nathan98000

Karma: 164

nathan98000 7 Apr 2024 19:23 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: How I learned to stop worrying and love X-risk
FWIW standard conceptions of existential risk would categorize suffering risks as a type of existential risk. For example, Nick Bostrom has defined it as “threats that could cause our extinction or destroy the potential of Earth-originating intelligent life.” (emphasis mine)

nathan98000 1 Apr 2024 2:30 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Keen Visionary’s comment on: Education: Teaching Love (Philia/Brotherly love) as a Priority Cause
I think indoctrination (at least among adults) is actually surprisingly difficult. The psychologist Hugo Mercier was recently on the 80,000 Hours podcast to discuss why.
And the other thing which has had much more dramatic consequences is the idea of brainwashing: the idea that if you take prisoners of war and you submit them to really harsh treatment — you give them no food, you stop them from sleeping, you’re beating them up — so you make them, as you are describing, extremely tired and very foggy, and then you get them to read Mao for hours and hours on end. Are they going to become communists? Well, we know the answer, because unfortunately, the Koreans and the Chinese have tried during the Korean War, and it just doesn’t work at all. They’ve managed to kill a lot of POWs, and they managed to get I think two of them to go back to China and to claim that they had converted to communism. But in fact, after the fact, it was revealed that these people had just converted because they wanted to stop being beaten and starved to death, and that as soon as they could revert back to go back to the US, they did so.
I’d also echo others’ comments that I think testing a curriculum will be relatively hard. Even education programs with clear measurables (e.g. financial literacy programs, work-skills programs for former convicts, second language programs) often end up unsuccessful. It would be even more difficult to teach “love.” How do you measure how loving someone is and reliably teach it to others?

nathan98000 21 Mar 2024 3:22 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Crabs in a Bucket ~ Or Links in a Chain
Fwiw this review discusses why Rutger Bregman’s book is deeply flawed.

”That he felt the need to misrepresent the past and other cultures in order to provide a ‘hopeful’ history is rather a message of despair. Bregman presents hunter-gatherer societies as being inherently peaceful, antiwar, equal, and feminist likely because these are commonly expressed social values among educated people in his own society today. This is not history but mythology.”

nathan98000 28 Feb 2024 18:25 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Refining My Moral Values Using Steelman Solitaire
Interesting post! I think what would have made this more helpful would be a discussion of the kinds of arguments that led you to change your mind in each case. For example, you note that you were convinced of universal prescriptivism but then later came to reject it. A brief discussion of the relevant arguments for/against would be interesting!

nathan98000 4 Feb 2024 5:33 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: JacobBowden2023’s comment on: A response to an attempted rebuttal of maximising ethics
[What] is required of the philosopher is also to provide grounding or to think about grounding upon which the intuitions pointed to by a thought experiment are consistent.
Why can’t a philosopher just present a counterexample? In fact, it seems arguing from a specific alternative grounding would make Timmerman’s argument weaker. As he notes (emphasis mine):
I have purposefully not made a suggestion as to how many (if any) children Lisa is obligated to rescue. I did so to make my argument as neutral as possible, as I want it to be consistent with any normative ethical view ranging from moral libertarianism to a view that only permits Lisa to indulge in a comparably insignificant good a single time.
As an analogy, if you make a general claim such as: “All marbles are blue,” it’s enough to point to a single counterexample to show that that claim is false. I don’t also have to have my own view about what colors marbles come in.

Also, as a matter of interpreting Famine, Affluence, and Morality, Singer doesn’t justify his principles based on any inferences from the drowning child thought experiment. Instead, he only uses that thought experiment as an application of his principles, which he takes to simply be common-sense. And although Singer is himself a utilitarian, he doesn’t make any argument for utilitarianism in that paper, largely for the same reason as Timmerman! He wants diverse people to agree with him regardless of their grounding for the principles he discusses.

nathan98000 1 Feb 2024 4:33 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: A response to an attempted rebuttal of maximising ethics
I don’t quite understand your objection to Timmerman’s thought experiment. You say it’s “ad hoc” and “justifies our complacency arbitrarily”, but it’s unclear what you mean by these terms. And it’s unclear why someone should agree that it’s ad hoc and arbitrary.

nathan98000 7 Jan 2024 0:52 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: SummaryBot’s comment on: “Capitalism”: talking past each other
This seems like a good summary! Was this downvoted merely because of a wrong pronoun?

nathan98000 14 Nov 2023 17:30 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: TESCREAL and social justice: a synthesis
I don’t think advocating for libertarian socialism or anarcho-communism is a tractable way to improve the world. I also think it’s not at all obvious that it would even be desirable.

