justsaying

Karma: 397

justsaying Aug 24, 2024, 7:04 PM
7 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: Jason’s comment on: How do you deal with the “meat eater” problem
There are many reasons for choosing not to have kids that are in no way similar to concerns in the poor meat eater problem.

However, I disagree that choosing not to have children specifically because you think humans are a net moral bad is so vastly different from choosing not to actively expend resources to save an existing human in terms of the logic underlying the motivation.

The two actions have different consequences but the two beliefs imply roughly the same sorts of things that JWS finds uncomfortable when followed to their logical conclusion.

My only point was that these beliefs both stem from a similar kind of misanthropy that is not unique to ea/utilitarianism/the meat eater problem/ poor people.

Some people think humans are on net bad and want to see fewer of them, future or existing. People who think that having a child is any way wrong because humans are on average a net moral bad are in my opinion pretty ideologically aligned with people who think it’s wrong to donate to human-focused charities for the same reason.

justsaying Aug 24, 2024, 2:31 PM
15 points
8 ∶ 1
in reply to: JWS 🔸’s comment on: How do you deal with the “meat eater” problem
A lot of people in animal advocacy circles (inside and outside ea) choose not to have children and report that this is because humans tend to be meat eaters. There are far larger numbers of environmentally minded (mostly non-ea) people who claim to choose not to have children because their children will contribute to global warming or general environmental harms. Most such environmentally minded people are not particularly animal-welfare focused. Further, most such people are not committed utilitarians.

I am not defending this view, nor even claiming that these reasons are true drivers of personal decisions. However the frequency with which I hear similar suggestions about how having children is a moral wrong for the planet suggests to me that this sort of idea is not directed toward poorer people in particular, nor is it the result of considering animals as moral patients nor is it idiosyncratic to EA not does it stem from any strict interpretation of utilitarianism.

For better or worse, a certain type of misanthropy runs deep in modern culture.

justsaying Aug 24, 2024, 1:45 PM
4 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: David Mathers🔸’s comment on: How do you deal with the “meat eater” problem
Why are private conclusions about moral dilemmas anyone else’s business? Not saying it’s good to be private about that (necessarily) or that there aren’t contexts where it would be relevant to disclose but I really don’t understand why it would be sleezy or manipulative.

justsaying Aug 7, 2024, 2:22 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Alix Pham’s comment on: On Owning Our EA Affiliation
I think your first point is totally fair and agree that those are separate things.

As to your second point, I feel similar hesitation strongly associating with most movements for the same reason. In fact the example you give of feminism stands out to me as perfect because I probably agree with most “feminists” about most issues around gender and gender-associated rights but the term feels loaded and opaque. I don’t know what people mean when they use it, and there are people who use it to mean pretty uncontroversial things as well as people who mean something quite distinct. With respect to feminism, I generally don’t use the word to describe myself but am happy to have a longer conversation about my beliefs on the topic, which is pretty similar to how I approach EA in conversation.

justsaying Aug 6, 2024, 3:23 PM
17 points
4 ∶ 2
on: On Owning Our EA Affiliation
I have no issue being transparent about the various ways I am involved with EA organizations, institutions, and ideas but I find a lot of people want to identify me as “an EA”, literally in introductory emails and stuff like that. I am very put off by this for two reasons:

One, the label applied to me as a person strikes me as incredibly arrogant; it seems to imply I consider myself more effective and more altruistic than people outside this community, which I absolutely do not. I’m doing my best just like every one else.

Two, after many years of engagement including being a cause-area organizer for my local chapter, going to EA global, reading every major book about EA and associated ideas, and spending countless hours on the 80k website and podcast, I still don’t think I could fairly summarize some of the key principles in EA. I don’t think it is particularly well-defined and those sources that aim to define it are often quite vague and inconsistent with one another. When I object that I do not commit to being fully non-particularist or accepting all the tenets of utilitarianism or some similar gripe, I hear from one corner that I misunderstand EA and EA doesn’t demand that and from another corner that objecting to those things does in fact mean I am not aligned with EA. Thus, I don’t feel comfortable identifying with the movement.

