Henry Stanley 🔸

• Henry Stanley 🔸May 7, 2025, 4:07 PM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Richard Y Chappell🔸’s comment on: Don’t Void Your Pets

  I’m going to bow out—wasn’t my intention to try to “silence” anybody and I’m not quite sure how we got there!

• Henry Stanley 🔸May 7, 2025, 2:15 PM

  8 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Richard Y Chappell🔸’s comment on: Don’t Void Your Pets

  I’m still skeptical of using ‘obviousness’/​‘plausibility’ as evidence of a theory being correct—as a mental move it risks proving too much. Multiple theories might have equally obvious implications. Plenty of previously-unthinkable views would have been seen to be deeply un-obvious.

  You have your intuitions and I have mine—we can each say they’re obvious to us and it gets us no further, surely? Perhaps I’m being dense.

  In Don’t Valorize The Void you say:

  Omelas is a very good place, and it’s deeply irrational to condemn it. We can demonstrate this by noting that from behind a veil of ignorance, where you had an equal chance to be any affected individual (including the kid in the basement), it would be prudent to gamble on Omelas.

  If it was so straightforwardly irrational (dare I say it—insensible), Le Guin would presumably never have written the story in the first place! Not everyone behind the veil of ignorance would take the gamble, despite the naked assertion that ‘it would be prudent’ to do so.

• Henry Stanley 🔸May 7, 2025, 12:51 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Don’t Void Your Pets

  This got added as a comment on the original Substack article; think it’s worth reading in this context:

  https://​​expandingcircle.substack.com/​​p/​​the-dark-side-of-pet-ownership

• Henry Stanley 🔸May 6, 2025, 5:38 PM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Richard Y Chappell🔸’s comment on: Don’t Void Your Pets

  Not what I was saying. More like, it’s a weak argument to merely say “my position generates a sensible-sounding conclusion and thus is more likely to be true”, and it would surprise me if eg a highly-upvoted EA Forum post used this kind of circular reasoning. Or is that what you’re defending?

  I suppose I agree that we’re not obliged to give every crackpot view equal airtime—I just disagree that “pets have net negative lives” is such a view.

• Henry Stanley 🔸May 5, 2025, 9:47 AM

  7 points

  5 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Richard Y Chappell🔸’s comment on: Don’t Void Your Pets

  I think the “pathology” comment is probably a norm violation. The “sensible” comment feels more like circular reasoning I guess? (Or maybe it doesn’t feel obvious to me, and perhaps therefore it irks me more than it does others.)

• Henry Stanley 🔸May 4, 2025, 10:35 PM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: JoA🔸’s comment on: Don’t Void Your Pets

  Regarding the latter: calling a philosophical position “a pathology” with no further justification is not the sort of thing I usually expect to find on the forum

  Agreed; same for the reference to the position here being strong because “it straightforwardly verifies sensible views on the topic”.

• Henry Stanley 🔸May 4, 2025, 12:47 PM

  8 points

  4 ∶ 2

  on: Don’t Void Your Pets

  Although they’re presented in adjacent sentences, this:

  I’d say that domesticated life seems both (i) clearly good overall, and (ii) the best form of life that’s realistically available for many non-human animals.

  seems distinct from:

  (I know I’d much rather be reincarnated as a well-cared-for companion animal than as a starving, parasite-ridden stray. Yeah, even at the cost of a minute spent tied to a lamppost!)

  I would also prefer to be a companion animal over being a stray – but I would probably prefer not to exist than exist as a companion animal.

  Needless to say I don’t think companion animal lives are “clearly” good overall. I think “a minute tied to a lamppost” is a bit sanguine. Companion animals are subjected to all sorts of unpleasant experiences: surgeries like neutering/​spaying, boredom, lack of autonomy over basic functions and routine, confinement, breeding-related health issues.

  I suspect this varies a lot—e.g. I think rabbits probably have overall net negative lives, being prey animals and often neglected, kept in cages outside with little to do, fear from predators, unable to perform their natural habits. Cats and dogs probably have a better time.

