MetricSulfateFive

Karma: 27

MetricSulfateFive 23 Feb 2018 20:09 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: zdgroff’s comment on: Why I prioritize moral circle expansion over artificial intelligence alignment
He defines hedonium/dolorium as the maximum positive/negative utility you can generate with a certain amount of energy:

“For example, I think a given amount of dolorium/dystopia (say, the amount that can be created with 100 joules of energy) is far larger in absolute moral expected value than hedonium/utopia made with the same resources.”

MetricSulfateFive 19 Jan 2018 18:35 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Milan_Griffes’s comment on: [link] “20-year-old claims $451 million jackpot, hopes to ‘do some good for humanity’”
Isn’t this an example of the unilateralist’s curse? If every EA independently decides whether to slide into his DMs, the people who decide to do so will be those who are overconfident in their persuasion abilities.

The risk here is that someone will give him a negative first impression of EA. People don’t change their minds nearly as much as they should, so first impressions matter a lot. Any below-99th-percentile attempt to reach out to multimillionaires could have very negative expected utility.

That said, I’m not sure this argument is correct, so I’d appreciate criticism.

MetricSulfateFive 4 Jan 2018 4:09 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Economics, prioritisation, and pro-rich bias
See responses to this post on /r/badeconomics.

MetricSulfateFive 31 Dec 2017 3:19 UTC
14 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Where can I donate to support insect welfare?
The closest is probably Wild-Animal Suffering Research, since they have published (on their website) a few papers on invertebrate welfare (e.g., Which Invertebrate Species Feel Pain?, An Analysis of Lethal Methods of Wild Animal Population Control: Invertebrates). However, their work doesn’t focus exclusively on invertebrates, as they have published some articles that either apply to all animals (e.g., “Fit and Happy”: How Do We Measure Wild-Animal Suffering?), or only apply to vertebrates (e.g., An Analysis of Lethal Methods of Wild Animal Population Control: Vertebrates).

Animal Ethics and Utility Farm also work on issues relating to wild animal suffering. My impression is that AE mostly focuses on outreach (e.g., About Us, leaflets, FB page), and UF mostly focuses on advocacy and social change research (e.g., Study: Effective Communication Strategies For Addressing Wild Animal Suffering, Reviewing 2017 and Looking to 2018), although AE also claims to do some research (mainly moral philosophy literature reviews?). Again, these organizations don’t only focus on invertebrates. In fact, AE doesn’t even focus solely on wild animals, as they seem to spend significant resources on traditional animal advocacy (farm animals, veganism) as well.

I don’t know of any insect-specific charities, although some may exist. Unfortunately, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Insects is only satire. If we widen the scope a bit and include invertebrate-specific charities, I know only of Crustacean Compassion, but there may be others. There was also at one point a website called Invertebrate Considerations that seemed to be EA-aligned, but it’s gone now and I don’t think it was ever anything more than just a mockup.

Humane insecticides might be a promising area for future work.

MetricSulfateFive 4 Dec 2017 21:14 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Venkatesh’s comment on: Open Thread #39
According to this reddit thread:

The EA Hub team had to take down a few sites because of a CPU overuse error. Until they work out what the problem is and an alternative, some sites will have to stay offline. An archive has been retained.