On the other hand, I am happy to acknowledge the quote positive influence various EA orgs have had on my work, my thinking, and even my values. I have a lot of appreciation for the EA movement (which I will readily tell my network) but I am not “an effective altruist.”

justsaying Aug 6, 2024, 12:31 PM
7 points
4 ∶ 0
on: Anthropocentric Altruism is Ineffective—The EA Movement Must Embrace Environmentalism and Become Ecocentric
I’m a bit confused as to whether you are trying to make an empirical point (i.e. that even from a standard utilitarian-ish perspective, protecting ecosystems is a cost-effective but often ignored intervention for the sake of hunan and animal welfare) or a philosophical point (i.e. that we should value ecosystems for their own sake rather than for the sake of human and animal welfare). These are very different claims but I find it hard which you are trying to get at here. Could you please clarify?

justsaying Jul 22, 2024, 5:57 PM
16 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Peter Singer AMA (July 30th)
How do you think about the trade-offs (or “moral weights”) between species, including humans? If you believe that what matters is primarily hedonistic pleasure/pain and you believe anything on the order of magnitude of the rethink priorities weights (e.g. humans have merely twice the capacity of suffering as pigs and three times that of chickens), then it seems issues like the “poor meat eater problem” or even just opportunity costs make human poverty alleviation efforts actively bad. It also leaves open the possibility that, say, shrimp or insects should actually be the top priority and our concern for their welfare should overwhelm all concerns for human welfare. If you believe that animals matter, but humans matter much more (say, orders of magnitude more than the rethink weights), then it seems like that might undermine some of your positions on factory farming. Do you have any rough relative moral weights in mind? If not, do you think developing such weights is a top priority?

justsaying Jun 28, 2024, 1:10 AM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Marcus Abramovitch 🔸’s comment on: Maybe let the non-EA world train you
Thanks!

justsaying Jun 27, 2024, 4:14 PM
2 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Marcus Abramovitch 🔸’s comment on: Maybe let the non-EA world train you
I’m curious where in government your experience comes from. One issue in these conversations is that I think some people who feel they have a high impact job/opportunity in government want to be a bit quiet about it because doing otherwise could attract unnecessary hurdles from stakeholders/politicians who have interests against their goals. In contrast, those who have direct experience with low impact jobs at least don’t have that specific disincentive to talk about it. With that said I agree that government is extremely high variance.

justsaying Jun 23, 2024, 1:27 PM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Magnus Vinding’s comment on: Why UFOs matter
This is a super helpful response, thanks!

justsaying Jun 22, 2024, 6:50 PM
8 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Why UFOs matter
I’m curious about your take on Mick West’s commentary re: UFOs. He seems to think they are all explainable by pretty mundane things including confused perspective (e.g. things being farther away than pilots estimate), weather balloons, etc. I have not taken a deep dive into the particular cases and his explanations don’t seem to address some of the more puzzling cases to me but I would be interested to hear your thoughts.

justsaying Jun 22, 2024, 6:44 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: turchin’s comment on: Why UFOs matter
I find your 1st point in contradiction to your later points. Your first point seems to say that taking them seriously implies a certain level of irrationality but your later points imply that you yourself take them seriously, including some more out -there explanations.

justsaying Jun 22, 2024, 6:41 PM
10 points
3 ∶ 0
in reply to: dirk’s comment on: Why UFOs matter
I think there is something to be said about the level of earned credibility of some of the people claiming UFOs versus other sorts of miracles. I am generally more likely to trust a navy officer who is not obviously into the mythology of UFOs and reports what they saw without tacking on an interpretation than a random person who has not gone through any of the kinds of vetting for trustworthiness that a career as a military officer entails and is clearly super into the mythology of their particular miracle.

justsaying May 8, 2024, 8:40 PM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: AMA: Lewis Bollard, Program Director of Farm Animal Welfare at OpenPhil
Thanks for doing this AMA, Lewis! To steal from the suggested questions, what do you think is behind the decline in plant-based meat sales? And what do you think are some good strategies to build career capital in the animal welfare space? Relatedly, what areas in animal welfare change are more skill/talent constrained?

