I’ve seen this paper: The effects of communicating uncertainty around statistics, on public trust. I thought its findings may be extensible for communicating uncertainty around not-statistics, so potentially useful for the community.
mikbp
Karma: 135
I just read an interview with Roberto Saviano (author of the book Gomorrah in which he denounced the organised crime in Italy) in which he says that his quest against the mafia has destroyed his life, not only he needs protection 24⁄7, he feels very alone. In his new book he explains the problems that the judge Giovanni Falcone run into because of his fight against the mafia, that led to his death. So, Salviano is now in “selling mode” in precisely this topic, but still, it made me think that making the life of whistle blowers and the like (like him or even the judge) may be an effective way to do good. Protection may not be neglected —although it may depend case by case— but in general making their life more livable and easier to navigate may help them focus better in their reporting work and help fight injustice. I don’t think this has been checked, so I just wanted to leave this comment here in case anyone wants to make a preliminary research to assess whether it is doable and effective.
This sounds very plausible, thanks
I write only as user, I don’t have any further knowledge but I have never seen it. There are the hair dressers that collaborate with “whip organisations” but as far as I know, they only collect the hair of the people who want to donate it.
In general, I don’t think it is very common that people want to cut >20cm of hair in one go, and it makes the hair dresser’s work somehow less natural, as they usually don’t cut all hair at once (i.e. make a ponytail and cut it). Maybe those collaborating hair dresses would ask a customer who wants to cut their hair in one go if they may donate it?
I forgot to ask you who are those “degrowthers” that you refer to. I never came across them. Could you please give me a couple of names?
GDP contraction (=somebody’s income contraction)
This is obvious. And, again, the point is that the relationship between GDP and social outcomes after some point breaks down or becomes irrelevant.
Many things can lead to degrowth, and some could be necesary. What I point out is that degrowth is allwayws a negative side consequence. You do not plan for it, you suffer it (the less, the better).
It seems strange to argue in favour of not planning for a negative consequence of something that may be necessary.
Has anyone, to your knowledge, assessed the chances that an energy descent (“Most Underrated EA Forum Post in 2022”) poses a significant global catastrophic risk? If not, who should look into that? If yes, what were the outcomes and how do/should they change EA’s priorities?
One thing I forgot to mention: a substantial carbon tax that accounts for its externalities would be a policy like the ones you describe and would most likely lead to, at least temporary, degrowth.
I’ll try to read it, thanks
It looks that income matters in the US, but then it does not matter across countries…
Well, this is the whole point. Some ways to organise countries achieve better social outcomes without the need of better GDP. You don’t have Bulgaria and Denmark in each US city in this sense, which is the sense that counts in this conversation.
But you cannot separate material and non material prosperity.
This is not what degrowthers claim and it is not what I claimed: “*Past a certain point*, the relationship between GDP and social outcomes breaks down *or becomes irrelevant*, at least for many indicators.” Logarithmic plots show pretty straight lines. This basically means exactly that past a certain point the relationship becomes irrelevant.
In any case, this all shows my point. Saying “Growth is good” is like saying “Intelligence is good”. Precisely the point of the post. All this is irrelevant if the ecological collapse degrowthers fear is a big enough thing. This would mean something leading to a pretty bad humanity’s state, far worse than stark degrowth. If you want to argue with a degrowther, you have to argue about that, not say growth is good. Same that advocates for AI development have to argue (and mostly don’t do) that developing AI is not dangerous, not saying how wonderful AI could be.
Thanks. I’ll try to take a look at the paper (at some point). The issue of comparing bads (effects of ecological collapse vs effects of full degrowth) still stands, though.
I do remember that we tweeted about this (and it made me blush that you too remember). I just want to read something longer than just a tweet. At the time I couldn’t find any paper.
Sorry, the claim “UK basically do not have enough land to produce the energy they’d need”… misses “with solar”.
According ESO, in 2022 the UK renewals mix was Wind − 26.8%, Biomass − 5.2%, Solar − 4.4%, Hydro − 1.8%, less than 40%. And wind is roughly half-half regarding on- and off-shore. Many countries are not big islands, or are more or less close to the equator, or have a lot of land. Really hard to scale.
EROI: low but acceptable EROI + storage + need to overinstall = pretty bad effective EROI. And EROI is not all that counts, of course.
While taking a look around the forum for some answer before, I came across this post series (so far I have only skimmed it) that seem to flesh out pretty much my concerns and does it much better I could have. Have you seen it?
I really have not come across academic “degrowthers” that claim that we need to have fewer people or less prosperity (Kallis, Hickel, Raworth, Jackson, Van den bergh). In any case, in the post I deliberately spoke about to “degrowth the economy in rich countries”, not about degrowth in general or (any group of) degrowthers to try avoid these kinds of misunderstandings.
From the post: “economic degrowth in rich countries”. From your quote: “global negative growth”.
But in any case this is irrelevant if the ecological collapse that some argue about has worse global effects.
I don’t find “Spain’s life expectancy is 5 years longer than that of USA’s” to be subjective. Do you?
I am curious about the arguments from the person who voted disagree to alexherwix’s comment.
You are Spanish. Spain’s GDP per capita is much lower than that in the USA, yet Spain’s life expectancy is 5 years longer than that of USA’s and Spain outperforms USA in many other social indicators. There’s much more than GDP in prosperity. Past a certain point, the relationship between GDP and social outcomes breaks down *or becomes irrelevant*, at least for many indicators.
Do you have some references for this? Is the claim more that EA hasn’t seen the degrowth arguments at all, or that it has and has dismissed them unjustifiably (in your opinion)?
I don’t have references but, for example searching for the term Degrowth in the forum only returns 22 results. The claim is a bit of both, but more that EA has dismissed them unjustifiably. And I partly understand it because the term degrowth is very misleading.
That the world is getting better in some senses and worse in some others I think it is nothing anyone in either side disputes, no? Their argument rests in the fact that past a certain point, the relationship between GDP and social outcomes breaks down *or becomes irrelevant* (see linear plots of Child mortality vs GDP, for example -below). And it is not about how to live morally, it is about what the carrying capacity of Earth can sustain. This carrying capacity depends on our technology, and the “stocks” are very large, so it is not a problem to follow a trajectory that goes outside the carrying capacity for a while as long as it comes back sufficiently inside on time. But this is nothing that can be lightly disregarded.
Similar to what Brad says, posts not in line with EA mainstream, or just exploring or giving ideas, or not written in EA-style, or drafty are often down-voted very early on without engaging in discussion or giving any reason for the down-vote.
Even though forum moderators try to engage people to write even if the post is not perfectly polished or thought through—most people are very busy!-- to incentivize exchange of ideas, the dynamics of the forum make it basically useless as such posts are usually very quickly hidden. It often feels useless to write anything.
Another reason, which is understandable and difficult to avoid, but that I find a bit surprising in this forum, is the status and political dynamics: I’ve seen several times good posts with very low karma and afterwards very similar posts written by known EAs that have lots of karma.