Ives Parr

• Ives Parr 16 Apr 2024 14:24 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Ives Parr’s Quick takes

  Great thoughts. I will need to think more deeply about how to make this possible cost wise. We need a large sample to find the genes, but the brain imaging might make this challenging.

• Ives Parr 16 Apr 2024 3:44 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Ives Parr’s Quick takes

  I recently wrote a post on the EA forum about turning animal suffering to animal bliss using genetic enhancement. Titotal raised an thoughtful concern: “How do you check that your intervention is working? For example, suppose your original raccoons screech when you poke them, but the genetically engineered racoons don’t. Is that because they are experiencing less pain, or have they merely evolved not to screech?”

  This is a very good point. I was recently considering how we could be sure to not just change the expressions of suffering and I believe that I have determined a means of doing so. In psychology, it is common to use factor analysis to study a latent variables—the variables that we cannot measure directly. It seems extremely reasonable to think that animal pain is real, but the trouble is measuring it. We could try to get at pain by getting a huge array of behaviors and measures that are associated with pain (heart rate, cortisol levels, facial expressions, vocalizations, etc.) and find a latent factor of suffering that accounts for some of these behaviors.

  To determine if an intervention is successful at changing the latent factor of suffering for the better, we could test for measurement invariance which is an important step in making a relevant comparison between two groups. This basically tests whether the nature of the factor loadings remains the same between groups. This would mean a reduction in all of the traits associated with suffering. This would also seem relevant for environmental interventions as well.

  As an illustration: imagine that I measure wefare of a raccoon by the amount of screeching it does. A bad intervention would be taping the raccoons mouth shut. This would reduce screeching, but there is no good reason to think that would alleviate suffering. However, imagine I gave the raccoon a drug and it acted less stressed, screeched less, had less cortisol, and started acting much more friendly. This would be much better evidence of true reduction in suffering.

  There is much more to be defended in my thesis but this felt like a thought worth sharing.

• Ives Parr 16 Apr 2024 2:37 UTC

  3 points

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  on: Ives Parr’s Quick takes

  From a utilitarian perspective, it would seem there are substantial benefits to accurate measures of welfare.

  I was listening to Adam Mastroianni discuss the history of trying measure happiness and life satisfaction and it was interesting to find a level of stability across the decades. Could it really be that the increases in material wealth do not result in huge objective increases in happiness and satisfaction for humans? It would seem the efforts to increase GDP and improve standard of living beyond the basics may be misdirected.

  Furthermore, it seems like it would be extremely helpful in terms of policy creation to have an objective unit like a util.

  We could compare human and animal welfare directly, and genetically engineer animals to increase their utils.

  While efforts might not super successful, it would seem very important to merely improve objective measures of wellbeing by say 10%.

• Ives Parr 13 Apr 2024 20:19 UTC

  9 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: yanni kyriacos’s comment on: Yanni Kyr­i­a­cos’s Shortform

  This is probably a good exercise. I do want to point out a common bias about getting existential risks wrong. If someone was right about doomsday, we would not be here to discuss it. That is a huge survivorship bias. Even catestrophic events which lessen the number of people are going to be systemically underestimated. This phenomenon is the anthropic shadow which is relevant to an analysis like this.

• Ives Parr 13 Apr 2024 20:15 UTC

  15 points

  8 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ian Turner’s comment on: Jeroen De Ryck’s Quick takes

  I think [April Fools] added to the title might be a good addition since the tag is hard to see.

• Ives Parr 11 Apr 2024 17:46 UTC

  1 point

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  on: Ives Parr’s Quick takes

  In conversations of x-risk, one common mistake seems to be to suggest that we have yet to invent something that kills all people and so the historical record is not on the side of “doomers.” The mistake is survivorship bias, and Ćirković, Sandberg, and Bostrom (2010) call this the Anthropic Shadow. Using base rate frequencies to estimate the probability of events that reduce the number of people (observers), will result in bias.

