doing a career u-turn when they discover some other path that for them is more effective or more satisfying. So it may be that there’s a fun, fulfilling career out there for you—that’s effective in helping others—and that lies outside of STEM. Or maybe your current field is right for you after all, and you just need to find the right people to make it exciting for you.

  Good luck, and thanks so much for opening up. I’m sure what you’re saying resonates with a lot of people.

• GilesJan 20, 2015, 3:11 AM

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  on: Jan­uary Open Thread

  I was reading The Phatic and the Antic-Inductive on Slate Star Codex.

  Why’s this relevant?

  Birthday and Christmas charity fundraisers of course!

  There is a sense in which the concept of a birthday fundraiser is anti-inductive—if they worked, and everyone realised they worked, then a lot more people would be doing them and they wouldn’t work so well any more.

  But actually running a fundraiser feels more like phatic communication. You’re really communicating very little information about the charity you want people to give money to, but people seem to appreciate it and (as far as I know) very rarely get mad.

  So is there some kind of lesson here that in some situations, one mindset is better, in other situations a different mindset is better… but always to remember that the other person may have a very different mindset to yourself?

• GilesJan 20, 2015, 2:30 AM

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  in reply to: RyanCarey’s comment on: Com­ments on Ernest Davis’s com­ments on Bostrom’s Superintelligence

  Yes—I clicked on “save and continue” and what I got was “submit”. I’d better get back to work on it, I guess!

• GilesJan 19, 2015, 7:42 PM

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  in reply to: davidc’s comment on: Jan­uary Open Thread

  I’ll bite. It may take a new top-level post though.

• GilesJan 19, 2015, 7:38 PM

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  in reply to: ImmaSix’s comment on: Jan­uary Open Thread

  I’d suggest Global Catastrophic Risks as a good primer. (The essays aren’t written by Bostrom; he co-edited the book)

• GilesJan 16, 2015, 5:37 AM

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  on: The Out­side Crit­ics of Effec­tive Altruism

  I was googling “effective altruism arrogant” and it turned up a few links which I’m posting here so I don’t lose them:

  • Barry’s blog on want vs. need

  • A comment on this forum from vipulnaik on hubris/​arrogance with responses

  • Attacking the value of art is not a good strategy by Dwight Furrow on 3quarksdaily

  • Not all lives saved are good by Atheist Ethicist

• GilesJan 13, 2015, 7:05 PM

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  in reply to: Evan_Gaensbauer’s comment on: The Out­side Crit­ics of Effec­tive Altruism

  Thanks—I knew they were involved in the EA Summit but I didn’t know they were the sole organizers. I also knew they weren’t soliciting donations. I partially retract my earlier statement about them! (Also I hope I didn’t cause anyone any offense—I’ve met them and they’re super super nice and hardworking too)