BSc Econometrics and Operations Research (focus: econometrics)
MSc Systems Biology (focus: evolutionary game theory for adaptive cancer treatment)
MSc Econometrics and Operations Research (focus: operations research, and math. econ. thesis regarding social influence and change)
Premaster Executive Master in Actuarial Science
Premaster and master Amsterdam Master in Actuarial Science
Teaser essay bundle āIdeas to Secure Our Futureā:
Interesting, thanks, will try to find more info!
āOpenPhilās Worldview Investigations teamā refers I think to Rethink Prioritiesā, or another one at Open Philanthrophy? Thanks!
Hi Joe,
I much appreciated your post on deep atheism, and will still finish that. I also found this above post, and I thought I could contribute to the understanding at some points (as a Thesean myself).
You seem to move to discussing content, not distinguished this from consciousness (as in Dennettās work), and perhaps even conflate the two concepts. Consciousness, I would refer with to, the mere platform, the capability that enables content to be featured. The self/āI Dennett (r.i.p.) would conceive as ācenter of narrative gravityā, in line with your reflections.
Pragmatically there are tradeoffs in wrongly or rightly having confidence or not having confidence in your first person perspectives. Most commonly a belief in the reality of (the content of) consciousness co-occurs with the belief that one simply cannot be wrong about certain aspects of it, as opposed to them being āmere illusionsā, that not necessarily have realism. This is I think particulary relevant in, among many other highly relevant ethical applications, interpersonal power-dynamics, where the assertions in the necessary realism of some of (the content in) consciousness can only be effectively countered with a retalliatory healthy skepticism on this front. I also agree that how this should exactly look is not yet most clear, as is even also the case for a very senior scientist like Anil Seth, according to his reflections prompted by Daniel Dennettās passing.
Best,
Indra
āmany causes we choose to support tend to be the result ofā should I think be āmany choices to support a cause tend to be the result ofā as what follows should I think refer to the choice as opposed to the cause or charity.
āSo holding lifespans fixed, a greater capacity for synchronic welfare does entail a greater capacity for diachronic welfare.ā Iām missing here a discussion of adaptation, e.g. I might really like my first donut, but with more donuts my welfare capacity from another donut rapidly declines. The rate of this declining might differ across species. As such momentary peaks might be higher in one species while less rate of decline and less variance in another species inclunes larger diachronic welfare, despite lower synchronic welfare, at times, or, sustainably.
Thanks for this post and for drawing attention to the topic. I specialized in OR within my master degree with much enjoyment. I would very much enjoy a seminar series with EA-aligned or -adjacent OR-talks and/āor OR research projects. Happy to connect on these topics!
In addition, we might also want to useāand take in accountāour abilities to look ahead. Suppose for example a worthwhile task that requires two people to engage in it. The first person to engage in it gains zero marginal returns, while the latter gets everything (all of the returns as marginal returns). The first person might however predict the second personās behavior and based on the expectation that results engage with this task. By contrast, chimpanzees are not able to do this; You would never see two of them cooperate to together e.g. carry a log (research by Joseph Henrich).
I also liked your comment that most philosophers would ānot worry too muchā about population ethics āin the short-termā. As that was I guess part of my aims. I added a subtitle with a footnote with what I additionally learned from our exchange and the previous comments.
Thank you for your comment and for your explanation!
I agree that if you know what improving the future means (to you), and if that future matters to you, then you have an optimal population size to aim at. Granted that if improving the future means something different to you[1], then the optimal population size to aim at will be different. And if youāre time-inconsistent in what improving the future means to you, you are then time-inconsistent in the optimal population size to aim at. But that supports the consistency, not the inconsistency, of the if-then statement/ārelationship.
In my paraphrase/āagreement above, I added āif that future matters to youā. And herein I add the longtermism. Iām, indeed, not solving population ethics per se. Iām saying that for a (strong) longtermist the problem reduces to āwhat is now the optimal population size (for me)?ā. (Still a significant and substantial empirical question.)
A tangential other point your last paragraph reminded me of: at end of the future, so to say, and knowingly so, longtermism would no longer make sense, and these above implications for a resolution of population ethics would thus neither.
A more general question, of ethics?
Thank you both for your comments. Letās consider an example.
Suppose you are tasked with ethical decision-making and part of a moderately sized population on a moderately sized island. Moreover the current population size is exactly at the minimally viable population size to maintain sufficient genetic diversity to sustain itself into the future. It is also exactly at the carrying capacity, such that growth in population will be followed by scarcity and population decline, after which the population will be below the minimally viable population size. There is no expectation of additional lands or technologies (to effectively increase the carrying capacity) in the foreseeable future.
Would it in this case be ethical to advocate for a change in the population size? And if the question of population ethics can be answered in this particular case, the statement that the question of population ethics cannot be answered in general must I think be false(?).
Moreover, my argument has an if-then structure and conditions on a belief in (strong) longtermism. If you believe in (strong) longtermism, you care about the future, so it seems to me the answer to my above question should then be no; in order to have a sustainable population size, and safeguard the potential in the future.
