Lizka

• Lizka 18 Sep 2023 23:30 UTC

  14 points

  6 ∶ 0

  on: Shrimp: The an­i­mals most com­monly used and kil­led for food production

  I’m curating this post.

  I’m extremely unsure of how I should think about whether shrimp are sentient (or what matters to them, or whether farming them is bad for them) or similar questions, but numbers like these seem like a flashing warning sign spelling out something like “there might be a moral catastrophe over here, we can’t afford to casually dismiss this.”

  I also find myself unable to really comprehend numbers or statements like “230 billion (90% SCI: 150 billion − 370 billion) shrimp are alive on farms at any moment, which surpasses any farmed animal estimate known to date, including farmed insect numbers.”

  And as always, I really appreciated the diagrams:

  Numbers of farmed shrimp and other farmed animals alive at any time

  

  Fig. 2. Estimated numbers (means) of different farmed animals alive at any time. The figure for farmed shrimp is presented in darker blue.

  If you could pick research directions, do you have an idea for what might be most pressing to study?

EA Or­ga­ni­za­tion Up­dates: Septem­ber 2023

• Lizka 14 Sep 2023 15:52 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Erich_Grunewald’s comment on: The state of AI in differ­ent coun­tries — an overview

  Thanks for these corrections! You’re right. I’ll make a few quick edits for now, and try to update it properly later (digging into the CSET report again).

The state of AI in differ­ent coun­tries — an overview

• Lizka 12 Sep 2023 12:51 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: Nathan Young’s Shortform

  I’m sorry to hear this (and grateful that you’re reporting them). We have systems for flagging when a user’s DM pattern is suspicious, but it’s imperfect (I’m not sure if it’s too permissive right now).

  In case it’s useful for you to have a better picture of what’s going on, I think you get more of the DM spam because you’re very high up in the user list.

• Lizka 11 Sep 2023 12:08 UTC

  6 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Ap­ply Now: EAGxPhilip­pines ap­pli­ca­tions are clos­ing soon

  This is just a quick comment to flag that I changed “CLOSING SOON” to “closing soon” in the title of this post (to avoid slipping into ~clickbaity titles).

  Also, in case someone’s interested, the original post notes the specific deadline:

  The deadline for applications is September 30, 2023. Slots are limited and applications will be considered on a rolling basis, so please apply early!

About my job: “Con­tent Spe­cial­ist”

Writ­ing about your job is (still) great — con­sider do­ing it

• Lizka 6 Sep 2023 0:16 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Omnizoid’s comment on: Eliezer Yud­kowsky Is Fre­quently, Con­fi­dently, Egre­giously Wrong

  Thanks for editing your post.

  I’ve moved the post back to Frontpage (although I don’t think this changes much) — see this comment. We don’t generally move posts to Frontpage if the authors mark them as Personal Blog themselves. Do you want us to move this post back?

• Lizka 6 Sep 2023 0:15 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: sphor’s comment on: Eliezer Yud­kowsky Is Fre­quently, Con­fi­dently, Egre­giously Wrong

  Thanks for this comment — I left a longer comment here. In brief, I hadn’t thought very hard about the decision to move the post to Personal Blog, and was in fact mostly focused on the rhetorical/​inflammatory aspects of the post, and only briefly considered the strength of its relevance to EA.

• Lizka 6 Sep 2023 0:13 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Linch’s comment on: Eliezer Yud­kowsky Is Fre­quently, Con­fi­dently, Egre­giously Wrong

  Thanks for this comment — I left a longer reply here.

• Lizka 6 Sep 2023 0:12 UTC

  2 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Nathan_Barnard’s comment on: Eliezer Yud­kowsky Is Fre­quently, Con­fi­dently, Egre­giously Wrong

  Thanks for commenting — I agree with your main point, and wrote more here.

• Lizka 6 Sep 2023 0:11 UTC

  50 points

  6 ∶ 3

  in reply to: SeeYouAnon’s comment on: Eliezer Yud­kowsky Is Fre­quently, Con­fi­dently, Egre­giously Wrong

  Thanks for the pushback. Writing some notes, and speaking only for myself (I don’t know what the other moderators think).

  1. I think my note^[1] about Personal Blog-ing this post was unambiguously bad. In practice, the decision was made because I was trying to avoid delaying the comment, someone proposed (in the moderator slack) that this post was only loosely connected to doing good effectively and should be in Personal Blog, and I didn’t question it further.

  2. I think we probably shouldn’t have moved the post to Personal Blog, but I’m not totally sure. I’ve flip-flopped a bit about this. (I just moved the post back, although I think this doesn’t change anything at this point.) I think the bigger error is that the distinction is so messy — I had written a doc trying to clarify things last year (it was mostly focused on whether productivity-hack-style posts should go on the Frontpage or not), and we thought a bit about it when we added the Community section, but this hasn’t been resolved. I think we probably should have prioritized clearing this up earlier, but I’m once again unsure.

  3. Relatedly, I don’t think moving the post to “Personal Blog” substantially lowered the post’s visibility (I’m not sure it did anything except put a little “personal blog” icon on it), given that the post is also in the Community section. If it were not a Community post, then I think logged-out users wouldn’t see it on the Frontpage, but I think nothing really changes for Community posts. (Not totally confident in this; I’ll check with the rest of the Online Team.)

