I studied Physics, hold a MSc in Photonics and was working for some years in a micro-cavitation lab. Then, as I wanted to work in improving the long-term future, I switched and did a PhD in applied foresight. Since then, I work as foresight researcher, first in the Centre for Foresight and Internationalisation of the Łukasiewicz Network and currently in Fraunhofer ISI. I helped to design Nüwa, a 1M people Mars city-state ranked top 10 in the Mars Society contest 2020, and have experience in sustainability projects and social volunteering. I’m very interested in the relation between global energy and progress, and their consequences for the environment, which may pose a global catastrophic risk. Dad of 2 still in that period when there’s no time for anything else than taking care of them and working.
Miquel Banchs-Piqué (prev. mikbp)
Point 1 in favour reads very much like “focus on near-future benefits because this will (most likely) bring far-future benefits”, which is in practice indistinguishable from just “focus on near-future benefits”. Plus the assumption—improving near-future will most likely improve far-future, which I also tend to think—is far from certain (you acknowledge it). With this reasoning, technically, the underlying reason to do X is improving the far-future, indeed. But the actual effect of X is improving the near-future with much higher certainty than improving the far-future; everything is aligned. This is not, AFAI understand, the point of the question. Who wouldn’t do X? Answering assuming this scenario doesn’t give any information.
Consider the following different scenario: doing X will make near-future worse with much higher certainty than it does far-future better (assume same value generation magnitudes as before, just make the value for near-future negative). Would you then advocate doing X? I think this gives the information the question is asking for.
I would overwhelmingly most likely not do X in that scenario. Because I know how dumb we (I) am and how complex reality is, so the longer the time frame, the less I trust any reasoning (cluelessness) [It is difficult enough to find out whether an action taken has actually been net positive for the immediate future!]. Would you? If your answer tends to No, then the far-future effects are not the most important determinant of what we ought to do for you.
Far-future effects are the most important determinant of what we ought to do
Cluelessness. The world is far too complex and we are far too dumb to pretend that we can predict whether if what we do now is going to be net-positive in the very long run.
I just came to the forum to ask the same question and you did it much better than I would, as I don’t have the time to have given much information to accompany the question. I’m glad you asked it!
Addressing face masks expiry date as low-hanging mini-cause area?
I agree in general but I strongly miss something in the lines of:
Each problem is different, the roots of a single problem are ill defined and they usually span along probably endless levels… and, most importantly, problems are nested. One should be aware of this otherwise one cannot address the most interesting question which is whether, overall, it is more helpful/effective to address a problem in a superficial level or in a deeper one.
In some cases the number and severity of problems is going to fade by addressing them directly, but sometimes they are only going to get worse with time if a deeper parent problem is not addressed. You gave examples of the first type. An example of the second type are problems stemming from climate change. If we’d not do anything to stop the climate to continue warming, we could move cities further from the coast, rebuild and protect us from more extreme weather events, etc.; but these problems would continue to reproduce only getting worse with time.
“Solving a problem doesn’t require addressing the root cause of it”, yes; but sometimes, not doing it produces more and more problems. The aim is not solving problems, the aim is having so few problems as possible. And these are significantly distinct aims.
It breaks my heart a bit tbh, but I’ve long accepted it probably won’t happen.
I know far to less about economy for having a strong opinion about it, but I feel the same way.
Have you heard about the movement EconGood that came out of the book Economy for the common good by C. Felber? I find their proposals very reasonable and I would like to know what EAs think about it. I made a couple of comments mentioning it in the forum but the movement is too unknown, probably really few EAs have heard about it outside say Germany, Austria and maybe Spain.
What made you change your mind?
There is an Avaaz signature campaign to “Establish National Licensing systems for AGI before it is fully achieved” (started by the director of the Millennium Project, Jerome Glenn) you may want to sign.
I’m not sure how fitting such a petition is for the forum, that’s why I put it here. If somebody more involved (forum admins, maybe?) thinks it is worth for it to have a real post, please do it.
Yes, it is frustrating the downvoting-without-explanation dynamics of this forum. From the one side, forum admins encourage people to write more rather than less and then people downvoting without giving any reason. Maybe they don’t realise it, but that’s harming the forum and the movement. Anyway, thanks for the moral support.
Interested to hear other thoughts
Same here! :-)
Ok, thanks. I leave it like this, then. Then everyone will have answered to the same question :-)
And actually, since some time I tend to think that he’s probably been vastly less net-good in the past than I previously thought. Not really because of him, but because Chinese companies are beating everyone, including Tesla, with their EVs (and I don’t think he’s had any influence in China betting hard for EVs, though I might be wrong here); so if Tesla would have not existed, the adoption of EVs would just have been only delayed for few years (and mostly only in the west). So his net-positive contribution -for me and now- seems much lower than it seemed before.
Oh, I meant it to include everything, sorry for the confusion. So, he’s done a bunch of net-good stuff but now he’s doing a bunch of net-bad stuff, is the former still larger than the latter? How should I express it in the title so that it is clear?
