Larks

Karma: 16,750

Larks 28 Feb 2026 5:24 UTC
−4 points
0 ∶ 1
on: How To Safeguard Democracy
A lot of people seem to conflate ‘democracy’ with ‘status quo institutions and center-left parties’, but in many cases these are deeply illiberal and undemocratic. I think you would benefit from considering institutional / center-left threats to democracy, which quite glossed over in this essay.
When I think about threats to democracy, I think of things like:
None of these violations of individual rights or the ability of the people to affect policy through political change were enacted by populist or extremist parties—they were enacted by generally respected and left-wing incumbents.

Larks 24 Feb 2026 3:33 UTC
2 points
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on: Donation policy as tax policy
Thanks for writing this up, nice post. A few quick thoughts:
The motivation of praise seems quite weak. I think a lot of people would prefer no praise and no oversight over subjecting to any degree of audit. Though I guess if you are just checking with the charities that doesn’t require subjecting the donor to anything directly.
It’s strange to me that governments don’t do more to praise high tax payers. In general their relationship with the highest tax payers seems very adversarial… yes audits make sense, but why not also be publicly grateful, give honours, invite to special events and so on? If donating to a university will have them name a building after you, maybe the government should name some bridges after its top funders.

Larks 24 Feb 2026 3:16 UTC
10 points
5 ∶ 0
on: How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?
At least until people accept that “oh the AI wrote that bit, I don’t exactly mean that” is unacceptable. If you post it, you should stand behind every word.

Larks 17 Feb 2026 15:31 UTC
1 point
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Ebenezer Dukakis’s comment on: 80,000 Hours says we need more people — so why do top candidates still struggle to land roles?
But after the first 50 customers, I run out of jackfruit, and the rest of the customers don’t get to try the tacos. How do you think those customers would feel about my restaurant?
Quite possibly they infer this must be the most exciting new product, feel FOMO, and arrive even earlier the next day? Restaurant behaviour is weird—see for example how long lines are seen as a sign of success rather than mispricing.

Larks 31 Jan 2026 21:13 UTC
10 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: Ben Stevenson’s comment on: Unfalsifiable stories of doom
The context of this quote, which you have removed, is discussion of the reasonableness of wages for specific people with specific skills. Since neither Nate nor Eliezer’s counterfactual is earning the median global wage, your statistic seems irrelevant.

Larks 27 Jan 2026 1:35 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Why I reject the longtermist argument against accelerating AI
Thanks for sharing this. Do you have a sense for how cruxy your perspective is that long run replacement of humanity by AI is not a bad thing for you conclusion?

Larks 21 Jan 2026 0:07 UTC
2 points
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on: Why Isn’t EA at the Table When $121 Billion Gets Allocated to Biodiversity Every Year?
Thanks for writing this up! Despite the title I found it very informative and interesting.

Larks 16 Jan 2026 16:44 UTC
2 points
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on: From a fundraiser’s perspective—what do Effective Altruists want to see from ‘other’ charities?
It might be helpful if you could share what types of data you are able to collect, and your best-effort at producing a BOTEC for your cost-effectiveness so far.

Larks 15 Jan 2026 5:54 UTC
36 points
15 ∶ 2
on: EA is underfunding animal advocacy according to our own preferences
If the phenomena you are highlighting is that Animal Welfare gets a smaller share of funding than people would prefer, it seems very strange to ‘blame’ AI messaging, since AI risk also gets a smaller share of funding that the surveys suggest would be preferred. Based on your methodology, the phenomena to explain is why does global welfare get so much more.

Larks 28 Dec 2025 21:49 UTC
9 points
9 ∶ 5
in reply to: ClimateDoc’s comment on: Pagw’s Shortform
No-one in this thread is the target audience for the campaign. And you are clearly attacking another group’s effort right here!

Larks 28 Dec 2025 21:46 UTC
9 points
5 ∶ 1
in reply to: InTheSky’s comment on: Pagw’s Shortform
Because the author’s objective is to promote animal welfare. They are jettisoning that which is unnecessary, but you need the payload.

Larks 28 Dec 2025 21:00 UTC
3 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: ClimateDoc’s comment on: Pagw’s Shortform
There doesn’t seem to be anything gained by being negative about veganism though, and not doing that would seem robustly better.
Being seen as honest about the problems with veganism raises their credibility with their other recommendations. “Oh yes, we’re not like those annoying people you’ve already rejected, we have a different view”.

Larks 28 Dec 2025 20:58 UTC
11 points
7 ∶ 7
in reply to: ClimateDoc’s comment on: Pagw’s Shortform
This feels like a very negative take on a lighthearted campaign that is trying to get across an important point. It’s important to do outreach to people who disagree with you—even people who think vegans are annoying.