  If there are multiple possible timelines and AI p(doom) is super high (and soon), then we would expect a greater frequency of events that delay the creation of AGI (geopolitical issues, regulation, maybe internal conflicts at AI companies, other disaster, etc.). It might be interesting to see if super forecasters consistently underpredict events that would delay AGI. Although, figuring out how to actually interpret this information would be quite challenging unless it’s blatantly obvious.

  I guess more likely is that I’m born in a universe with more people and everything goes fine anyway. This is quite speculative and roughly laid out, but something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

Ives Parr’s Quick takes

• Ives Parr 10 Apr 2024 20:18 UTC

  14 points

  3 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Bob Jacobs’s comment on: Should I donate my kid­ney or part of my liver?

  I see. Well, that changes my perspective. Originally, I assumed that you did not give away everything except for what is necessary to live. With the context that you are giving maximally, then donating your liver or kidney can go beyond that so it makes more sense why you are asking the question. I don’t think analyzing QALYs is strange generally.

  You are quite the EA! Congrats

• Ives Parr 10 Apr 2024 17:32 UTC

  2 points

  1 ∶ 8

  on: Should I donate my kid­ney or part of my liver?

  Such an altruistic sacrifice is quite admirable, but why not just commit to donating more money to effective charities (global dev/​animal welfare)? That is much more efficient and effective, unless you place a low value on undergoing a kidney removal? An analysis for cost-effectiveness seems somewhat strange in this context.

• Ives Parr 5 Apr 2024 14:24 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: David Mathers’s comment on: How to bet­ter ad­vo­cate for ge­netic en­hance­ment to the EA com­mu­nity?

  I still defend that I am not parroting Nazi arguments or citing Nazi sources. I think that’s an inaccurate thing to say, and it is quite an accusation. MQ is not a Nazi journal and from what I read in the article not even that guy is a Nazi if we are being technical. The logic here seems to be that he is basically a Nazi, so MQ is basically a Nazi journal, so I’m basically parroting Nazi arguments and citing Nazi sources. This is like calling EA a “crypto-scam-funded organization.” I especially take issue with it being said that I’m parroting Nazi arguments. Do you think that is a fair assessment after reading my article?

  I think the purpose of saying such a thing is to throw mud over the whole article because some citations are a journal connected to a racist. But this is the worst way to argue—the person who ran a journal that published the article says bad things and associates with bad people—is very far from the central point of the argument. Critiques should strike at the heart of the argument instead of introduce moral disgust about some non-central aspect.

  If you had a good critique of the empirical or moral claims, you should forward that. The moral arguments are wholly-EA—we should help the world through charitable actions to improve the world’s welfare (nothing wrong here!). So, then this is just a claim some of the citations are questionable in terms of their empirical quality. Fine, throw out all the MQ citations. I could rewrite my article without them. I am considering doing this. I still maintain (1) national measures of cognitive ability are associated with good outcomes, and (2) we can use genetic enhancement to boost them.

  My overall argument still holds IMO, and so this feels like nitpicking used to distort people’s intuitions about my article through introducing a lot of moral disgust and then trying to get me banned. This seems like the opposite of what EAs should do.

• Ives Parr 4 Apr 2024 20:10 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: akash’s comment on: Ge­netic En­hance­ment to Turn An­i­mal Suffer­ing to An­i­mal Bliss

  Good question.

  I think that a human being in a constant blissful state might endanger someone’s existence or make them non-functional, which isn’t much of an issue for a farm animal.

  However, I do think that we can use genetic engineering to make people happier, healthier, and more intelligent than anyone who has ever lived. I think these would have positive network effects to general society—making people more altruistic and society better functioning. I think we’re quite close to achieving this and that EAs could take deliberate efforts to accelerate this process. My argument was not well-received by the EA forum, I think largely because the idea is controversial and some of the researchers I cited were controvesial (https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​posts/​​gaSHkEf3SnKhcSPt2/​​the-effective-altruist-case-for-using-genetic-enhancement-to).

