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.
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.
Good idea, but one issue with donating books to a library is that the librarian still has to decide whether to accept or reject the donation. Most librarians are very selective about what gets included and what gets weeded out of their collection.
Another option is to use the library website and find the “Suggest items for the library” web form. (Search the library catalogue first to see whether the library already holds the item.) If the librarian decides to purchase the book, it is completely funded by the library budget.
You can suggest the format too: print, ebook or both. I would say both because both print and ebook formats have their respective strengths and limitations.
For university libraries, if you mention the course or unit (e.g. ethics, philosophy) that would benefit from the book, it helps the librarian to justify the purchase.
New article about wild animal suffering, interventions, genome editing and gene drives:
Johannsen, Kyle (2021). Humanitarian Assistance for Wild Animals. The Philosophers’ Magazine 93:33-37. Available on PhilArchive: https://philarchive.org/archive/JOHHAF-5
Hello! The EA Hub has some scripts and slides in English: https://resources.eahub.org/events/intro/
Try contacting a staff member from the Groups Team, e.g. Catherine Low, for tips and pointers: https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team/
No worries, thanks for renaming it. I have added a short lead section.
That would work. Or an information symbol ⓘ (the letter ‘i’ in a circle).
Or a green sprout. Some games have that to indicate new players.
The timelines do a great job of visualising how colonisation would be completed quickly on a cosmic timescale.
There was also a memorable visualisation in Scientific American depicting how space colonies grow exponentially to fill the galaxy: Crawford, Ian (2000) Where are they? Maybe we are alone in the galaxy after all, Scientific American, July.
The time it takes to colonise the galaxy depends on the speed of the colony ships and the time it takes for new colonies to create colony ships of their own.
The remarkable thing is that the home planet only needs to send out two successful colony expeditions to start the colonisation wave. That’s it. Just two ships to colonise the galaxy. One of the most high impact projects one can think of.
Thanks for creating this comprehensive list!
For the wild animal suffering section, there’s a book by Kyle Johannsen that covers the ethics of intervention:
Hi Aaron,
Many thanks to you and everyone for organising and funding this contest.
If anyone is interested in a sequel, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days.
A good opportunity to expand that short story into a novel!
Thanks for your post!
Would an open access repository plus an open peer review system like PREreview or the Open Peer Review Module meet your needs?
Also, is there a need to create an open access multidisciplinary repository (green open access) for effective altruism researchers? Or is the existing network of repositories enough?
It was Isaac Asimov’s favorite story of the hundreds of stories he has written.
I found the ending impossible to forget.
Spoiler:
Very utopian. This is what could happen if everything goes right with AGI. The story doesn’t cover all the things that could go wrong.
An introductory reading list on wild animal welfare that covers all the important debates:
Should we intervene in wild animal welfare?
Will interventions work? Are they tractable?
What impact will wild animal welfare have on the long-term future?
The post was part of a 2018 series, the Wild Animal Welfare Literature Library Project.
Wild animal welfare has increased in prominence since then, e.g. Animal Charity Evaluators has regularly identified wild animal welfare as a key cause area.
Thanks for your post. There’s a reasonable case for GMOs and malaria to be a cause area. Target Malaria is using genetic modification to reduce the population of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes.
Open Philanthropy writes, “It seems likely to us that the cost-effectiveness of this grant will be competitive with donations to the Against Malaria Foundation (though unlikely that it will be more than 10 times as cost-effective)” (Open Philanthropy, 2017).
Charity Entrepreneurship has a report called “Welfare Focused Gene Modification” from March 2019 that mentions golden rice and other GMOs, mostly farm animal interventions. The report might be superseded though because it no longer appears on the website.
This is an interesting idea from the report: “A ‘Good Gene Institute’, similar to the Good Food Institute, that is focused on carefully and thoughtfully building public awareness and interest in individuals getting into the science of genetics-based animal issues.”
Great feature! Just wondering whether Our World in Data charts can be embedded into Substack and Ghost in a similar way.
Thanks very much!
(Sorry, I didn’t see your comment until now.)
Animal Ethics has some bibliographical lists: https://www.animal-ethics.org/bibliographical-lists/
Kyle Johannsen’s book Wild Animal Ethics has extensive reference lists https://philpapers.org/rec/JOHWAE-2
Thanks for your post! Good to see this issue in the EA Forum.
Regarding the statement that:
At this point, most people in Taiwan don’t consider themselves Chinese anymore and simply want to be their own nation instead, indefinitely.
Survey data supports your first point. The vast majority of people in Taiwan call themselves “Taiwanese” or “Both Taiwanese and Chinese”:
Survey data doesn’t support your second point though: “[most people in Taiwan] simply want to be their own nation instead, indefinitely”. Most people in Taiwan support the status quo in various forms:
The most popular options are:
Maintain status quo, decide at later date (28.4%)
Maintain status quo indefinitely (27.3%)
Maintain status quo, move toward independence (25.1%)
The survey question doesn’t define what the status quo is, but it’s definitely not independence, and it’s definitely not unification. It’s the grey area, the middle choice, between independence and unification.
The US uses strategic ambiguity to keep Taiwan with the status quo. It will support Taiwan as long as it doesn’t declare formal independence and start a war.
Why is the status quo so popular? It means peace and prosperity, and it has been surprisingly stable over the last 70 years.
No worries. I think we have different definitions of the status quo, and that is affecting our interpretation of the survey results.
Your definition of the status quo is a form of independence: functional independence (or perhaps de facto independence). In which case, since all the survey results show that “Maintain status quo” is popular, means that independence is the most popular choice.
My definition of the status quo is something in-between unification and independence, like a third way. It’s the “none of the above” choice, disapproving both unification and independence. If this definition is used, then all the survey results show that this position is the most popular choice.
It’s a shame that the survey question doesn’t actually define what the status quo is. The status quo changes over time too, so it’s hard to pin down.
But perhaps that is what makes the status quo option so popular. It’s a vague, undefined entity that can be interpreted whatever way you like.
Anyway, for completeness, here’s the full survey question from the data collection methodology:
The independence-unification (TI-UM) position is constructed from the following survey item:
“Thinking about Taiwan-mainland relations, there are several differing opinions:
unification as soon as possible;
independence as soon as possible;
maintain the status quo and move toward unification in the future;
maintain the status quo and move toward independence in the future;
maintain the status quo and decide in the future between independence or unification;
maintain the status quo indefinitely.
Which do you prefer?”
In addition to these six attitudes, the trend chart also includes non-responses for a total of seven categories.
To add to arguments for inclusion, here’s an excerpt from an EA Forum post about key figures in the animal suffering focus area.
David Pearce’s work on suffering and biotechnology would be more relevant now than in 2013 due to developments in genome editing and gene drives.