Larks 23 Dec 2025 15:45 UTC
9 points
1 ∶ 5
on: Offering higher salaries than social-sector peers
If donors thought the other thing was more valuable than GiveWell, they should donate there instead, and that other group could then pay higher salaries and attract the talent.

Larks 23 Dec 2025 1:57 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Matrice Jacobine🔸🏳️‍⚧️’s comment on: Are health and development of negative utility?
Thanks for finding! If it was new to Toby and Ryan in that thread this was probably the earliest EAs had come across it.

Larks 22 Dec 2025 16:50 UTC
6 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Henry Howard🔸’s comment on: Are health and development of negative utility?
This was named the Meat-Eater Problem in this article in the Journal Of Controversial Ideas by @MichaelPlant.
The name is much older than this, though it has generally been refered to as ‘The Poor Meat-Eater Problem’ which I think is a better name; I remember discussing it in 2012 and I don’t think it was new then. On the forum with a quick search I found this from over 9 years ago.

Larks 21 Dec 2025 3:11 UTC
10 points
2 ∶ 0
on: Wartime ethics is weird
David D Friedman wrote a very interesting blog post on this topic which significantly influenced my thinking, arguing that if you reject the validity of human shields, then you should also accept the possible acceptability (in sufficiently dire circumstances) of conscription:
The bad guy grabs a convenient bystander, pulls out a gun, points it at you, and starts shooting with the bystander held in front of him. If you shoot back you might kill the innocent shield. Are you entitled to do it?
...
If your response to the human shield problem is that killing an innocent shield violates the victim’s rights so you should never do it, you are at the mercy of any opponent willing to follow the Hamas strategy or any serious nuclear power.
...
The alternative is that you have a right to defend yourself. If the only way of defending yourself violates the rights of other people, you are still entitled to do it; your violation of their rights is the fault of the attacker you are defending against. That seems the obvious position, short of pacifism, for a libertarian to take.
But …
Arguably, defending against aggressive neighbors requires taxes. Collecting taxes violates the rights of the taxpayers but if you are entitled to kill innocent Palestinians or Russians when doing so is necessary to defend your rights, surely you are also entitled to violate the rights of Americans to some of their money.
There are good arguments against a military draft under most circumstances but imagine a war so dangerous that no wage would be high enough to recruit enough volunteers to keep the enemy from conquering you. You wouldn’t want to violate the rights of people by drafting them, but if it is the only way of defending your rights …
Similarly, you argue that (according to normal ethics) killing people is forbidden normally, but encouraged during war. But neither seems true to me: killing is permitted to normal people if necessary in self defense or the defense of others, and killing in war is only permitted if the war is just—ie a war of national defense or the defense of others.

Larks 18 Dec 2025 15:44 UTC
7 points
4 ∶ 0
on: Why haven’t we seen a promising longtermist intervention yet?
Something can be a promising X intervention even if its something that had been thought of before in connection with another purpose.
For example, GLP-1 blockers are promising obesity interventions. When we discovered they were very effective at weight loss, this was an important intellectual contribution to the world. It gave fat people a new reason to take the drugs. This is true even though GPL-1s were already an approved medical intervention for a different purpose (diabetes).
Even beyond this, I think Nick’s Astronomical Waste argument is Longtermist. So in that sense it is a novel Longtermist idea, even if it predates the term ‘Longtermism’.

Larks 16 Dec 2025 2:54 UTC
7 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Did LessWrong call covid-19 early? No
I distinctly remember telling my parents to wear a mask in the airport, based on rationalist sources, and having to argue that actually anonymous people on the internet were more reliable sources than the government, who did not recommend this.

Larks 13 Dec 2025 19:22 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
on: U.S. Democracy Threat Index: $10,000 in Forecasting Prizes
Bright Line Watch, a nonpartisan watchdog group
Is this actually meaningfully the case? As far as I can see, this is basically a group of left-wing academics (some of whom literally worked for the Democrats!) who assembled a list of things they think the current administration might do and called them Threats to Democracy. They omitted any questions which might paint the current administration in a more favourable light, or the prior democrat administration in a negative light.
The scoring also seems pretty biased. For example, for the question about whether the DoJ would override normal procedures to protect the President’s family, the Biden Administration is given a (positive) scoring of ‘no’, even though the DoJ tried to give the President’s son a sweetheart plea deal that would protect him from charges of being a drug user in possession of a firearm (and potential lengthy prison sentence), and whistleblowers say the prosecution deliberately slow-walked the process and leaked information to the defense.
Even the data presentation seems biased. For example, on this question, the Biden administration is scored as ‘yes’ (i.e. 100%) for 2023-2024. Yet for some reason the bar for 100% is shorter than Trump’s bar for 40%?