Is it possible to create a postsuffering future where involuntary suffering no longer exists?
I’m in the International Suffering Abolitionists group and began the Wikipedia article eradication of suffering.
Michael Huang
Karma: 730
The donor is anonymous.
From the Wired article: “The temporary exhibit is funded until May by an anonymous donor...”
Thanks for all the comments.
Updated the post with a recent tweet from Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI:
“recalibrate” means “increase” obviously.
disappointing to see this six-week development. openai will continually decrease the level of risk we are comfortable taking with new models as they get more powerful, not the other way around.
John Culver’s How We Would Know When China Is Preparing to Invade Taiwan is also worth reading.
China’s political strategy for unification has always had a military component, as well as economic, informational, legal, and diplomatic components. Most U.S. analysis frames China’s options as a binary of peace or war and ignores these other elements. At the same time, many in Washington believe that if Beijing resorts to the use of force, the only military option it would consider is invasion. This is a dangerous oversimplification. China has many options to increase pressure on Taiwan, including military options short of invasion—limited campaigns to seize Taiwan-held islands just off China’s coast, blockades of Taiwan’s ports, and economic quarantines to choke off the island’s trade. Lesser options probably could not compel Taiwan’s capitulation but could further isolate it economically and politically in an effort to raise pressure on the government in Taipei and induce it to enter into political negotiations on terms amenable to Beijing.
An all-out invasion would be detected months in advance:
Any invasion of Taiwan will not be secret for months prior to Beijing’s initiation of hostilities. It would be a national, all-of-regime undertaking for a war potentially lasting years.
You’re welcome! Thanks for donating
Ray Dalio also has a TisBest $50 charity gift card page: https://www.tisbest.org/rg/ray/
This describes three utopias. It makes sense to have several since everyone has differing definitions of utopia.
The ‘Psychonauts’ sound like the Hedonistic Imperative version of utopia:
The Psychonauts had formed the second most popular cluster. They endorsed hedonism as a theory of value, believing that the purpose of life is the elimination of suffering and the enjoyment of bliss.
Hedonistic Imperative—David Pearce. Eradicating suffering through biotechnology and paradise engineering.
Toby Ord has written about the affectable universe, the portion of the universe that “humanity might be able to travel to or affect in any other way.”
I’m curious whether anyone has written about the affectable universe in terms of time.
We can only affect events in the present and the future
Events are always moving from the present (affectable) to the past (unaffectable)
We should intervene in present events (e.g. reduce suffering) before these events move to the unaffectable universe
Thanks for your post, great advice.
Please ensure you include the book’s title, author, and year/edition, as well as any other information requested by the library. If you’re a university group organiser, it’s likely helpful to note that you’re with a university student group.
Maybe include the ISBN as well. For academic libraries, it’s also helpful to say which students the book is relevant for. Peter Singer’s books would be relevant for the Arts students studying philosophy, for example. Academic libraries can buy some extracurricular resources, but most of the budget is for course-relevant resources.
It’s important to actually use the books after they arrive! Libraries will look at metrics like the number of times a book is borrowed, the number of unique borrowers, date it was last borrowed, etc. Books that don’t get used will eventually be weeded out of the collection. Books that are borrowed a lot may justify multiple copies.
For community building, there’s the International Suffering Abolitionists group. It hosts meetups, a Discord server and a section of EA Gather Town.
“Invincible Wellbeing is a research organisation whose mission is to promote research targeting the biological substrates of suffering.”
Appears on the 80,000 Hours Job Board
(Edit: Accidentally posted a duplicate link.)
Aligned with whom? by Anton Korinek and Avital Balwit (2022) has a possible answer. They write that an aligned AI system should have
direct alignment with its operator, and
social alignment with society at large.
Some examples of failures in direct and social alignment are provided in Why we need a new agency to regulate advanced artificial intelligence: Lessons on AI control from the Facebook Files (Korinek, 2021).
We could expand the moral circle further by aligning AI with the interests of both human and non-human animals. Direct, social and sentient alignment?
As you mentioned, these alignments present conflicting interests that need mediation and resolution.
