Now that’s it been 10 years: What’s your best guess for what this would’ve needed for impact certs to take off?
Lakin
Karma: 298
Someone DM’d me asking for more information. See https://www.mostly-fat.com/eat-meat-not-too-little-mostly-fat/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOQCKEoflPc
Few people I talk to in these communities know this, but animals several-thousand-pound in size used to roam the Earth. And not just wooly mammoths either: 8,000-lb sloths (Megatherium), armadillos “roughly the same size and weight as a Volkswagen Beetle” (Glyptodon), 7,000-lb marsupials (Diprotodon), and many more.
Suspiciously, the megafauna on each continent mostly went extinct every time humans got on that continent.[1][2] Personally, I suspect that humans largely evolved to hunt megafauna.
Note that megafauna meat is quite different than meat of smaller animals. It had a much larger amount (and percentage!) of fat.[3]
These days I eat 1-1.5lbs of lean beef per day, and I supplement 8-16oz of fat in the form of butter. I’ve been eating basically just this (also some seafood, rarely a potato, rarely some other things) for the last 3.5 years.
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https://ourworldindata.org/quaternary-megafauna-extinction Every time humans got on a new continent, all of the megafauna died…
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I suspect this may also be true for some large fraction of the population.
I do this for health reasons. I feel significantly better and have much more energy when I do this.
I eat (almost) only meat and butter, and by my calculations this comes out to ~1 cow/year.
oh cool! (Also I’m glad you proactively acknowledge the eg saturated fat)
Also, are there risks to over-reduction in salt intake?
Hmmmm. I’m suspicious is because it doesn’t make any sense for anyone to decide what’s best for me. (Sure, educate me instead, whatever.) (I’m particularly suspicious of this because of the discourse I’ve seen around proposed ‘meat taxes’, typically pedaled by people who think the climate and nutritional (and ethical) effects are far worse than I think they are. So I’m worried about the same thing here.)
Couple things (I’ve only skimmed the post):
How certain are you that increased sodium consumption causes hypertension? (I’m skeptical of this personally)
(Do prediction markets exist on this? Could you make one?)
How certain are you that decreasing increased sodium consumption causes not less hypertension, but also less mortality/more DALYs overall? Some interventions are backwards like this. (E.g. Limiting sun exposure fairly certainly decreases skin cancer, but it also might fairly significantly increase mortality, on net)
Why specifically taxation, instead of other ways to influence individual behavior? (Taxation seems rather coercive IMO, an overstepping of bounds of individuals by their government)
(I have more questions like this but I’ll leave just these three for now.)
Are you thinking that the community should consider collectively insuring against the risk of a megadonor going underwater in the future?
Yeah something like that. Just trying to think of a way to make a market out of due-diligence.
Is there an insurance product that covers clawbacks?
Hm, how could this interact with hypothetical clawbacks?
E.g.
your org has $0
your org receives $100 from FTXF, now your org has $100
your org spends $50 of that money, and then decides to stop
your org receive $10 from Nonlinear, now your org has $60
the clawback effort comes to your org and says “hey we need $100”. org say “I don’t have $100, I only have $50″
Does the clawback effort then say “No actually you have $60, we’re taking all $60” because of money fungibility?
The title of this made me think “ways to buy time [with money in your personal life]” rather than “ways to buy time [in AI safety]”
wow
Animals do this intuitively:
Pigeons were presented with two buttons in a Skinner box, each of which led to varying rates of food reward. The pigeons tended to peck the button that yielded the greater food reward more often than the other button, and the ratio of their rates to the two buttons matched the ratio of their rates of reward on the two buttons.
I’m glad you wrote this! I was worried about your previous post, and was thinking about writing something on this dimension myself.
It’s funny: this could’ve been mostly avoided by a consideration of Chesterton’s Fence and the EMH? (“If AGENCY was so good, why wouldn’t everyone do it?”)
Anyways, I’m now worried about e.g. high school summer camp programs that prioritize the development of unbalanced agency.
Thank you for writing about what pushed me away from the EA community. The force to make all else instrumental. Best of luck
I’ve known many EAs. Many have been vegan and many have not (I’m not). I’ve never seen anyone “treat [someone] as non-serious (or even evil)” based on their diet.
I’ve had this happen fwiw.
I think #3 is the most important question and the most likely way that shelters fail
EA forum:
Lesswrong: