Halstead

• Halstead 6 Jun 2021 16:37 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: jackva’s comment on: Cli­mate change ques­tions for Jo­hannes Ackva and John Halstead

  Victor and Cullenward—Making Climate Policy Work is good.

  On the science side, for an overview, I would recommend just reading the summary for policymakers or technical summary of the IPCC 2013 Physical science basis report.

  For long-termist/​ex-risk takes the following are good

  King et al Climate Change a Risk Assessment

  Hansen et al, Climate Sensitivity, sea level and atmospheric CO2

  Clark et al, Consequences of twenty-first-century policy for multi-millennial climate and sea-level change

• Halstead 6 Jun 2021 16:32 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: JamesOz’s comment on: Cli­mate change ques­tions for Jo­hannes Ackva and John Halstead

  Hello!

  I agree that climate change is not neglected but I view that as a bit of a weak steer when deciding whether to work on it, for reasons I outline here. Neglectedness is one determinant of how cost-effective it is to work on a problem, but there are many others. Taking the example of AI safety—it is more neglected than climate change, but I have almost no idea how to make progress on this problem, whereas with climate change there is quite a clear path to making a difference. It also might be true that certain solutions within climate are less neglected than others, e.g. CCS and nuclear are neglected.

  I think to make cause prioritisation decisions when the stakes are high, we actually need to sit down and figure out directly which cause is more cost-effective to work on.

[Question] How well did EA-funded biorisk or­gani­sa­tions do on Covid?

• Halstead 22 May 2021 18:20 UTC

  21 points

  in reply to: Aaron Gertler’s comment on: Re­sponse to Phil Tor­res’ ‘The Case Against Longter­mism’

  Hi Aaron, I appreciate this and understand the thought process behind the decision. I do generally agree that it is important to provide evidence for this kind of thing, but there were reasons not to do so in this case, which made it a bit unusual.

• Halstead 19 May 2021 17:43 UTC

  11 points

  on: In­som­nia with an EA lens: Big­ger than malaria?

  I have written up the instructions for CBT-i here for those interested—https://​​johnhalstead.org/​​index.php/​​2020/​​10/​​11/​​how-to-cure-your-insomnia/​​

• Halstead 12 May 2021 19:34 UTC

  49 points

  in reply to: Sean_o_h’s comment on: Re­sponse to Phil Tor­res’ ‘The Case Against Longter­mism’

  Simon Beard is providing the foreword for his forthcoming book, and Luke Kemp has provided a supporting quote for it.

• Halstead 12 May 2021 14:46 UTC

  52 points

  in reply to: Aaron Gertler’s comment on: Re­sponse to Phil Tor­res’ ‘The Case Against Longter­mism’

  I’m pretty surprised and disappointed by this warning. I made 3 claims about ways that Phil has interacted with me.

  1. I didn’t share the facebook messages because I thought it would be a breach of privacy to share a private message thread without Phil’s permission, and I don’t want to talk to him, so I can’t get his permission.

  2. I also don’t especially want to link to the piece calling me a racist, which anyone familiar with Phil’s output would already know about, in any case.

  3. There is a reason I didn’t share the screenshot of the the paedophilia/​rape accusations, which is that I thought it would be totally unfair to the people accused. This is why I called them ‘celebrities’ rather vaguely.

  As you say, I have shown all of these claims to be true in private in any case.

  This feels a lot like punishing someone for having the guts to call out a vindictive individual in the grip of a lifelong persecution complex. As illustrated by the upvotes on my comments, lots of people agree with me, but didn’t want to say anything, for whatever reason. If you were going to offer any sanction for anyone, I would have thought it would be the people at CSER, such as Simon Beard and Luke Kemp, who have kept collaborating with him and endorsing his work for the last few years, despite knowing about the behaviour that you have just banned him for.

• Halstead 18 Apr 2021 21:00 UTC

  19 points

  in reply to: MichaelPlant’s comment on: Avoid­ing the Repug­nant Con­clu­sion is not nec­es­sary for pop­u­la­tion ethics: new many-au­thor col­lab­o­ra­tion.