For example in this way, I state that (strong) longtermism restricts the space of permissible positions in population ethics, with those positions remaining that minimize the risk to the potential in the future. This could still be multiple or even many permissible positions, such that the issue is not quite resolved yet. But to a (strong) longtermist it would be resolved in the sense that the different options would not be relevant to decision-making, as they would care only for and prioritize the potential in the future (such that they are indifferent between these multiple permissible positions).
To think about possible worlds, as philosophers do, is then valuable in a developed state of many options, as it helps to triage among them. In my example hereāa state and actual world (within a thought experiment, ironically) of few (or even not multiple ethical) optionsāthis is however not the case.
And regarding the non-orthogonality, I wasāas a moral realist -more thinking along the lines of: being organized (etc., etc.), is presumably a good value, and it would also improve your decision-making (sort of considered neutrally)...
Thanks for the post and for taking the time! My initial thoughts on trying to parse this are below, I think it will bring mutual understanding further.
You seem to make a distinction between intentions on the y-axis and outcomes on the x-axis. Interesting!
The terrorist example seems to imply that if you want bad outcomes you are not value-aligned (aligned to what? to good outcomes?). They are value-aligned from their own perspective. And āterroristā is also not a value-neutral term, for example Nelson Mandela was once considered one, which would I think surprise most people now.
If we allow āfrom their own perspectiveā then āeffectivenessā would do (and āefficiencyā to replace the x-axis), but it seems we donāt, and then āaltruismā (or perhaps āgoodā, with less of an explicit tie to EA?) would without the ambiguity āvalue-alignedā brings on whether or not we do [allow āfrom their own perspectiveā].
(As not a moral realist, the option of ābetter valueā is not available, so it seems one would be stuck with āfrom their own perspectiveā and calling the effective terrorist value-aligned, or moving to an explicit comparison to EA values, which I was supposing was not the purpose, and seems to be even more off-putting via the mentioned alienating shortcoming in communication.)
Next to value-aligned being suboptimal, which I also just supported further, you seem to agree with altruism and effectiveness (I would now suggest āefficiencyā instead) as appropriate labels, but agree with the author about the shortcoming for communicating to certain audiences (alienation), with which I also agree. For other audiences, including myself, the current form perhaps has shortcomings. I would value clarity more, and call the same the same. An intentional opaque-making change of words might additionally come across as deceptive, and as aligned with oneās own ideas of good, but not with such ideas in a broader context. And that I think could definitely also count as /ā become a consequential shortcoming in communication strategy.
No. I do think that combining the comments would yield less karma, which could be a bad thing andāin the spirit of this postāin need of being done better, thereby not saying anything about your intentions. And I agree with your reply to your comment: therefore the āandā. And I think what you say there is actually a very good reason, which also answers why I was reading all these distinct comments by you, which is in turn why I appreciated this one amongst them and responded. Iām sorry if it came across as an ad hominem attack instead! Best!
And likely yields less karma overall!
One way to succinctly make a similar point, I suggest, is to insist, continuously, that AI alignment and AI safety are not the same problems but are actually distinct.
Thank you for making and pushing for the relevance of these comments!
Indeed!
Also, I donāt think reducing existential risk is of intrinsic value; instead it translates into an increase in WELLBYs, in expectation. In that way, the two kinds of measures (nearterm vs. longterm) and their outcomes are also āin a common currencyā and thus, in principle, comparable.
The following part has I think some problems, which I recently addressed here: āFuture people might not existā
The challenge of conceptualizing and estimating costs and benefits for such a large and diffuse stakeholder group, the vast majority of whom canāt speak for themselves, is daunting to say the least. Longtermists have partially gotten around that challenge, however, by focusing on āexistential risksā, meaning risks of events that would permanently, drastically reduce the potential for value in the future. If the future could contain vast numbers of morally relevant beings with flourishing lives, and those existential risks could irreversibly prevent them from existing or worsen their lives, it may be reasonable to simply focus on the proxy goal of existential risk reduction.
Producing reasoning transparancy would I think yield echo-chamber-reduction effects, and also inform the powerful person practicing it how to (to them, for starters) weigh pros and cons of transferring power. Moreover, without it, I donāt see using reason and evidence to do the most good practiced, nor with that a license to be a powerful EA, as opposed to simply powerful. And if EA membership would instead just be about trying to do the most good, that would include all of humanity minus some deviants.
I appreciate your point that people that donate are under no obligation. As such an advisory (instead of instructing) role to them seems fitting. On the other hand, the intellectual EA community should however also have the freedom to: not take on certain money, or not take on certain money coupled to certain actions, or disassociate with people, e.g. when this otherwise puts the communityās (intellectual) integrity at risk, e.g. their reasoning transparancy. (And even chosen intransparancy one can be transparant about at a higher level.) In that, also being that much of EA charity work is research-based, an analogy to the scientific community, where such potent integrity risk is also tantamount, seems quite fitting.
All in all there should I think be some balance in the democratic power at both ends, including on the burden of proof, instead of this being fully one-sided. Take in FTX maybe as another (historical) example. And ideally both sides are practicing (reasoning transparancy and are) getting better in being informed by reason and evidence to do good better. Potentially this identifies (and resolves?) some (but not all) cruxes, and fleshes out new ones, while also responding to some of your encouragements, to move the conversation (or reasoning transparancy) forward?