mic

Karma: 1,953

mic 19 May 2022 4:51 UTC
56 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Aaron Gertler’s comment on: Some potential lessons from Carrick’s Congressional bid
Overall, I agree with Habryka’s comment that “negative evidence on the campaign would be ‘systematically filtered out’”. Although I maxed out donations to the primary campaign and phone banked a bit for the campaign, I had a number of concerns about the campaign that I never saw mentioned in EA spaces. However, I didn’t want to raise these concerns for fear that this would negatively affect Carrick’s chances of winning the election.
Now that Carrick’s campaign is over, I feel more free to write my concerns. These included:
- The vast majority of media coverage was negative from the start. If voters made even a cursory Google of Carrick Flynn’s name, they would be met with plenty of negative headlines like “Carrick Flynn, Crypto-Backed Candidate in New Congressional District, Has Rarely Voted in Oregon” or “Environmental Groups Condemn Congressional Candidate Carrick Flynn’s Comments on Spotted Owls and Timber Unity”.
- The vast majority of comments on Oregon subreddits were also negative.
- The campaign seemed to have quite few non-EA donors or volunteers, suggesting a lack of local support.
- The campaign seemed to have few volunteers until about a week ago, after Why Helping the Flynn Campaign is especially useful right now was posted.
- Even putting aside the issue of crypto funding, Carrick had a notable amount of other controversies such as his comments on spotted owl conservation, the fact that only 2.5% of donations were from Oregon, and that he only voted twice in the past 20 years.
I also have some critiques of the post Why Helping the Flynn Campaign is especially useful right now but I declined to write a comment. These include:
- The post claims “The race seems to be quite tight. According to this poll, Carrick is in second place among likely Democratic voters by 4% (14% of voters favor Flynn, 18% favor Salinas), with a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points.” However, it declines to mention that “26 percent of the district’s voters holding an unfavorable opinion of him, compared to only 7 percent for Salinas” (The Hill).
- At the time the post was written, a significant fraction of voters already had already voted. The claim “the campaign is especially impactful right now” seems misleading when it would have been better to help earlier on.
- The campaign already has plenty of TV ads from the Protect the Future PAC, and there are lots of internet comments complaining about receiving mailers every other day and seeing Carrick ads all the time. (Though later I learned that PAC ads aren’t able to show Carrick speaking, and I’ve read a few internet comments complaining about how they’ve never heard Carrick speak despite seeing all those ads. So campaign donations could be valuable for ads which do show him speaking.)
- Having a lot of people coming out-of-state to volunteer could further the impression among voters that Carrick doesn’t have much support from Oregonians.
- If you can speak enthusiastically and knowledgeably about the campaign, you can do a better job of phone banking or door-knocking than the average person. However, the campaign already spent $847,000 for door-knockers. While volunteering for the campaign might have been high in expected value, the fact that other people could do door-knocking raises questions about whether it’s in out-of-state EAs’ comparative advantage to do so.

mic 16 Jan 2022 1:27 UTC
53 points
0 ∶ 0
on: [linkpost] Peter Singer: The Hinge of History
I was surprised to read this from Peter Singer, a thoroughgoing utilitarian who I often see as a little extreme in how EA his beliefs are.
I don’t particularly agree with this conclusion:
When taking steps to reduce the risk that we will become extinct, we should focus on means that also further the interests of present and near-future people. If we are at the hinge of history, enabling people to escape poverty and get an education is as likely to move things in the right direction as almost anything else we might do
It seems extremely unlikely to me that global poverty is just as good at reducing existential risk as things that are more targeted, such as AI safety research. At least, Singer’s point requires significant elaboration on why he believes this to be the case. MichaelStJules writes more about this in his comment here.
Nevertheless, I found it valuable to see how Peter Singer views longtermism, which can provide a window into future public perceptions.
Yaroslav Elistratov writes more on Peter Singer’s thoughts on existential risk here.

mic 11 Dec 2021 7:24 UTC
44 points
0 ∶ 0
on: I am taking a break from the EA community. Here are a few words about why.
I’m really sorry to hear that you’re experiencing suicidal ideation. Based on your post, I’m feeling concerned that you might carry out your “”“theoretical””” suicide plans. If my impression is correct, I ask that you take proactive action to mitigate that risk – for yourself, and for the world. That said, I want to say that you don’t have to do everything you could to improve the world – take care of yourself.