  Echoing what Max says, I think this paper comes from the assumption that a lot of population ethics is just off down the wrong track of trying to craft theories in a somewhat ad hoc manner that avoid the repugnant conclusion. It is difficult to think of how else these people could try and make this point given that making the same points that others have made before, in some cases several decades ago, would not be publishable because they are not novel. This strikes me as something of a (frustrated?) last resort to try and make the discipline acknowledge that there might be a problem in the way it has been going for thirty years.

  I suppose one alternative would have been to publish this on a philosophy blog, but then it would necessarily have got less reach than getting it in a top journal.

  Although unusual in philosophy, the practice is widespread in science. Scientists will often write in short letters criticising published articles that are light on substantive argument but reiterate a view among some prominent researchers.

  Finally, I think it is useful to have more surveys of what different researchers in a field believe, and this is one such instance of that—it tells us that several of the world’s best moral philosophers are willing to accept this thing that everyone else seems to think is insane.

• Halstead 31 Mar 2021 12:41 UTC

  4 points

  on: Ju­lia Galef and Matt Ygle­sias on bioethics and “ethics ex­per­tise”

  I think a key point is that bioethics usually involves applying particular moral theories, which is not that interesting an exercise from a philosophical point of view. That’s why the best philosophers are often drawn to higher level theoretical questions such as about the truth of otherwise of consequentialism or rights-based theories or whether and how we should respond to moral uncertainty. Consequently, the true ethics experts (if they really exist) are not likely to be studying bioethics. as they say in the podcast it is also weird that bioethics has this special status as a field with a distinct set of experts who get to veto public policy. In most areas of public policy, the economists get to decide what happens (subject to political constraints), and the outcomes are usually much better!

• Halstead 9 Mar 2021 8:57 UTC

  96 points

  in reply to: HaydnBelfield’s comment on: Re­sponse to Phil Tor­res’ ‘The Case Against Longter­mism’

  If you agree it is a serious and baseless allegation, why do you keep engaging with him? The time to stop engaging with him was several years ago. You had sufficient evidence to do so at least two years ago, and I know that because I presented you with it, e.g. when he started casually throwing around rape allegations about celebrities on facebook and tagging me in the comments, and then calling me and others nazis. Why do you and your colleagues continue to extensively collaborate with him?

  To reiterate, the arguments he makes are not sincere: he only makes them because he thinks the people in question have wronged him.

• Halstead 8 Mar 2021 18:39 UTC

  144 points

  on: Re­sponse to Phil Tor­res’ ‘The Case Against Longter­mism’

  It is very generous to characterise Torres’ post as insightful and thought provoking. He characterises various long-termists as white supremacists on the flimsiest grounds imaginable. This is a very serious accusation and one that he very obviously throws around due to his own personal vendettas against certain people. e.g. despite many of his former colleagues at CSER also being long-termists he doesn’t call them nazis because he doesn’t believe they have slighted him. Because I made the mistake of once criticising him, he spent much of the last two years calling me a white supremacist, even though the piece of mine he cited did not even avow belief in long-termism.

  What links here?

  • Aaron Gertler's comment on Re­sponse to Phil Tor­res’ ‘The Case Against Longter­mism’ by HaydnBelfield (18 May 2021 9:31 UTC; 16 points)

• Halstead 2 Mar 2021 10:26 UTC

  4 points

  on: Assess­ing Cli­mate Change’s Con­tri­bu­tion to Global Catas­trophic Risk

  On species extinctions, you cite the Thomas et al estimate that climate change would cause “15-37% of all species to become ‘committed to extinction’ by mid-century”. This paper has been subject to an avalanche of criticism. For example, there is a good review here, and strong counter-evidence discussed at length here. I think it would be useful to the reader to provide this context.