[Question] Is Musk still net-positive for humanity?
I like your posts. They are short and informative.
I really wonder how you manage to have the time to work, take care of the kids and do other stuff like writing… good posts. It is not only that the topic is usually interesting, but writing short informative posts is usually much more time-consuming that writing the same post as a long and not specific/without links version. How do you do it?
Replacing chicken meat with plant-based foods only decreases pain slightly more than replacing it with beef or pork.
This is very surprising to me! Super interesting! To be honest, I find this as important as the numbers you give in the post.
Hi Vasco, merry Christmas and so on!
It is great that you base your arguments on other people’s research. Then add a sentence or two clarifying it (in addition, this would add some information on the values you used). All these are very speculative still, but this is not the issue -though it could be mentioned.
The issue with your post is that you claim something you do not demonstrate at all. If you’d framed the post as something similar to “Replacing chicken meat with beef or pork: pain vs emissions analysis”, your post would be really very good. I still think you should add some description to the values used, but just including the reference from RP would probably suffice for this. And if it’d include the information that replacing chicken with no-meat does not move the needle nearly as much as replacing it for beef or pork, it would be even better, as this is very relevant context.
But this is not what you do. You have done very interesting and useful calculations. But your claims go much, much further than what you can claim with them. You narrow your analysis to a comparison of two specific aspects of the issue, basically neglecting the rest. I hope you see that the issue goes beyond pain and emissions. You most likely think that these two aspects are the most important ones for the analysis but do no support -or even mention- this. Doing it would probably clarify the values behind your analysis—if you really want to go broad. Or you could just say sth like “assuming pain and emissions are the driving aspects of this problem...”. But do not even do this.
A stupid example. There’s people who care mostly about the amount of pleasure in the universe and (claim) not to care much for suffering. Assuming chickens get some pleasure at all in their lives, the amount of pleasure in the universe would increase by eating more chicken and less pork or beef. Even if they currently wouldn’t experience any pleasure, the potential would be huge… and the analysis completely opposite to yours. And this is not taking into account any other aspects than animal pleasure.
I am sure you see all this, and that you wanted to write as short an essay as possible. But to do this, then you have to be very specific—otherwise, a very good analysis like yours ends up not holding the water you claim it holds.
I didn’t want to go beyond commenting the form—how the post is presented. But as you answered, I’d like to ask you something about the content as well:
I’m so confused on why you wrote the post given the preferences you believe people (EAs?) have and that you are (almost?) vegetarian/vegan. Making the change you propose decreases a bit animal pain… while decreasing the amount of meat one eats decreases it much more.
Hi Vasco, thanks for the answer and the upvote (I guess it was you).
I think most people would prefer decreasing human healthy life by a few minutes across billions of humans over roughly a century over soon causing to one pet tens of hours more of annoying pain, tens of hours more of hurtful pain, a few hours more of disabling pain, and a few seconds more of excruciating pain.
I first want to say that I imagine you just answered fast and without giving it much thought, so I don’t expect this to really reflect your believes. Even so I have to reply what is written.
Maybe it is true that most people would prefer this. It still would be a values-dependent issue.
Even if it would be true that most people feel like this, you cannot pretend that most people feel the same way about a pet than about a random animal, less so about what they regard as food. I mean, take a look around! I hope I don’t need to expand on this. We are not speaking about how we think people should feel but how they actually feel.
There are more aspects to the issue besides animal suffering vs (human health issues due to) GHG emissions, and people vary on their values related to these issues. The numbers you do in your post are partial and you don’t give any reasoning on why you presumably think that the other aspects of the issue are less relevant and therefore you don’t bother to quantify/compare them.
Maybe you are addressing exclusively EAs. Then, of course, your assertion on people’s preferences is much more accurate. Still, 100% values-dependent and with more relevant aspects besides pain and emissions.
I understand you think I am overconfident about my views, but I want the post to represent these, and I worry the updates you suggested would made it sound like I am less confident than what I actually am.
It is not an issue about expressed confidence but about not acknowledging that your conclusions are values-dependent. For example, “given my values I am 100% confident that (...), plus I believe that most people (in EA) have similar enough values to mine so that these conclusions apply 100% to them too” expresses total confidence in your views while acknowledges that your conclusions are not universal but values-dependent, so it reflects reality more accurately.
In this line, it is very good that at the end of your post you acknowledge the possible health issues and give people worried about this the option to go in the direction to vegan/vegetarian. Note that this is a veiled acknowledgement that more aspects can play a significant role in your conclusions and that these depend on one’s values. Let’s make it explicit!
Then it definitely fits with your vote. I just meant that the fact that you (and me) tend to think that making the near-future better also will make the far-future better shouldn’t influence the answer to this question.
We just disagree on how confident we are on our assessment of how our actions will affect the far-future. And probably this is because of our age ;-)