Here are some questions I have:
- Have you called the suicide hotlines? Have you found them to be helpful?
- Are you seeing a therapist? If not, I’m happy to talk through the logistics of starting to see one. It might also be worth reminding yourself of the items in “Things that sometimes help if you have depression”.
- Do you have a plan when you’re in a moment of crisis? Is there someone you can contact in such a scenario? If not, I think it would be important to form one.
If you’re running out of money, you might want to consider applying for funding from the EA Infrastructure Fund so that you have the funds necessary for mental health support. You can email Michelle Hutchinson if you want to inquire about it before applying. (Despite what the website says, the EA Infrastructure Fund does not have a balance of $0.)

Feel free to schedule a call with me if you want support with anything – we don’t have to talk about anything EA-related. Or you can message me on the EA Forum.

If you’re disengaging from the EA community, please ensure that you stay in touch with friends and family.

If what I’ve written isn’t relevant for you, I’m sorry about that, and I wish you all the best.

mic 30 May 2019 1:07 UTC
43 points
0 ∶ 0
on: There’s Lots More To Do
I think the post is more fundamentally flawed; there is a substantial funding gap under Benjamin’s assumptions, even if we were to ignore GiveDirectly and other cause areas, and even if we were unwilling to save a life for any more than $5,000.

According to the 2017 Global Burden of Disease report, around 10 million people die per year, globally, of “Communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases.”* This is roughly the category that the low cost-per-life-saved interventions target. If we assume that all of this is treatable at current cost per life saved numbers—the most generous possible assumption for the claim that there’s a funding gap—then at $5,000 per life saved (substantially higher than GiveWell’s current estimates), that would cost about $50 Billion to avert.

This is already well within the capacity of funds available to the Gates Foundation alone, and the Open Philanthropy Project / GiveWell is the main advisor of another multi-billion-dollar foundation, Good Ventures. The true number is almost certainly much smaller because many communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases do not admit of the kinds of cheap mass-administered cures that justify current cost-effectiveness numbers.

Of course, that’s an annual number, not a total number. But if we think that there is a present, rather than a future, funding gap of that size, that would have to mean that it’s within the power of the Gates Foundation alone to wipe out all fatal communicable diseases immediately, a couple times over—in which case the progress really would be permanent, or at least quite lasting. And infections are the major target of current mass-market donor recommendations.

The Open Philanthropy Project started out with $8.3 billion in 2011, and presumably has less now. The Gates Foundation has an endowment of $50.7 billion as of 2017. They wouldn’t be able to sustain $50 billion of annual donations for very long. As such, I think the first and second paragraphs are essentially invalid.

It sounds dubious that we could wipe out communicable diseases in a few years and have that be permanent without any further investment. The 2017 Global Burden of Disease lists some communicable diseases as follows: HIV/AIDS, syphilis, chlamydia, gonococcal infection, tuberculosis, other respiratory infections, diarrheal disease, typhoid, salmonella, malaria, schistosomiasis, dengue, rabies, other neglected tropical diseases, ebola, zika, meningitis, measles, hepatitis, tetanus, and so on.

My understanding is that rather few of these have been permanently eliminated, even in high income countries. Distributing condoms and PrEP for a few years isn’t going to permanently eliminate HIV. Bed nets and seasonal chemoprevention aren’t going to eliminate malaria. Measles needs ongoing vaccinations. Etc.

There are of course more permanent solutions that we can use, but these are probably much more expensive and it’s unclear whether the two foundations would be able to fully fund them. In the late 1940s, the US substantially reduced malaria by draining swamps and spraying mosquito spray.¹ There’s gene drives of course, but we probably need more research at this point before we can safely try to eliminate mosquitoes with that. Ending worms, diarrheal disease, or typhoid would probably require incredible improvements to the water supply. Still, HIV and respiratory infections would probably not be possible to eliminate without substantial improvements in medicine.