  Also, this is just one study (also the most pessimistic), and I think one would get a better view by providing an overview of the literature. The IPBES report that you also cite says “For instance, a synthesis of many studies estimates that the fraction of species at risk of extinction due to climate change is 5 per cent at 2°C warming, rising to 16 per cent at 4.3°C warming {4.2.1.1}.” 4.3 degrees is the median outcome at 2100 on the high emissions pathway. Being committed to extinction is also very different to being at risk of extinction. This suggests that the risk is a lot lower than the Thomas et al estimate suggests.

• Halstead 1 Mar 2021 14:25 UTC

  7 points

  in reply to: HaydnBelfield’s comment on: Assess­ing Cli­mate Change’s Con­tri­bu­tion to Global Catas­trophic Risk

  The factors you mention therefore seem to increase vulnerability, but merely in the following sense

  • Some of the factors don’t seem relevant at all (phosphorous depletion)

  • The food system will be much less vulnerable in the future vs today despite these factors.

  • Some other event would have to do 99% of the work in bringing about a global food catastrophe

• Halstead 26 Feb 2021 19:06 UTC

  11 points

  on: EA Up­dates for March 2021

  thanks for taking the time to do this!

• Halstead 20 Feb 2021 14:52 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: rorty’s comment on: Defer­ence for Bayesians

  I think I would find it very hard to update on the view that the minimum wage reduces demand for labour. Maybe if there were an extremely well done RCT showing no effect from a large minimum wage increase of $10, I would update. Incidentally, here is discussion of an RCT on the minimum wage which illustrates where the observational studies might be going wrong. The RCT shows that employers reduced hours worked, which wouldn’t show up in observational studies, which mainly study disemployment effects

  I am very conscious of the fact that almost everyone I have ever tried to convince of this view on the minimum wage remains wholly unmoved. I should make it clear that I am in favour of redistribution through tax credits, subsidies for childcare and that kind of thing. I think the minimum wage is not a smart way to help lower income people.

• Halstead 20 Feb 2021 13:28 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: jackva’s comment on: Assess­ing Cli­mate Change’s Con­tri­bu­tion to Global Catas­trophic Risk

  I would agree with that—climate change seems like it could have very bad humanitarian costs for poor agrarian societies that look set to experience low economic growth this century. I do though find it very difficult to see how it could lead to a collapse of the global food system

• Halstead 19 Feb 2021 20:41 UTC

  39 points

  on: Assess­ing Cli­mate Change’s Con­tri­bu­tion to Global Catas­trophic Risk

  Thanks for sharing this.

  Regarding food, you suggest that due to climate change, soil erosion, water scarcity, and phosphorus depletion, there are risks to the global food supply that could constitute a global catastrophe. What do you think is the probability of this occurring in the next 30 or 80 years?

  I am sceptical of this. Crop yields for almost all crops have increased by 200% since 1980, despite warming of about 0.8 degrees since then. The crop effects of climate change you outline, which are typically on the order of up to 20% losses for major food crops at 5 degrees, should be set in this context. Various studies suggest that yield will increase by 25% to 150% by 2050. e.g UN FAO; Wiebe. The yield damage estimates you cite seem like they will be outpaced by technological progress unless there is a massive trend break in agricultural productivity progress.

  On phosphorous, according to a report by the IFDC funded by USAID, global phosphorous reserves (those which can be currently economically extracted, so this is a dynamic figure) will last for 300-400 years. “Based on the data gathered, collated and analyzed for this report, there is no indication that a “peak phosphorus” event will occur in 20-25 years. IFDC estimates of world phosphate rock reserves and resources indicate that phosphate rock of suitable quality to produce phosphoric acid will be available far into the future. Based on the data reviewed, and assuming current rates of production, phosphate rock concentrate reserves to produce fertilizer will be available for the next 300-400 years.” The US geological survey says “World resources of phosphate rock are more than 300 billion tons. There are no imminent shortages of phosphate rock.”

  On water scarcity, agriculture is about 4% of global GDP and declining. If water became enough of a constraint on agriculture to threaten a global catastrophe, why would we not throw some money or wisdom at the problem for example by spending more money on water, desalination, or stopping subsidising agricultural uses of water? Have any middle or high income countries ever failed to produce more than enough food because of lack of water?

