I wrote a quick letter I’m happy with.
(Feel free to DM me for a link tho ofc don’t copy anything)
Linch
Karma: 26,178
More important than the point of Washington personally owning slaves, the US was two generations behind the UK in banning slavery. A counterfactual where the US didn’t leave Britain (or seceded peacefully later on in a manner similar to Canada, Australia, etc) likely means emancipation of slaves much earlier. So at least contemporaneously the “machinery of freedom” argument is implausible; you’d basically need the World Wars/maybe the Cold War before the argument becomes plausible.
(I will do this if Ben’s comment has 6+ agreevotes)
This is interesting and definitely updates me a bit, but like others I’m still not convinced.
One thing I think Huw alludes to, but nobody else have spelled out, is considering net effects on other economic sectors than the ones directly studied. (In economics language, “consider general equilibrium more broadl”y). You say:If the supply of doctors and nurses is fixed, this is a valid concern. In the real world, the supply of doctors isn’t fixed. When people have the option to earn qualifications in order to go abroad and earn more, they are much more likely to pursue those qualifications. When doctors can go abroad (and earn more), more people want to become doctors. Some of these additional doctors will end up leaving, but some will end up deciding not to.2
This is exactly what happened in the Philippines when US visa rules changed to make it easier to move there as a nurse. Many more Filipinos decided to train as nurses; new nursing colleges opened to accommodate the demand. Many of the newly trained nurses did end up moving, but not (even close to) the majority. Even after some left for the US, the Philippines ended up with considerably more nurses than they’d had before.
The same happened in the IT sector in India. Many people in India went to school and learned IT because they hoped to migrate to the US. But not all ended up getting visas to the US—and those that stayed behind helped start the Indian software boom. India did not end up worse off because people tried to migrate; instead, they ended up with more skilled people than ever before.
Imagine a simple model/story where there’s unidimensional STEM competency, call it s. In such a world, perhaps what happens is that some countries with a good fit for a sector (for sake of argument, IT in India, nurses in the Philipines) would have many people in the 99th percentile in s enter that sector without emigration. If emigration via that sector then becomes popular, perhaps 95th-99th percentile people will all enter that sector. Then when the 99th percentile leaves, the remaining people in the 95th-98th percentile people will still buttress the sector (average quality goes down but the effects on that sector are muted because the overall quantity of qualified people goes up).
However, this masks the effect where other sectors are indirectly affected by brain drain to the exporting sector. (In such a world, perhaps the counterfactual without exports would be that India would have great nurses, or the Philipines would have a tech boom).
So you can’t necessarily infer from a specific sector not suffering that the overall counterfactual effects of emigration are net positive.
Another aspect here is that scientists in the 1940s are at a different life stage/might just be more generally “mature” than people of a similar age/nationality/social class today. (eg most Americans back then in their late twenties probably were married and had multiple children, life expectancy at birth in the 1910s is about 50 so 30 is middle-aged, society overall was not organized as a gerontocracy, etc).
I like the New Yorker for longform writings about topics in the current “zeitgeist”, but they aren’t a comprehensive news source, and don’t aim to be. (I like their a) hit rate for covering topics that I subjectively consider important, b) quality of writing, and c) generally high standards for factual accuracy)
The Economist has an article about China’s top politicians on catastrophic risks from AI, titled “Is Xi Jinping an AI Doomer?”
Western accelerationists often argue that competition with Chinese developers, who are uninhibited by strong safeguards, is so fierce that the West cannot afford to slow down. The implication is that the debate in China is one-sided, with accelerationists having the most say over the regulatory environment. In fact, China has its own AI doomers—and they are increasingly influential.
[...]
China’s accelerationists want to keep things this way. Zhu Songchun, a party adviser and director of a state-backed programme to develop AGI, has argued that AI development is as important as the “Two Bombs, One Satellite” project, a Mao-era push to produce long-range nuclear weapons. Earlier this year Yin Hejun, the minister of science and technology, used an old party slogan to press for faster progress, writing that development, including in the field of AI, was China’s greatest source of security. Some economic policymakers warn that an over-zealous pursuit of safety will harm China’s competitiveness.
But the accelerationists are getting pushback from a clique of elite scientists with the Communist Party’s ear. Most prominent among them is Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, the only Chinese person to have won the Turing award for advances in computer science. In July Mr Yao said AI poses a greater existential risk to humans than nuclear or biological weapons. Zhang Ya-Qin, the former president of Baidu, a Chinese tech giant, and Xue Lan, the chair of the state’s expert committee on AI governance, also reckon that AI may threaten the human race. Yi Zeng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences believes that AGI models will eventually see humans as humans see ants.