justsaying May 8, 2024, 8:35 PM
5 points
0 ∶ 0
on: AMA: Lewis Bollard, Program Director of Farm Animal Welfare at OpenPhil
What do you think about the possibility of regulatory rather than legislative change? It seems like there is a ton of room within existing legislation (humane slaughter act, 28 hour law, the animal welfare act, and horse protection act) to improve enforcement and apply the existing legislation to more species. For example, AWA recently expanded to include non-farm birds—rodents (e.g. used in research) could be next. The humane slaughter act has terrible enforcement and my (possibly incorrect) reading of the law itself is that it leaves room to expand to more species if FSIS decide sto. It also seems like there is a lot of room to improve, for example, the process of how diseased animals are killed, which would fall under APHIS. Why aren’t regulatory actions discussed as much as corporate or legislative actions? What are your thoughts on how they can be influenced?

justsaying Sep 25, 2023, 3:25 PM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Geoffrey Miller’s comment on: An Incomplete List of Things I Think EAs Probably Shouldn’t Do
I too get extremely annoyed by some anti-power-differential rhetoric that I see on the forum a lot and I think that any attempt to police that through norms or other means is an unacceptable violation of privacy. I agree this post has some elements of that or at least is not clear about the motivations.

However, I think many of the specific things proposed here are on the basis of conflicts of interest rather than power differentials. I see no issue dating co-workers including ones more/less senior than you but I think there is a real problem dating someone in your chain of command because then there are conflicts of interest at play. For this reason I have no issue if one partner finds another with their own money but it seems unethical to dating grantees if you are awarding grants on behalf of another person/organization without disclosing the relationship.

Would you agree that such conflict of interest is a legitimate concern rather than an element of safety culture?

justsaying Sep 25, 2023, 3:11 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: calebp’s comment on: An Incomplete List of Things I Think EAs Probably Shouldn’t Do
Yea I am also confused about this. I know a bunch of ea-affiliated people in group houses and I’ve never heard any of them imply that the house is somehow endorsed/sponsored by cea or anything if the sort. If they ever do call it “an ea house” everyone is clear that they just mean it’s a house with people who are interested in ea and I don’t think there has been any misunderstanding around that. So what’s the issue?

justsaying Sep 21, 2023, 2:03 PM
3 points
2 ∶ 0
on: A List of Things EAs should and shouldn’t do, attempt 2.1
This not dating funders/grantees is a little strange to me as phrased, although I certainly strongly agree in the cases most people are imagining.

As phrased it sounds like there is a problem (for example) of paying a girlfriend/boyfriend with your own funds to do an extended project. Which is sort of weird and unusual but what exactly is the problem with that? I think what this is getting at is you shouldn’t date a grantee that you are deciding to pay with someone else’s money or on behalf of a larger organization. Correct?

justsaying Jun 20, 2023, 6:30 PM
5 points
2 ∶ 0
on: Should we continue dismissing most ideas about EA (without a fair trial)?
People have been arguing about religion for hundreds if not thousands of years. Maybe there has been progress and maybe there hasn’t but I’m not sure why you would think EA is particularly well positioned to make any progress on either truth-finding or on convincing anyone of the truth. The sort of “fair trial” you propose sounds extremely alienating to religious people. Many religious people do not believe, for example, that religion should be subjected to rational debate and scientific inquiry. To them, it would be a little bit like a parent making a pro and con list about whether their particular baby is worthy of love based on the baby’s particular characteristics. It wouldn’t come across as giving the baby a “fair chance”, it would just come across as gross. Most adults have given the matter some significant thought and come to a conclusion that works for them. I’m not religious myself but I’m glad that EA is working on building common ground with people across different religions (ea for Christians/Jew/Muslims/etc). This seems like it would burn those bridges to no good end.

justsaying Mar 31, 2023, 9:09 PM
3 points
1 ∶ 1
in reply to: RobBensinger’s comment on: Pausing AI Developments Isn’t Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down by Eliezer Yudkowsky
What percentage chance would you estimate of a large scale nuclear war conditional on the U.S. bombing a Chinese data center? What percentage of the risk from agi do you think this strategy reduces?