MichaelDello

Sen­tience In­sti­tute 2022 End of Year Summary

• MichaelDelloNov 6, 2022, 10:50 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Joel Tan🔸’s comment on: Shal­low Re­port on Asteroids

  Fair enough! I probably wasn’t clear—what I had in mind was one country detecting an asteroid first, then deflecting it into Earth before any other country/​‘the global community’ detects it. Just recently we detected a 1.5 km near Earth object that has an orbit which intersects with Earth. The scenario I had in mind was that one country detects this (but probably a smaller one ~50 m) first, then deflects it.

  We detect ~50 m asteroids as they make their final approach to Earth all the time, so detecting one first by chance could be a strategic advantage.

  I take your other points, though.

• MichaelDelloOct 26, 2022, 3:54 AM

  1 point

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  on: Shal­low Re­port on Asteroids

  “(b) Secondly, while the great powers may see military use for smaller scale orbital bombardment weapons (i.e. ones capable of causing sub-global or Tunguska-like asteroid events), these are only as destructive as nuclear weapons and similarly cannot be used without risking nuclear retaliation.”

  I don’t think this is necessarily right. First, an asteroid impact is easier to seem like a natural event, therefore being less likely to result in mutually assured destruction. Also, just because we can’t think of a reason for a nation to use an asteroid strike, doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Accidental deflection of a small planetary body into an Earth-intersecting orbit is possible. And I don’t necessarily think that only great powers will have access to asteroid deflection technology in the future. As the technology develops, it will be possible for smaller and smaller groups to access it.

  Given the relatively low probability of asteroid impacts on short-term timescales, it wouldn’t take that much of an increased risk from the deflection dilemma to make developing deflection technology not worth it.

  I think improving detection technology might be a safer option to leave our options open while having a similarly positive effect.

• MichaelDelloApr 27, 2022, 5:06 AM

  15 points

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  on: Feed­back re­quested for an an­i­mal ad­vo­cacy and longter­mist ca­reer (di­rect and re­search)

  If anyone is still reading this today and is curious where I ended up, I just took a job with Sentience Institute as a Strategy Lead & Researcher.

• MichaelDelloApr 25, 2022, 1:07 AM

  7 points

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  on: Up­dat­ing on Nu­clear Power

  Cost is one factor, but nuclear also has other advantages such as land use, amount of raw material required (to make the renewables and lithium etc. for battery storage), and benefits for power grid.

  It’s nice that renewables is getting cheaper, and I’d definitely like to see more renewables in the mix, but my ideal long term scenario is a mix of nuclear, renewables and battery. I’m weakly open to a small amount of gas being used for power generation in the long term in some cases.

• MichaelDelloApr 24, 2022, 7:23 AM

  2 points

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  in reply to: Ren Ryba’s comment on: Minor poli­ti­cal par­ties as an ad­vo­cacy strat­egy: The case of an­i­mal politics

  Hm, good to know and fair point! I wonder if we can test the effect of extra funding over what’s needed to run a passable campaign by investing say $5,000 in online ads etc. in a particular electorate, but even that is hard to compare to other electorates given the number of factors. If anyone else has ideas for measuring impact of extra funding, I’d love to hear it!

• MichaelDelloApr 20, 2022, 3:54 AM

  7 points

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  in reply to: Ren Ryba’s comment on: Minor poli­ti­cal par­ties as an ad­vo­cacy strat­egy: The case of an­i­mal politics

  Seeking grants from EA grant makers is something I haven’t at all considered. I wonder if there are any legal restrictions on this as a political party recipient (I haven’t looked into this but could foresee some potential issues with foreign sources of funding). On the one hand, AJP can generate its own funds, but I feel like we are still funding constrained in the sense that an extra $10,000 per state branch per election (at least) could almost always be put to good use. Do you think we should we look into this, particularly with the federal election coming up?

• MichaelDelloApr 20, 2022, 3:50 AM

  9 points

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  in reply to: Tom Bry-Chevalier🔸’s comment on: Minor poli­ti­cal par­ties as an ad­vo­cacy strat­egy: The case of an­i­mal politics

  “This being said, the format of legislative elections in France makes it very unlikely that a deputy from the animalist party will ever be elected, and perhaps limits our ability to negotiate with the other parties.”

