MSc in applied mathematics/theoretical ML.
Interested in increasing diversity, transparency and democracy in the EA movement. Would like to know how algorithm developers can help “neartermist” causes.
Guy Raveh
Karma: 4,739
I’d argue that this doesn’t measure the harms I was talking about.
Still, I like that you replied to a 3 year old comment with actual data.
Sorry for being this blunt, but EA is about using evidence and reason to identify the most effective ways to help others. I can’t possibly see how operating on a vague guess is on par with that.
This criticism is independent of the fact that I still claim a “negative life” is not a concept we should incorporate into moral theories, and that we definitely shouldn’t aim to just cull all animals whose lives we somehow think are negative.
Strongly up voted.
Compare with this quote from MacAskill’s “What We Owe the Future chapter 7”, showing exactly the problem you describe:
If scientists with Einstein-level research abilities were cloned and trained from an early age, or if human beings were genetically engineered to have greater research abilities, this could compensate for having fewer people overall and thereby sustain technological progress.
estimate the cropland- and pasture-years per $ for the interventions they fund.
What would they do with such an estimate? I don’t think anyone, you included, knows with any more than very slim confidence, if it’s good or bad for soil animals to turn wild land into cropland or vice versa.
The title is really confusing and I didn’t understand it. Maybe try “Recommended interventions for X when considering Y” or something instead of an explicit bottom line?
I largely agree with you but I want to point to a small issue with terminology: what does “supporting Palestine” mean here?
I think it’s both vague (do you mean a current entity? A future state? Something else? And what does supporting it mean?) and unnecessary (in my view strongly objecting to what Israel’s doing in Gaza and in the West Bank is consistent with most political views other than those who for some reason put extremely low value on the lives of Palestinians compared to Israelis).
FWIW the latest estimate I heard from Gaza was 100,000 dead (many of which haven’t been reported by Hamas) (sorry for the paywall) which is on the same order of magnitude—and as opposed to the Ukraine war, most of them aren’t combatants. It’s up to you what to make of that.
Thanks. I avoid honey because it’s easier for me as a vegan to just avoid all foods involving farmed animals. But some of your points seem valid and I’ll need to think it over.
Some things I disagreed with:
The net-positive vs. net-negative framing, although you addressed this.
The claim about not contributing financially by buying honey having no effect—doesn’t seem right since the profit margin is still lower that way.
Ignoring environmental effects and biodiversity, though I get that the post is in response to a different claim.
Somewhat embarrassed to have remembered the opposite given that I read this just last week. Thanks!
That increases in variance are associated with imminent tipping points. The IPCC characterizes the latter as “low confidence” because the same metrics also rise in unforced scenarios.
What about autocorrelation? I [edit: mistakenly] think Ditlevsen & Ditlevsen themselves identify this as a stronger warning sign than variance.
It’s not that I’m ignoring group loyalty, just that the word “traitor” seems so strong to me that I don’t think there’s any smaller group here that’s owed that much trust. I could imagine a close friend calling me that, but not a colleague. I could imagine a researcher saying I “betrayed” them if I steal and publish their results as my own after they consulted me, but that’s a much weaker word.
[Context: I come from a country where you’re labeled a traitor for having my anti-war political views, and I don’t feel such usage of this word has done much good for society here...]
Sellout (in the context of Epoch) would apply to someone e.g. concealing data or refraining from publishing a report in exchange for a proposed job in an existing AI company.
As for traitor, I think the only group here that can be betrayed is humanity as a whole, so as long as one believes they’re doing something good for humanity I don’t think it’d ever apply.
Yes, but if at some point you find out, for example, that your model of morality leads to a conclusion that one should kill all humans, you’d probably conclude that your model is wrong rather than actually go through with it.
It’s an extreme example, but at its basis every model is somehow an approximation stemming from our internal moral intuition. Be it that life is better than death, or happiness better than pain, or satisfying desires better than frustration, or that following god’s commands is better than ignoring them, etc.
Is not every moral theory based on assumptions that X must be better than Y, around which some model is built?
No, that’s not what I think. I think it’s rather dangerous and probably morally bad to seek out “negative lives” in order to stop them. And I think we should not be interfering with nature in ways we do not really understand. The whole idea of wild animal welfare seems to me not only unsupported morally but also absurd and probably a bad thing in practice.
If I somehow ran into such a dog and decided the effort to take them to an ultrasound etc. was worth it, then probably yes—but I wouldn’t start e.g. actively searching for stray dogs with cancer in order to do that.
In principle—though I can’t say I’ve been consistent about it. I’ve supported ending our family dog’s misery when she was diagnosed with pretty bad cancer, and I still stand behind that decision. On the other hand I don’t think I would ever apply this to an animal one has had no interaction with.
On a meta level, and I’m adding this because it’s relevant to your other comment: I think it’s fine to live with such contradictions. Given our brain architecture, I don’t expect human morality to be translatable to a short and clear set of rules.
I assume you’re looking for a rational explanation, but it’s rather based on personal experience. It’s because I think my life with constant chronic pain has more negative experiences than positive ones but I have decided I should keep on living.
I don’t think there’s such a thing as a negative life.
Well, you can now see that you don’t know who upvoted your comment (but it was me).
I’m not sure if admins know or not.