The influence of such arguments is increasingly on display. In March an international panel of experts meeting in Beijing called on researchers to kill models that appear to seek power or show signs of self-replication or deceit. [...]
The debate over how to approach the technology has led to a turf war between China’s regulators. [...]The impasse was made plain on July 11th, when the official responsible for writing the AI law cautioned against prioritising either safety or expediency.
The decision will ultimately come down to what Mr Xi thinks. In June he sent a letter to Mr Yao, praising his work on AI. In July, at a meeting of the party’s central committee called the “third plenum”, Mr Xi sent his clearest signal yet that he takes the doomers’ concerns seriously. The official report from the plenum listed AI risks alongside other big concerns, such as biohazards and natural disasters. For the first time it called for monitoring AI safety, a reference to the technology’s potential to endanger humans. The report may lead to new restrictions on AI-research activities.
More clues to Mr Xi’s thinking come from the study guide prepared for party cadres, which he is said to have personally edited. China should “abandon uninhibited growth that comes at the cost of sacrificing safety”, says the guide. Since AI will determine “the fate of all mankind”, it must always be controllable, it goes on. The document calls for regulation to be pre-emptive rather than reactive[...]
Overall this makes me more optimistic that international treaties with teeth on GCRs from AI is possible, potentially before we have warning shots from large-scale harms.
I’m thinking less of total number of people and more like probability of having specific collaborators work in your exact area or are otherwise useful to have around.
You might believe that there are network effects, or that the “best” people are only willing to come along if there’s a sufficiently large intellectual scene. (Not saying either is likely, just illustrating that the implied underlying model is not a tautology).
To quickly clarify what I mean by “confused,”
to the degree there are any health trade-offs, the veganism focus tends to make the EA coalition intellectually weaker and more politically polarized.
I mean that I expect veganism’s health tradeoffs and political polarization to almost be entirely independent of each other. It could be the case that veganism has no health tradeoffs but nonetheless EA should not focus on it because there is extreme political political polarization. It could also be the case that veganism has many health costs but its support is divided equally among partisan lines.
I also would be surprised if there’s a strong correlational case. In general the world isn’t that neat.
So I basically think your claim is pretty close to formally invalid. I’m a bit surprised people haven’t noticed this even after I pointed it out initially.
Thanks, interesting letter/link!
(Quickly noting for casual readers that I didn’t say all the things or hold all the views that this comment ascribed to me, though no particular detail was especially egregious. Just wanted to provide a heads-up for any onlookers to reread my own comments to understand any specific claims I make; people who know me well can also DM for clarifications).
If you want people to have more children, it’s unclear why you’d support a candidate whose primary policy goal is to prevent immigrants from providing affordable services to Americans.
I mean TFR (total fertility rate) is falling everywhere, but it’s at least plausible that preventing people from higher-TFR countries immigrating to lower-TFR countries will increase net number of children. (Just narrowly making a claim about the logical implication; not saying that I endorse this policy).
Hi. Thanks for your comment. I thought about it some. I’m inclined to disagree with the comment more after thinking about it, compared to when I initially read it. I’ll try to give some non-exhaustive reasons below.
Re 1: I did bring it up first, sorry. But I don’t think whether Iraq War is actually more or less important than PEPFAR is a central crux for me; Trump isn’t running against Bush. So probably not worth getting into much detail. Two quick points I will quickly contest that he opposed the Iraq War before it happened (as opposed to claiming so much later). re: “this reflects someone that was unusually thoughtful/changed their mind early relative to public convo (and their political party) at the time.” I don’t know if this was what you had in mind, but I want to note that Trump was a Democrat at the time.
Re 2: I think we broadly agree then that Trump is worse for animal welfare, and that this isn’t the most important question for this election. I do think this subclaim is confused “Right now, to the degree there are any health trade-offs, the veganism focus tends to make the EA coalition intellectually weaker and more politically polarized,” as in it ties together two mostly unrelated things.
Re 3: This comment feels wrong to me but I feel like I’m not qualified/knowledgeable enough to assess this.
Re 4: “On competence: I think Trump has more of a world model than Biden or Harris, does more reasoning for himself, and yet also delegates more decision making.” But independent thinking and world models are only good if it systematically leads you to have more correct beliefs! Note that there is a pretty obvious tension with your later comment “My main observation is that he and his people really do think the election was stolen from them.” I think you need to believe one of:
A. Trump’s independent thinking leads him to believe false(r) things, and this is good.B. Trump’s independent thinking leads him to believe true(r) things, and he was correct in believing that the election was stolen from him.
C. Trump’s independent thinking leads him to believe true(r) things, the heuristic misfired this one time, but it pays off in other important areas. (which ones?)