Also, the Gates Foundation is not particularly EA, and we should not expect it to put all its money into global health. (Nor would we assume Open Phil to do so, because it also cares about other cause areas.) In any case, even if they could fill the gap, that’s not a relevant counterfactual unless they would fill the gap.

All of the above is using Benjamin’s charitable, optimistic assumption that we can save a life for $5,000 up to $50 billion per year. If we consider just the room for more funding of all the top GiveWell charities better than GiveDirectly, is that low enough that Open Phil and the Gates Foundation can completely fill it? Possibly, in which case I will defer to the argument Jeff Kaufman’s post.

mic 12 Nov 2021 18:52 UTC
39 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Why boring writing is unethical: the case for it being high impact to make EA writing entertaining
To push back on this a bit, I genuinely dislike much of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s and Scott Aexander’s blogging for not being serious enough or intellectually rigorous enough. I would avoid sharing many non-serious articles with people, for example, Wait But Why’s “The Artificial Revolution” or Scott Alexander’s “Superintelligence FAQ” or Scott Alexander’s “Beware Systemic Change” (especially the dialogue) because the posts’ non-serious tone make it hard to take the content of the post seriously, and I wouldn’t include them in a fellowship syllabus, for example. At the same time, I recognize that many more people have read Wait But Why’s “The Artificial Revolution” or Eliezer Yudkowsky’s posts because they are written in an interesting way, compared to if they were more serious.

In contrast, I’m a fan of other kinds of “engaging” writing such as Nate Soares’ “On caring” and Joe Carlsmith’s “Against neutrality about creating happy lives” or “Small animals have enormous brains for their size”. There are different ways of being engaging, and some of them have a higher risk of sacrificing respectability.

(Writing in easy-to-read and brief sentences is a good recommendation, but I haven’t done that here because I don’t feel like taking the time to revise my comment.)

I think there is a place for dry writing on the EA Forum. (And by dry, I mean something like what Rethink Priorities currently writes.) I think “more engaging writing → more views” is a valuable reason to have more interesting writing, but I think we should still be mindful of whether trying to make your writing more interesting leads to poorer argumentation or respectability.

mic 1 Mar 2022 5:49 UTC
38 points
0 ∶ 0
on: The Future Fund’s Project Ideas Competition
Foundational research on the value of the long-term future
Research That Can Help Us Improve
If we successfully avoid existential catastrophe in the next century, what are the best pathways to reaching existential security, and how likely is it? How optimistic should we be about the trajectory of the long-term future? What are the worst-case scenarios, and how do we avoid them? How can we make sure the future is robustly positive and build a world where as many people are flourishing?

To elaborate on what I have in mind with this proposal, it seems important to conduct research beyond reducing existential risk over the next century – we should make sure that the future we have afterwards is good as well. I’d be interested in research following up on subjects like those of the posts:

mic 5 Jul 2022 4:31 UTC
35 points
8 ∶ 0
on: My Most Likely Reason to Die Young is AI X-Risk
Technical note: I think we need to be careful to note the difference in meaning between extinction and existential catastrophe. When Joseph Carlsmith talks about existential catastrophe, he doesn’t necessarily mean all humans dying; in this report, he’s mainly concerned about the disempowerment of humanity. Following Toby Ord in The Precipice, Carlsmith defines an existential catastrophe as “an event that drastically reduces the value of the trajectories along which human civilization could realistically develop”. It’s not straightforward to translate his estimates of existential risk to estimates of extinction risk.
Of course, you don’t need to rely on Joseph Carlsmith’s report to believe that there’s a ≥7.9% chance of human extinction conditioning on AGI.
What links here?
- Zach Stein-Perlman's comment on My Most Likely Reason to Die Young is AI X-Risk by AISafetyIsNotLongtermist (4 Jul 2022 16:01 UTC; 27 points)

mic 20 Mar 2022 19:45 UTC
34 points
0 ∶ 0
on: $100 bounty for the best ideas to red team
Red team: Is the expected value of extinction risk reduction positive?
Relevant articles:
- The expected value of extinction risk reduction is positive—EA Forum
- A longtermist critique of “The expected value of extinction risk reduction is positive”—EA Forum