• Henry Stanley 🔸Apr 18, 2025, 4:39 PM

  7 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: case­bash’s Shortform

  I tend to agree; better to be explicit especially as the information is public knowledge anyway.

  It refers to this: https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​posts/​​HqKnreqC3EFF9YcEs/​​

• Henry Stanley 🔸Apr 18, 2025, 12:27 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Chris Leong’s comment on: Epoch AI alumni launch Mech­a­nize to “au­to­mate the whole econ­omy”

  Interesting that you chose not to name the org in question—I guess you wanted to focus on the meta-level principle rather than this specific case

Epoch AI alumni launch Mech­a­nize to “au­to­mate the whole econ­omy”

• Henry Stanley 🔸Apr 18, 2025, 9:55 AM

  2 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Hu­man and HPV Genes Com­bine to Form Ex­tra­chro­mo­so­mal DNA that Pro­motes Oropha­ryn­geal Tu­mor Growth

  Interesting stuff but I think this is a bit too technical/​in the weeds for the average EA forum reader—and it’s not super clear what the EA angle is here.

• Henry Stanley 🔸Apr 7, 2025, 2:54 PM

  6 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ben_West🔸’s comment on: An­thropic is not be­ing con­sis­tently can­did about their con­nec­tion to EA

  most people’s coworkers aren’t trying to reshape the lightcone without public consent so idk, maybe different standards should apply here

  Exactly. Daniela and the senior leadership at one of the frontier AI labs are not the same as someone’s random office colleague. There’s a clear public interest angle here in terms of understanding the political and social affiliations of powerful and influential people—which is simply absent in the case you describe.

• Henry Stanley 🔸Apr 2, 2025, 8:26 AM

  5 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: Ozzie Gooen’s Shortform

  From an animal welfarist perspective you could even have the recipe contain a message about how making chicken soup is unethical and should not be attempted.

• Henry Stanley 🔸Apr 1, 2025, 2:19 PM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Im­por­tant Up­date: Pivotal(TM) Trade­mark Announcement

  Oddly I used to work at Pivotal^[1] - have very fond memories of the London office with its full breakfast every morning...

  Has since been acquired by VMware and gradually killed, and then VMware was acquired again by Broadcom who have really really killed it

  1. ^

     There’s almost no mention of it online now as the brand has been killed off

For­ma­tion of Macros­trat­egy Refine­ment Division

• Henry Stanley 🔸Jan 14, 2025, 2:47 PM

  7 points

  3 ∶ 0

  on: How to Source Caviar Sus­tain­ably and Sup­port Stur­geon Recovery

  To what extent do you think this fits the typical EA brief of ‘important, neglected, tractable’? Even if we think that supporting sturgeon populations is intrinsically valuable—given that the fall in sturgeon populations is caused by overfishing for caviar, isn’t is more obvious to just… not consume it?

• Henry Stanley 🔸Dec 16, 2024, 10:52 AM

  9 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: AMA: 10 years of Earn­ing To Give

  You’ve mentioned your experience with burnout in a previous post—I wondered if you were willing to share more about that, and how it influenced your approach to EtG if at all.

• Henry Stanley 🔸Nov 7, 2024, 2:52 PM

  5 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: I got dysen­tery so you don’t have to

  Very impressive—I don’t think I have the stomach (so to speak) to put myself through this kind of suffering. Thanks for doing something so selfless and unpleasant for the benefit of anonymous others ❤️

• Henry Stanley 🔸Oct 31, 2024, 3:16 PM

  7 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: To­day we fight for the fu­ture of one billion chick­ens.

  Hooray—this is awesome work. Fight the good fight.

  I donated to THL last year because of this case; was advised by Founders Pledge that without funding the appeal might fall through and was keen for that not to happen. I wonder what other time-sensitive efforts in this space with room for more funding?

• Henry Stanley 🔸Sep 2, 2024, 10:14 AM

  16 points

  5 ∶ 0

  on: The EA Hub is retiring

  Thanks for all the hard work that went into building/​rebuilding/​maintaining EA Hub!

  It’s always sad to see old projects get shuttered, especially ones that were a labour of love, so kudos on recognising that it’s the right time to do this.