  4. I agree that in an ideal world, I (or someone else from the moderation team) would have responded sooner to the replies on my comment. But I was traveling, very busy, and didn’t think the visibility of the post was actually lowered (see #3, and see the number of comments on the post), so I didn’t prioritize this issue. (I also suspect that this got ughy, although ughiness mainly pushed back my response time today, when I came back to the thread and saw newer comments.) I don’t know if I endorse the trade-offs I made, but it’s hard for me to tell.

  5. Setting aside Personal Blog — re: the fact that this is criticism of an influential figure in EA, and moderators should avoid responding to posts like that. I think it’s very important to protect criticism, but I also think the moderators are currently over-correcting for this kind of consideration a bit (see e.g. this), and I honestly think that I want to discourage the kinds of rhetorical attacks that I saw in this post. I want to protect whistleblowing, red-teaming, disagreement, serious critical engagement with the quality of someone’s work, etc., but I don’t want to encourage the sense that if you frame your post as criticism, then it will be featured even if it is inflammatory and misleading.

  (I’m still swamped and traveling, so might continue to be slow to respond.)

  1. ^

     “The moderators have decided to move the post to Personal Blog — the connection to EA and doing good better is not that clear”

  What links here?

  • Grumpy Squid's comment on Grumpy Squid’s Quick takes by Grumpy Squid (5 Sep 2023 21:35 UTC; 28 points)
  • SeeYouAnon's comment on Eliezer Yud­kowsky Is Fre­quently, Con­fi­dently, Egre­giously Wrong by Omnizoid (5 Sep 2023 12:22 UTC; 10 points)
  • Lorenzo Buonanno's comment on Grumpy Squid’s Quick takes by Grumpy Squid (6 Sep 2023 1:10 UTC; 8 points)
  • Lizka's comment on Eliezer Yud­kowsky Is Fre­quently, Con­fi­dently, Egre­giously Wrong by Omnizoid (6 Sep 2023 0:16 UTC; 4 points)
  • Lizka's comment on Eliezer Yud­kowsky Is Fre­quently, Con­fi­dently, Egre­giously Wrong by Omnizoid (6 Sep 2023 0:15 UTC; 3 points)
  • Lizka's comment on Eliezer Yud­kowsky Is Fre­quently, Con­fi­dently, Egre­giously Wrong by Omnizoid (6 Sep 2023 0:12 UTC; 2 points)
  • Lizka's comment on Eliezer Yud­kowsky Is Fre­quently, Con­fi­dently, Egre­giously Wrong by Omnizoid (6 Sep 2023 0:13 UTC; 2 points)

• Lizka 5 Sep 2023 1:01 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: ChanaMessinger’s comment on: ChanaMess­inger’s Shortform

  I think I agree, but also want to flag this list in case you (or others) haven’t seen it: List of AI safety newsletters and other resources

• Lizka 4 Sep 2023 0:08 UTC

  8 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Long-Term Fu­ture Fund Ask Us Any­thing (Septem­ber 2023)

  How do you think about applications to start projects/​initiatives that would compete with existing projects?

• Lizka 4 Sep 2023 0:07 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Long-Term Fu­ture Fund Ask Us Any­thing (Septem­ber 2023)

  Do you know how/​where people usually find out about the LTFF (to apply for funding and to donate)? Are some referral/​discovery pathways particularly successful?

• Lizka 30 Aug 2023 5:57 UTC

  4 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Joseph Lemien’s comment on: “Longter­mist causes” is a tricky classification

  Thank you! I used Google Slides. :)

“Longter­mist causes” is a tricky classification

• Lizka 27 Aug 2023 21:22 UTC

  50 points

  24 ∶ 23

  on: Eliezer Yud­kowsky Is Fre­quently, Con­fi­dently, Egre­giously Wrong

  I think this post has some good points about overconfidence and over-deferral, but (as some others have pointed out) it seems unnecessarily inflammatory and includes jibes and rhetorical attacks I’d rather not see on the EA Forum. Examples have been pointed out by Max H here:

  the language is also unnecessarily emotionally charged and inflammatory in many places. A quick sampling:

  > But as I grew older and learned more, I realized it was all bullshit.

  > it becomes clear that his view is a house of cards, built entirely on falsehoods and misrepresentations.

  > And I spend much more time listening to Yukowsky’s followers spout nonsense than most other people.

  > (phrased in a maximally Eliezer like way): … (condescending chuckle)

  I also think that you should retitle the post; I do not think that the contents defend the title to a reasonable extent, and therefore the title both feels misleading and somewhat like clickbait.

  The moderators have decided to move the post to Personal Blog — the connection to EA and doing good better is not that clear. I’ll also discuss with the rest of the moderation team to see if there’s anything else we should do about this post.

  What links here?

  • Grumpy Squid's comment on Grumpy Squid’s Quick takes by Grumpy Squid (5 Sep 2023 21:35 UTC; 28 points)

• Lizka 26 Aug 2023 23:51 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Vaidehi Agarwalla’s comment on: Ca­reer Con­ver­sa­tions Week on the Fo­rum (8-15 Septem­ber)

  Awesome, thank you! Adding it to the list.