mic 29 Apr 2022 4:21 UTC
31 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Increasing Demandingness in EA
Is it possible to have a 10% version of pursuing a high-impact career? Instead of donating 10% of your income, you would donate a couple hours a week to high-impact volunteering. I’ve listed a couple opportunities here. In my opinion, many of these would count as a high-impact career if you did full-time.
- Organizing a local EA group
  - Or in-person/remote volunteering for a university EA group, to help with managing Airtable, handling operations, designing events, facilitating discussions, etc. Although I don’t know that any local EA groups currently accept remote volunteers, from my experience with running EA at Georgia Tech, I know we’d really benefit from one!
  - If you’re quite knowledgeable about EA/longtermism and like talking to people about EA, being something like an EA Guides Program mentor could be a great option. One-on-one chats can be quite helpful for enabling people to develop better plans for making an impact throughout their life. I don’t know the Global Challenges Project is looking for more mentors for its EA Guides Program at this time, but it would be valuable if it had a greater capacity.
- Facilitating for EA programs that are constrained by the number of (good) facilitators. In Q1 2022, this included the AGI Safety Fundamentals technical alignment and governance tracks. (Edit) EA Virtual Programs is also constrained by the number of facilitators.
- Signing up as a personal assistant for Pineapple Operations (assuming this is constrained by the number of PAs, though I have no idea whether it is)
- Phone banking for Carrick Flynn’s campaign (though this opportunity is only available through May 17)
- Gaining experience that would be helpful for pursuing a high-impact career (e.g., by taking a MOOC on deep learning to test your fit for machine learning work for AI safety)
- Distilling AI safety articles
- Volunteering for Apart Research’s AI safety or meta AI safety projects
- Volunteering for projects from Impact CoLabs, perhaps
- Running a workplace EA group, especially if you’re able to foster discussion about working on pressing problems
Part-time volunteering might nprovide as much of an opportunity to build unique skills, compared to working full-time on direct work, but I think it could still be pretty valuable depending on what you do.
In a way, sacrificing your time might be more demanding than sacrificing your excess income. But volunteering can help you feel more connected to the community and feel more fulfilling than just donating money as an individual. It might not even be a sacrifice as for some opportunities, you could get paid, either directly (as in the case of Pineapple Operations) or through applying to the EA Infrastructure Fund or Long-Term Future Fund.

mic 10 Jan 2022 7:26 UTC
26 points
0 ∶ 0
on: How Big a Problem is Status Quo Bias in the EA Community?
I realize that you weren’t the original author of this question, but I think this question really needs much more context to be a high-quality question on the EA Forum. Why does the question asker think that the status quo bias might be a problem in the EA community? What kinds of examples do they have in mind? Are they interested in a status quo bias towards the way the world is, or the way the EA community currently is?

mic 6 Oct 2021 21:25 UTC
26 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Noticing the skulls, longtermism edition
These largely focus on the (indisputable) fact that avoiding X-risks can be tied to racist or eugenic historical precedents. This should be worrying;

I think most social movements can be traced to some sort of unsavory historical precedent. For example:
- Feminism and eugenics
- Socialism and human rights violations
- Anti-racism and the 1804 Haiti massacre
- Racial equality and Black supremacy
- Abolitionism and massacre
- Anti-imperialism and massacre
- Egalitarianism and massacre
I provide these examples not to criticize these movements but because I think these historical connections are nearly irrelevant for assessing whether a present-day movement is valid or what it should be working to improve on. (I’ll allow that examining history is essential if we want to adopt the framing of redressing past harms.) What’s more productive is to look at problematic behavior in the present and look at resolving that, and I don’t see what history-based critiques add if we do that.