  On soil erosion, the UN report on soil says “A synthesis of meta-analyses on the soil erosion-productivity relationship suggests that a global median loss of 0.3 percent of annual crop yield due to erosion occurs.7 If this rate of loss continues unchanged into the future, a total reduction of 10 percent of potential annual yield by 2050 would occur”. again, this is in the context of otherwise increasing yields. Soil erosion rates are also declining in various regions.

• Halstead 17 Feb 2021 15:12 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Arepo’s comment on: Defer­ence for Bayesians

  As I mention in the post, it’s not just theory and common sense, but also evidence from other domains. If the demand curve for labour low skilled labour is vertical, then it is all but impossible that a massive influx of Cuban workers during the Mariel boatlift had close to zero effect on native US wages. Nevertheless, that is what the evidence suggests.

  I am happy to be told of other theoretical explanations of why minimum wages don’t reduce demand for labour. The ones I am aware of in the literature are monopsonistic buyer of labour (clearly not the case), or one could give up on the view that firms are systematically profit-seeking (also doesn’t seem true).

  The claims that are wrong are the ones I highlight in the post, viz that the empirical evidence is all that matters when forming believe about the minimum wage. Most empirical research isn’t that good and cannot distinguish signal from noise when there are small treatment effects e.g. the Card and Krueger research that started the whole debate off got their data by telephoning fast food restaurants.

• Halstead 17 Feb 2021 14:57 UTC

  13 points

  in reply to: rorty’s comment on: Defer­ence for Bayesians

  2. I would disagree on economics. I view the turn of economics towards high causal identification and complete neglect of theory as a major error, for reasons I touch on here. The discipline has moved from investigating important things to trivial things with high causal identification. The trend towards empirical behavioural economics is also in my view a fad with almost no practical usefulness. (To reiterate my point on the minimum wage—the negative findings are almost certainly false: it is what you would expect to find for a small treatment effect and noisy data in observational studies. Before reading the literature and believing that the effect of a minimum wage increase of $3 is small but negative, I would still expect to find a lot of studies finding no effect because empirical research is not very good, so one should not update much on those negative findings. If you think the demand curve for low skilled labour is vertical, then the phenomenon of ~0 effect on native US wages after a massive influx of low skilled labour from Cuba is inexplicable. And: the literature is very mixed—it’s not like all the studies find no effect, that is a misconception)

  3. I agree that focusing on base rates is important but that doesn’t seem to get at the myopic empiricism issue. For example, the base rate of vaccine efficacy dropping off a cliff after 22 days is very low, but that was not established in the initial Astra Zeneca study. To form that judgement, one needs evidence from other domains, which myopic empiricists ignore.

  4. I’m not sure where we disagree there. I don’t think EAs should stay rooted in empiricism if that means ‘form judgements only on the basis of the median published scientific study’, which is the view I criticise. I’m not saying we should become less empirical—I think we should take account of theory but also empirical evidence from other domains, which as I discuss many other experts refuse to do in some cases.

  I’m not saying that we should be largely cut off from observation and experiment and should just deduce from theory. I’m saying that the myopic empiricist approach is not the right one.

• Halstead 17 Feb 2021 8:44 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: BenMillwood’s comment on: Defer­ence for Bayesians

  This is maybe getting too bogged down in the object-level. The general point is that if you have a confident prior, you are not going to update on uncertain observational evidence very much. My argument in the main post is that ignoring your prior entirely is clearly not correct and that is driving a lot of the mistaken opinions I outline.

  Tangentially, I stand by my position on the object-level—I actually think that 98% is too low! For any randomly selected good I can think of, I would expect a price floor to reduce demand for it in >99% of cases. Common sense aside… The only theoretical reason this might not be true is if the market for labour is monopsonistic. That is just obviously not the case. There is also evidence from the immigration literature which suggests that native wages are barely affected by a massive influx of low skilled labour, which implies a near horizontal demand curve. There is also the point that if you are slightly Keynesian you think that involuntary employment is caused by the failure of wages to adjust downward; legally forbidding them from doing this must cause unemployment.