The Tech Worker Handbook website has more information about Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs). It also cautions people from reading the website on a company device:
I do NOT advise accessing this from a company device. Your employer can, and will likely, track visits to a resource like this Handbook.
Business Insider’s review of 36 NDAs in the tech industry:
Some NDAs say explicitly that the confidentiality provisions never sunset, effectively making them lifelong agreements...
More than two-thirds of workers who shared their agreements with Insider said they weren’t exactly sure what the documents prevented them from saying—or whether even sharing them was a violation of the agreement itself.
Thank you for posting this. Appreciate reading about his life and legacy.
Are there any links to the translations of David Pearce’s works?
Thanks for the comment.
It would focus on species that have the capacity for suffering and enjoyment, so not all species.
I agree it is a hugely ambitious project. Megaprojects are within the scope of EA and its funders.
If most wild animal lives have negative wellbeing, I think this kind of intervention would be preferable to the status quo or extinction.
Thanks, I completely agree. David Pearce is the founder of this line of thought: editing and rewriting nature to reduce and eliminate involuntary suffering.
I have added a quotation to the post:
Like saving the drowning child in Singer’s thought experiment, now that gene drive technology is available, there is a choice between doing nothing and intervening to do good.
“In the post-CRISPR era, whether intelligent agents decide to preserve, reform, or phase out the biology of involuntary suffering will be an ethical choice.”
David Pearce, Compassionate Biology
Many thanks for writing this essay. The history of technological restraint is fascinating. I never knew that Edward Teller wanted to design a 10-gigaton bomb.
Something I have noticed in history is that advocates of technological restraint are often labelled luddites or luddite supporters. Here’s an example from 2016:
Artificial Intelligence Alarmists Win ITIF’s Annual Luddite Award
After a month-long public vote, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) today announced that it has given its annual Luddite Award to a loose coalition of scientists and luminaries who stirred fear and hysteria in 2015 by raising alarms that artificial intelligence (AI) could spell doom for humanity. ITIF argued that such alarmism distracts attention from the enormous benefits that AI can offer society—and, worse, that unnecessary panic could forestall progress on AI by discouraging more robust public and private investment.
“It is deeply unfortunate that luminaries such as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have contributed to feverish hand-wringing about a looming artificial intelligence apocalypse,” said ITIF President Robert D. Atkinson. “Do we think either of them personally are Luddites? No, of course not. They are pioneers of science and technology. But they and others have done a disservice to the public—and have unquestionably given aid and comfort to an increasingly pervasive neo-Luddite impulse in society today—by demonizing AI in the popular imagination.”
“If we want to continue increasing productivity, creating jobs, and increasing wages, then we should be accelerating AI development, not raising fears about its destructive potential,” Atkinson said. “Raising sci-fi doomsday scenarios is unhelpful, because it spooks policymakers and the public, which is likely to erode support for more research, development, and adoption. The obvious irony here is that it is hard to think of anyone who invests as much as Elon Musk himself does to advance AI research, including research to ensure that AI is safe. But when he makes inflammatory comments about ‘summoning the demon,’ it takes us two steps back.”
The list of people the ITIF wanted to call luddites included “Advocates seeking a ban on ‘killer robots’”, probably the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.
I wonder what the ITIF’s position is on Teller’s 10-gigaton bomb.
Lack of access to the incorporated standards, since the standards often cost hundreds of dollars each to access.
Not only are many standards expensive, but they often include digital rights management that make them cumbersome to access and open.
In Australia, access to standards is controlled by private companies that can charge whatever they like. There’s currently a petition to the Australian parliament with 22,526 signatures requesting free or affordable access to Australian Standards, including standards mandated by legislation. Across the ditch, the New Zealand government has set a great example by funding free access to building standards.
It’s important for AI safety standards to be open access from the start.
Support national laws and agencies regulating advanced AI. For the US, see this bipartisan bill and this proposal to establish a federal agency.
Good to see more ideas on new charities.
Could you provide more details on this example idea:
Charity Entrepreneurship produced a report on welfare focused gene modification back in 2019. Has there been a change of mind since then?