I think the standard apologetic response for an organization involved in a social movement would be to make a blog post describing these unsavory historical precedents and then calling for more action for diversity, equity, and inclusion. But that might not be a good strategy for longtermist organizations. The Tuskegee study is so well-known in the United States as an example of medical racism that it doesn’t cost anything for a hospital to write a blog post about it, while the situation isn’t analogous for longtermism.

mic 13 May 2019 11:39 UTC
25 points
0 ∶ 0
on: EA Still Needs an Updated and Representative Introductory Guidebook
I don’t have issues with the EA Handbook’s emphasis on the far future, but I do think Doing Good Better is much more beautifully written and emotionally compelling, so I’d probably still recommend it over the EA Handbook.
Here are some comments I have on individual articles in the EA Handbook:
- Introduction to Effective Altruism:
  - Places too much emphasis on “tested solutions,” which seems to advocate against high risk high reward interventions.
  - Overall, covers a lot of topics pretty decently.
- Efficient Charity – Do Unto Others:
  - Written in 2010 (although the EA Handbook says 2013), so it has out-of-date cost-effectiveness figures. There is a note at the top which says that and recommends looking at GiveWell, but I think it’d be better to just directly edit the article, so that people who don’t look up GiveWell’s figures don’t walk away with the impression that $5,000 to save a life is ineffective, or that we can save a life from fatal tuberculosis with $100 if we can’t. In addition, while the article claims that it costs $5,000 to save a life from diarrheal disease, I haven’t seen any figures from GiveWell which could provided an updated view.
    SHIC uses the following lines in their excerpt of “Efficient Charity”: “According to the World Bank’s analysis, immunising children for dengue fever saves one child’s life for $25,000, but we know that by donating to malaria prevention we could save about five lives for the same cost. If you want to save children, donating bed nets instead of immunising against dengue fever is the objectively right answer, the same way buying a nice car instead of a broken-down one for the same price is the right answer.”
  - I really like this article though and I think it does well in terms of emotional impact. It might be good to put this before Introduction to Effective Altruism to get readers hooked.
- Prospecting for Gold:
  - Feels kind of long-winded, and at some points the gold metaphor is a slog to read through rather than an actually helpful metaphor. I feel like it’s a lot better for watching as a presentation than reading. We might be able to rewrite this to make it more succinct.
  - Cites data from DCP2, which has some pretty unreliable figures, and there’s a DCP3 now which we can use instead. I don’t think this point is too important though.
  - This does cover some important concepts like long-tailed distributions, marginal utility, and comparative advantage.
I’m not going to read/review the rest of the EA Handbook right now, but I think overall, lightly edited transcripts of talks don’t make for great reading material, and we’d want to edit them a lot more to be more succinct and easier to read.
What links here?
- Evan_Gaensbauer's comment on EA Still Needs an Updated and Representative Introductory Guidebook by Evan_Gaensbauer (14 May 2019 6:09 UTC; 4 points)
- Evan_Gaensbauer's comment on EA Still Needs an Updated and Representative Introductory Guidebook by Evan_Gaensbauer (24 May 2019 6:47 UTC; 4 points)

mic 6 Aug 2021 22:45 UTC
22 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Phil Torres’ article: “The Dangerous Ideas of ‘Longtermism’ and ‘Existential Risk’”
Phil Torres’s tendency to misrepresent things aside, I think we need to take Phil Torres’s article as an example of the severe criticism that longtermism is liable to attract, as currently framed, and reflect on how we can present it differently. It’s not hard to read this sentence on the first page of (EDIT: the original version of) “The Case for Strong Longtermism”:

The idea, then, is that for the purposes of evaluating actions, we can in the first instance often simply ignore all the effects contained in the first 100 (or even 1000) years, focussing primarily on the further-future effects. Short-run effects act as little more than tie-breakers.

and conclude that, as Phil Torres does, longtermism means that we can justify causing present-day atrocities for a slight, let’s say 0.1% increase in the subjective probability of a valuable long-term future. Thinking rationally, atrocities do not improve the long-term future, and longtermists care a lot about stability. But with the framing given by “The Case for Strong Longtermism”, there is a small risk that is higher than it needs to be that future longtermists can be persuaded that atrocities would be justified, especially when subjective probabilities are so subjective. How can we reframe or redefine longtermism so that: firstly, we reduce the risk of longtermism being used to justify atrocities, and secondly (and I think more pressingly), reduce the risk that longtermism is generally seen as something that justifies atrocities?