  The second-order considerations are definitely a problem once there is more widespread adoption. If only 0.001% of the population is using genetic enhancement, there are very little in the way of collective action problems. If a sizeable portion is using this technology, then we run into game theory. This is the topic of Jonathan Anomaly’s “Creating Future People”—which released a second edition yesterday. I will be reviewing it on my blog (most likely) rather soon. I am not sure if the EA forum would consider it relevant.

• Ives Parr 4 Apr 2024 15:22 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: titotal’s comment on: Ge­netic En­hance­ment to Turn An­i­mal Suffer­ing to An­i­mal Bliss

  Thank you! Great thoughts.

• Ives Parr 4 Apr 2024 14:39 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: titotal’s comment on: Ge­netic En­hance­ment to Turn An­i­mal Suffer­ing to An­i­mal Bliss

  I am interested in writing a more thorough follow up post. If you would be willing, could you briefly explain some of your concerns. I want to be thorough in my response! Thank you

• Ives Parr 4 Apr 2024 14:38 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: niplav’s comment on: Ge­netic En­hance­ment to Turn An­i­mal Suffer­ing to An­i­mal Bliss

  Thank you!

Ge­netic En­hance­ment to Turn An­i­mal Suffer­ing to An­i­mal Bliss

• Ives Parr 29 Mar 2024 14:26 UTC

  9 points

  4 ∶ 2

  in reply to: Yarrow Bouchard’s comment on: How to bet­ter ad­vo­cate for ge­netic en­hance­ment to the EA com­mu­nity?

  I am advocating for the voluntary use of reprogentic technology to improve the welfare of humanity (all ethnicities and races).

  These are not Nazi arguments and I am not citing Nazi sources. I think you are actually using that term hyperbolically/​incorrectly.

  “I hope moderators will ban this user and delete his posts. There is nothing redeeming or defensible about this.”

  That is quite extreme. I don’t think I am violating forum rules. I just have different beliefs about what we can do to help humanity. I don’t think I should be censored for that reason.

• Ives Parr 29 Mar 2024 14:13 UTC

  0 points

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  in reply to: Wei Dai’s comment on: How to bet­ter ad­vo­cate for ge­netic en­hance­ment to the EA com­mu­nity?

  Thank you. I think these are good suggestions.

How to bet­ter ad­vo­cate for ge­netic en­hance­ment to the EA com­mu­nity?

• Ives Parr 15 Mar 2024 18:35 UTC

  6 points

  4 ∶ 3

  on: Why I care so much about Diver­sity, Equity and In­clu­sion in EA

  You call “whiteness in EA” an “issue.” You say that being asked to get to the EA part of your point “by men and white folks is widespread in EA. And it makes [your] blood boil.” You consider my post on the EA forum to be a bad experience, saying you are disappointed in “posts like this by white people on eugenics in poor, non-white countries.”

  The entire purpose of my post was to provide a plan to uplift the poor of the world, something every EA advocates for. I did so in a respectful manner, and I did not attack any race or say anything hateful whatsoever. Did you read it? I tried to argue my case in an extremely non-inflammatory manner citing a huge number of studies. Now it’s at −26 karma. You criticize me explicitly for my race. You make it a salient aspect of my argument when it is not relevant whatsoever and I’m being penalized for it. You also just assumed I’m white. Based on what? My picture? My name? Would you find me more reasonable or moral if I was a different race? If not, then why does it matter. If so, then how is this not racist/​biased?

  You on the other hand are especially disgusted bothered by things that white people do by your own admission. You are especially concerned when white folks do something or post something. Also, you consider whiteness a problem.

  This is a disappointing trend in EA that will drive out interesting thinking. Do you want more data analysis or anecdotes and appeals to emotion? Do we want to be trying to find the most effective ways to maximize human welfare (for all races) or do we want to be engaging in identity politics where non-white opinions and welfare are less important?

• Ives Parr 8 Jan 2024 6:08 UTC

  0 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: wes R’s comment on: Sorry, I’m Busy: The Math Be­hind Who Should Do What.

  You’re welcome