Note that being wrong about the election has massive downstream consequences!
”Trump is also more willing to fire people whether for competence or personal loyalty, but the net result is more competence in decision making relative to the incentives provided by not firing people for anything other than scandals” Do you have empirical evidence here? It’s easy to form a toy model where firing people for insufficient loyalty is worse for competency than not firing people (many people would consider this to be a major issue for Biden’s inner circle).“On character, I think Trump is just braver, more independent, and has a more valuable form of honesty despite being a chronic exaggerator” He’s auditioning to be one of the most powerful people in the world! I really don’t think a lack of “bravery” is anywhere near the most likely failure mode!
More importantly, I think a lot of what you see as heroically not falling prey to groupthink I see as “soon to be 82-year-old in an extremely powerful position doesn’t listen to others and trusts his own gut over other voices or objective reality.” If you have more examples of him coming to object-level true beliefs over expert-led consensus (even including all the problems that experts have) I’m willing to be swayed here; but the comment as it stands feels like applying rationalist-y local catechisms to a very different context.
“California isn’t doing well” Huh? Not sure how much responsibility Harris has for California’s status but also it’s one of the richest places in the country and people’s most common complaint is the lack of housing.
“On being able to deal with people honestly: When talking with people from other countries who focus on foreign policy, most experts I engaged with from ally countries thought Trump and his admin were easier to deal with than Biden.” I have no way to verify this. I agree that this may be good evidence for you. (I feel similarly about the rest of this section)Re 5:
(Some of your other claims in this section also seem implausible to me. Not addressing everything).
“It doesn’t matter if QAnon dude on the internet says unhinged stuff when Republican appointees and their staff aren’t actually as crazy or coerced into non-sensical beliefs.” Eh, more than half of Republican Congresspeople say they don’t believe climate change is caused by humans. This isn’t even getting into the culture war stuff, where Republicans place more prominence on culture war issues than Democrats do, and are kinda crazy about it. I don’t think most EAs, or most Americans, would view Republican elected officials as more “normal” in their beliefs and values than Democrat elected officials.
In general I find it very confusing when people take wokeness that seriously as an issue. I live in what has got to be literally one of the wokest places on the planet (Berkeley) and I can’t say wokeness is more than a minor inconvenience in my day-to-day life. Both NIMBYism and car culture have more clear and negative ramifications in my day-to-day life, for context.
(I think you also haven’t explained why you think people will be more woke if Harris wins than if Trump does; many of my ~centrist friends would consider 2020 to be peak woke)
”(minor note) Where in Trump’s Jan 6th speech does he praise dictators?” I’m pretty sure I’ve never said this. Maybe you just misread my comment?“I’m not surprised JD emotionally reacted in the way he did to the Trump assassination attempt.” ???? What. Basic emotional regulation for your political speech acts is kind of a bare minimum for the VP job description? The guy’s not applying for some junior programmer job in a tech company. He’s applying to be (among others) in charge of the US nuclear arsenal in a not-that-unlikely event that an 82-year old dies or is otherwise incapacitated. Being “emotional” is very much not an excuse here.
re: science, labor, and natalism, I still stand by what I originally said.
re: immigration. I don’t buy this line of reasoning narrowly. Biden specifically pushed for a bipartisan bill for border control that Trump shut down. I also don’t buy the argument spiritually. Something about it just feels very off.
(I also note that you conflated “high-skilled” with “legal” and “low-skilled” with “illegal”).
re: ai, I kinda feel like “I think a lot of the good stuff is likely to come back in a Trump admin even if the whole order were cut at the start. ” sounds like wishful thinking to me. But the more positive vision here is that the future is not set in stone. If Trump wins, I hope many people, ideally people who can honestly stand him, will try to work actively with the Trump admin in e.g. being minimally sane and preventing ideological capture by e/accs, at least.
(I’d also be interested in you listing specific sections of the White House EO that you think should be cut, though it’s not cruxy for me).
I agree that under some reasonable definitions Trump is more politically centrist than Harris. But I also think the most concerning issues, or greatest opportunities for improvement, are neither right- or left- wing. Eg authoritarianism is neither left nor right.
eh, I agree it’s possible but in the examples I’m aware of, it looks like other people around her (e.g. Biden, Sunak) were more pro-regulation for x-risk reasons.
Basically it seems like evidence she doesn’t take x-risk seriously, if she considers those problems on par with the ending of human civilization.
Scary. :/
re: 1, do you have a source on Trump opposing the Iraq war before it started? I couldn’t find any evidence of this (in contrast to eg Obama’s outspoken and very unambiguous opposition).
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