It seems like this framing of longtermism is a far greater reputational risk to EA than, say, how 80,000 Hours over-emphasized earning to give, which is something that 80,000 Hours apparently seriously regrets. I think “The Case for Strong Longtermism” should be revised to not say things like “we can in the first instance often simply ignore all the effects contained in the first 100 (or even 1000) years”, without detailing significant caveats. It’s just a working paper—shouldn’t be too hard for Greaves and MacAskill to revise. (EDIT: this has already happened, as Aleks_K has pointed out below.) If there are many more articles like Phil Torres’s here written in other media in the near future, I would be very hesitant about using the term “longtermism”. Phil Torres is someone who is sympathetic to effective altruism and to existential risk reduction, someone who believes “you ought to care equally about people no matter when they exist”; now imagine if the article were written by someone who isn’t as sympathetic to EA.

(This really shouldn’t affect my argument, but I do generally agree with longtermism.)

mic 30 Nov 2021 4:46 UTC
21 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Lizka’s comment on: Wikipedia editing is important, tractable, and neglected
Here are some topics that I noticed don’t have a page and would probably meet Wikipedia’s notability criteria:
- The Life You Can Save (organization)
- Giving Green
- Evidence Action
- ALLFED
- Animal Equality
- Cluelessness (see Google Scholar)
- Moral patienthood
- Moral uncertainty
- Rationalist community
- The Alignment Problem
- The AI Does Not Hate You
- The Scout Mindset
- X-Risk: How Humanity Discovered Its Own Extinction
To check whether a subject seemed notable, I looked it up on Google News or Google Scholar and tried to see at a glance whether there are multiple independent articles that are about the subject.

I haven’t done a thorough search of EA-related organizations and books so I’m sure I’m missing some topics.

mic 12 May 2022 18:46 UTC
20 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Theo Hawking’s comment on: Bad Omens in Current Community Building
I see, I thought you were referring to reading a script about EA during a one-on-one conversation. I don’t see anything wrong with presenting a standardized talk, especially if you make it clear that EA is a global movement and not just a thing at your university. I would not be surprised if a local chapter of, say, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, used an introductory talk created by the national organization rather than the local chapter.

mic 25 Dec 2021 13:56 UTC
20 points
0 ∶ 0
on: We should be paying Intro Fellows
I know Penn EA offers fellows a $500 stipend, and I’ve always found this to feel a little odd, and I’m concerned other applicants might feel the same way. Having a stipend makes sense in the context of fellowships generally being paid, but I’m not sure that I would have known that a year ago or that other undergrads would know that fellowships are usually paid. It raises the question, if EA is so focused on effectiveness, why does it make sense to pay people to just learn about EA, especially when no other student group is paying people for things. Why does a student group even have this money to give out? Are you sure EA isn’t a cult?? (Though generally you pay cults, not the other way around.) We’ve been offering incentives in the form of charity gift card credit (for things like referring a friend to apply to the EA Fellowship or applying for career advising from 80,000 Hours) rather than direct cash.

You could probably avoid this reputation risk by marketing it right and making sure the fellowship seems prestigious, so that it seems reasonable to be getting paid. E.g., rather than writing,

Intro Fellowship

Understand the core ideas of effective altruism while earning a $500 stipend.

You’ll have 8 weekly 1-hour discussions with a cohort of 3-5 participants and one facilitator, and earn a $500 stipend. Before attending each discussion, you’ll complete a set of readings (and sometimes a brief written exercise). Application due ⁹⁄₁₉.

You could instead write something like,

Intro Fellowship

Learn about and reflect on how to maximize your impact

Most of us want to help others, but figuring out the best ways to do that can be difficult. Fellows will read about and discuss ideas from effective altruism about how to do the most good, and start to form a plan on having a more impactful career. All fellows will receive a $500 at the completion of this 8-week program. Applications due ⁹⁄₁₉.

As for where you could get funding for stipends from, have you asked the EA Infrastructure Fund about whether they would fund this?