  This makes some sense, as unfortunate as it is. Part of the motivation for other parties being willing to negotiate with you or adopt their own incrementally pro-animal policies is based on how worried they are that they might lose a seat to your party. If they’re not at all worried, this limits your influence.

  But I wouldn’t say it entirely voids your influence. The more votes you receive, the more it shows other parties that people care about animals enough to vote accordingly. If they want to try and gain some of those votes to beat out other opponents from major parties, they may still adopt some pro-animal policies if they think it might mean getting elected. I think it’s still possible to have some influence in systems where minor parties are unlikely to get elected.

• MichaelDelloApr 14, 2022, 12:14 PM

  20 points

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  on: Minor poli­ti­cal par­ties as an ad­vo­cacy strat­egy: The case of an­i­mal politics

  I just want to add that I personally became actively involved with the AJP because I felt that political advocacy from within political parties had been overly neglected by the movement. My intuition was that this is because some of the earlier writings about political advocacy/​running for election work by 80,000 Hours and others focused mostly on the US/​UK political systems, which I understand are harder for small parties to have any influence (especially the US).

  One advantage of being in a small party is that it’s relatively easy to become quite senior quite quickly if you are dedicated, and then have a modest influence on party policy and strategy.

  By way of disclosure, I reviewed a draft of this post and am a member of the AJP (e.g. have run as a candidate several times and am the deputy convener of the NSW state branch).

• MichaelDelloJun 25, 2020, 4:32 AM

  3 points

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  in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Feed­back re­quested for an an­i­mal ad­vo­cacy and longter­mist ca­reer (di­rect and re­search)

  Thank you so much for the feedback!

  I did think about working for a government department (non-partisan), but I decided against it. From my understanding, you can’t be working for ‘the crown’ and running for office, you’d have to take time off or quit.

  The space agency was my thinking along those lines, as I don’t think that counts as working for the crown.

  I hadn’t thought about the UK Civil Service. I’ve never looked in to it. I don’t think that would affect me too much, as long as I’m not a dual citizen.

  I haven’t completely ruled out earning to give. I worked in the energy industry for 18 months before my PhD earning to give, but felt a pretty low personal fit for it. If I found a job that I was also intrinsically passionate about, I would consider it, but not otherwise.

  Ah I hadn’t thought about the for-profit plant-based food tech side of things, thanks, I’ll think about that.

Feed­back re­quested for an an­i­mal ad­vo­cacy and longter­mist ca­reer (di­rect and re­search)

• MichaelDelloJun 10, 2020, 2:26 AM

  6 points

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  on: X-risks to all life v. to humans

  Am I reading the 0.1% probability for nuclear war right as the probability that nuclear war breaks out at all, or the probability that it breaks out and leads to human extinction? If it’s the former, this seems much too low. Consider that twice in history nuclear warfare was likely averted by the actions of a single person (e.g. Stanislav Petrov), and we have had several other close calls ( https://​​en.wikipedia.org/​​wiki/​​List_of_nuclear_close_calls ).

• MichaelDelloMay 31, 2020, 8:38 AM

  7 points

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  in reply to: MichaelA🔸’s comment on: Why mak­ing as­ter­oid deflec­tion tech might be bad

  When I say that the idea is entrenched in popular opinion, I’m mostly referring to people in the space science/​engineering fields—either as workers, researchers or enthusiasts. This is anecdotal based on my experience as a PhD candidate in space science. In the broader public, I think you’d be right that people would think about it much less, however the researchers and the policy makers are the ones you’d need to convince for something like this, in my view.

• MichaelDelloMay 22, 2020, 12:44 PM

  2 points

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  in reply to: gavintaylor’s comment on: Why mak­ing as­ter­oid deflec­tion tech might be bad

  We were pretty close to carrying out an asteroid redirect mission too (ARM), it was only cancelled in the last few years. It was for a small asteroid (~ a few metres across), but it could certainly happen sooner than I think most people suspect.

• MichaelDelloMay 22, 2020, 12:42 PM

  2 points

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  in reply to: David_Kristoffersson’s comment on: Why mak­ing as­ter­oid deflec­tion tech might be bad

  Neat, I’ll have to get in touch, thanks.

