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: 4,763
Elon Musk has already used this power to do actions which will potentially kill millions (by funding the Trump campaign enough to get to close down USAID). I think that should worry us, and the chance of people amassing even more power should worry us even more.
Re: helping people in our communities
I’d respond that’s it’s not an either/or situation. I do donate to help the local community (for different senses of “local”), but there too:
I try to understand what is more effective within that space—e.g. EA Israel did a project at some point of trying to quantify the impact of charities operating within Israel, and they have a donation portal for the recommended charities.
I remember that all the people who are currently suffering keep existing even if I don’t see them in my neighbourhood. And my money, even personally, can have an impact there in the order of magnitude of saving a child’s life.
What do you think their counterfactual is? I don’t think any of what they’ve been doing is really transferable.
Not trying to answer on the author’s behalf, but it seems relatively clear to me that differential development is possible here: so far most advancements in science seem to have come from biological applications like AlphaFold that are distinct from the LLMs that have created most problems both in the eyes of “doomers” and in the eyes of people warning about current non-extinction dangers. Therefore the development of beneficial tools can in theory be accelerated while the development of LLMs is slowed down.
Small note: I don’t know if it’s my own English at fault, but I interpreted “7x below the WHO threshold” as meaning “7 times worse than the threshold” and only understood the actual meaning as I looked at the actual numbers later. Might be worth wording it differently.
Great result I think!
Mentioned many real dangers, gave a pretty realistic outlook, and was approachable and funny without making it all look ridiculous.
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.
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.
Extinction perhaps not, but I think eternal autocracy is definitely possible.