If someone asks about where funding is coming from, I think it would be good to say something like,

We get club funding from the Centre for Effective Altruism and EA Infrastructure Fund. They’re largely/partially funded by Open Philanthropy, a foundation which also makes major grants in global poverty relief, climate change, farm animal welfare, and criminal justice reform.

mic 17 May 2022 4:59 UTC
19 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Question Mark’s comment on: If EA is no longer funding constrained, why should *I* give?
The Qualia Research Institute might be funding-constrained but it’s questionable whether it’s doing good work; for example, see this comment here about its Symmetry Theory of Valence.

mic 1 Jul 2022 3:55 UTC
18 points
0 ∶ 0
on: (Even) More Early-Career EAs Should Try AI Safety Technical Research
Some quick thoughts:
- Strong +1 to actually trying and not assuming a priori that you’re not good enough.
- If you’re at all interested in empirical AI safety research, it’s valuable to just try to get really good at machine learning research.
- An IMO medalist or generic “super-genius” is not necessarily someone who would be a top-tier AI safety researcher, and vice versa.
- For trying AI safety technical research, I’d strongly recommend How to pursue a career in technical AI alignment.

mic 19 May 2022 3:29 UTC
18 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Why should I care about insects?
Another introductory post about why one may want to care about insect welfare: Does Insect Suffering Bug You? - Faunalytics (Jesse Gildesgame, 2016).
Recently, activists have started campaigning against silk because they believe the production process is cruel to silkworms. Many people respond to these campaigns with skepticism: who cares about silkworms? It’s easy to feel for the chinchillas, foxes, and other furry mammals used in fur clothing. But insects like silkworms are a harder sell. It seems crazy to grant moral consideration to a bug.
Nonetheless, the idea that we should care about insect welfare has been gaining credibility among activists, scientists, and philosophers in recent years.
[…]
The question of whether insects can feel pain or have other negative subjective experiences is hotly contested among scientists.¹² Amid the uncertainty and debate, one thing is clear: at least for now, we can’t be sure. Whether or not insects have the capacity to suffer is still very much an open question.
If insects can suffer, they probably suffer a lot. Starvation, desiccation, injury, internal organ failure, predation, infection, chemical imbalances, and other stressors are common features in a bug’s life.¹³ It’s possible that insect lives are full of suffering.
Should we be worried?
Since the science isn’t clear, we should assign a nontrivial likelihood to the hypothesis that insects suffer. However, even if you think the likelihood that insects suffer is extremely low, it’s worth keeping in mind just how many insects there are. Their sheer numbers suggest that if they do suffer, the scale of the issue would be enormous. […]
What should be done, if anything?
[…]
Even if we should prioritize vertebrate welfare, there are things we can do to mitigate the risk of insect suffering that don’t impede efforts to promote vertebrate welfare.¹⁹ We can replace silk with polyester or rayon. We can develop and improve standards for the humane use of insects in research. We can help farmers choose pesticides that limit possible insect suffering. We can also take care to avoid hurting insects in our daily lives in a number of ways.
It might turn out that insects don’t suffer, but until we know, it’s a risk worth taking seriously.

mic 5 Apr 2022 16:43 UTC
18 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Where is the Social Justice in EA?
I think lack of diversity in EA is largely due to founder effects, and EA is working on this. There’s an emerging effort to have EA outreach in more global south countries like India, the Philippines, and Mexico, and local EA community-builders are working hard on that.
For what it’s worth, it seems to me that EA university groups have more racial and gender diversity than the broader EA movement, which I think is because they reach a broader base of people, compared to the type of people who randomly stumble across EA on the internet.
The EA community is exclusive by level of education. I have seen much written about how EA considers itself merit-based, however, to be recognized for epistemic merit, one would need to have at least a post-secondary education to achieve a reputable job.
I’m not sure I agree. I think many EA orgs are anti-credentialist enough that you wouldn’t need any university education if you have the skills, which could be built through, e.g., doing independent work funded by the Long-Term Future Fund. Actually, I think dropping out of college to do EA work is even more badass. Compared to academia, a good number of AI alignment researchers don’t have graduate degrees, though it is true that many EA leaders have graduate degrees.

mic

Should we be worried?

What should be done, if anything?