Why mak­ing as­ter­oid deflec­tion tech might be bad

• MichaelDelloMay 18, 2020, 4:03 AM

  3 points

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  in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: How should longter­mists think about eat­ing meat?

  I guess that would indeed make them long term problems, but my reading on them seems to have been that they are catastrophic risks rather than existential risks, as in they don’t seem to have much likelihood (relative to other X-risks) of eliminating all of humanity.

Ap­ply­ing speciesism to wild-an­i­mal suffering

• MichaelDello 17 May 2020 22:55 UTC

  6 points

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  in reply to: Rupert’s comment on: How should longter­mists think about eat­ing meat?

  My impression is that people do over-estimate the cost of ‘not-eating-meat’ or veganism by quite a bit (at least for most people in most situations). I’ve tried to come up with a way to quantify this. I might need to flesh it out a bit more but here it is.

  So suppose you are trying to quantify what you think the sacrifice of being vegan is, either relative to vegetarian or to average diet. If I were asked what was the minimum amount money I would have to have received to be vegan vs non-vegan for the last 5 years if there were ZERO ethical impact of any kind, it would probably be $500 (with hindsight—cue the standard list of possible biases). This doesn’t seem very high to me. My experience has been that most people who have become vegan have said that they vastly overestimated the sacrifice they thought was involved.

  If one thought that there were diminishing returns for the sacrifice for being vegan over vegetarian, perhaps the calculus is better for being vegetarian over non-vegan, or for being vegan 99% of the time, say only when eating at your grandparents’ house. I see too many people say ‘well I can’t be vegan because I don’t want to upset my grandpa when he makes his traditional X dish’. Well, ok, so be vegan in every other aspect then. And as a personal anecdote, when my nonna found out she couldn’t make her traditional Italian dishes for me anymore, she got over it very quickly and found vegan versions of all of them [off-topic, apologies!].

  I also suspect that people are comfortable thinking about longtermism and sacrifice like this for non-humans but not for humans is because they may think that humans are still significantly more important. I think this is the case when you count flow-on effects, but not intrinsically (e.g. 1 unit of suffering for a human vs non-human).

  I think the intrinsic worth ratio for most non-human animals is close to 1 to 1. I think the evidence suggests that their capacity for suffering is fairly close to ours, and some animals might arguably have an even higher capacity for suffering than us (I should say I’m strictly wellbeing/​suffering based utilitarian in this).

  I think the burden of proof should be on someone to show why humans are significantly more worthy of intrinsic moral worth. We all evolved from a common ancestor, and while there might be a sliding scale of moral worth from us to insects, it seems strange for there to be such a sharp drop off after humans, even within mammals. I would strongly err on the side of caution when applying this to my ethics, given our constantly expanding circle of moral consideration throughout history.

• MichaelDello 17 May 2020 22:35 UTC

  16 points

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  on: How should longter­mists think about eat­ing meat?

  Self-plugging as I’ve written about animal suffering and longtermism in this essay:

  http://​​www.michaeldello.com/​​terraforming-wild-animal-suffering-far-future/​​

  To summarise some key points, a lot of why I think promoting veganism in the short term will be worthwhile in the long term is values spreading. Given the possibility of digital sentience, promoting the social norm of caring about non-human sentience today could have major long term implications.

  People are already talking about introducing plants, insects and animals to Mars as a means of terraforming it. This would enormously increase the amount of wild-animal suffering. Even if we never leave our solar system, terraforming just one body, let alone several, could near double the amount of wild-animal suffering. There’s also the possibility of bringing factory farms to Mars. I’m studying a PhD in space science and still get shut down when I try to say ‘hey lets maybe think about not bringing insects to Mars’. This is far off from being a practical concern (maybe 100-1000 years) but it’s never too early to start shifting social norms.

  I’d call this mid term rather than long term, but the impacts of animal agriculture on climate change, zoonotic disease spread and antibiotic resistance are significant.

  I’d like to echo Peter’s point as well. We don’t ask these questions for a lot of other actions that would be unethical in the short term. There seems to be a bias in EA circles of asking this kind of question about non-human animal exploitation. I’m more arguing for consistency than saying we can’t argue that a short term good has a long term bad resulting in net bad.