And in the US at least, the term “social justice” has become extremely politically loaded, and I think it would be unwise for EAs to explicitly associate themselves with the term.

nathan98000 8 Nov 2023 20:36 UTC
5 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jason Brennan’s comment on: Controlling for a thinker’s big idea
For someone not familiar with Farrell’s work, what’s the main problem with it?

nathan98000 28 Sep 2023 2:16 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: No. Impending AGI doesn’t make everything else unimportant.
I appreciate the post, though I think “The universe is meaningless” section wasn’t so convincing. The universe is meaningless because we’re the product of natural selection? I would want a better argument than that.

nathan98000 7 Sep 2023 20:41 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: EA is underestimating intelligence agencies and this is dangerous
FWIW I think it’s still the case that psychologists/neuroscientists are nowhere near developing an accurate lie detector. And the paper you cite doesn’t seem to support the claim that lie detection technology is accurate. From the abstract (emphasis mine):
Analyzing the myriad issues related to fMRI lie detection, the article identifies the key limitations of the current neuroimaging of deception science as expert evidence and explores the problems that arise from using scientific evidence before it is proven scientifically valid and reliable. We suggest that courts continue excluding fMRI lie detection evidence until this potentially useful form of forensic science meets the scientific standards currently required for adoption of a medical test or device.

There are methodological challenges associated with the typical studies done on lie detection. From a 2016 paper (emphasis mine):
Great hopes and expectations were expressed regarding the potential use of brain imaging techniques for the detection of deception. Contrary to what has been advocated by many researchers as well as practitioners (e.g., Bles & Haynes, 2008; Farwell, 2012; Langleben et al., 2005), the introduction of new measures such as P300 and fMRI is by no means a solution to the problems associated with the ANS-based CQT polygraph test. The CQT has been criticized for lacking proper controls and being unstandardized. In addition, its outcome is often contaminated by prior information available to the examiner. None of these criticisms can be resolved by replacing ANS recordings with fMRI measures.
Moreover, all paradigms face a similar logical problem: deception cannot be directly inferred either from the presence of emotional arousal in the CQT or from attentional orienting or inhibition in the CIT or DoD, regardless of whether ANS, reaction times, ERPs, or fMRI measures have been used.
So I’m not sure what the basis is for saying it’s an “unambiguous mistake” to think accurate lie detection technology is a long way off.

nathan98000 28 Apr 2023 0:17 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Should we priortize cognitive science in EA?
I’m personally skeptical that we’ll ever “solve” what the neural basis of sentience is. That said, I think there are still some promising ways a better understanding of psychology can advance standard EA causes. Here’s a paper that goes into more depth on this issue:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35981321/

nathan98000 20 Apr 2023 14:33 UTC
1 point
3 ∶ 1
in reply to: Manbearpanda’s comment on: Newcomb’s Paradox Explained
But for the paradox’s setup to make sense, the player must have, in some sense, made his decision before the prediction is made: he is either someone who is going to take both boxes or someone who is just going to take the opaque box.
This doesn’t seem correct. It’s possible to make a better than random guess about what a person will decide in the future, even if the person has not yet made their decision.

This is not mysterious in ordinary contexts. I can make a plan to meet with a friend and justifiably have very high confidence that they’ll show up at the agreed time. But that doesn’t preclude that they might in fact choose to cancel at the last minute.

nathan98000 10 Mar 2023 21:56 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: mikbp’s comment on: “Is this risk actually existential?” may be less important than we think
I suppose I agree that humanity should generally focus more on catastrophic (non-existential) risks.
That said, I think this is often stated explicitly. For example, MacAskill in his recently book explicitly says that many of the actions we take to reduce x-risks will also look good even for people with shorter-term priorities.
Do you have any quote from someone who says we shouldn’t care about catastrophic risks at all?

nathan98000 10 Mar 2023 15:52 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: mikbp’s comment on: “Is this risk actually existential?” may be less important than we think
Maybe a more realistic example would be helpful here. There have been recent reports claiming that, although it will negatively affect millions of people, climate change is unlikely to be an existential risk. Suppose that’s true. Do you think EAs should devote as much time and effort preventing climate change-level risks as they do preventing existential risks?

nathan98000 9 Mar 2023 22:06 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Fighting without hope
I found this post insightful! Although it’s a brief post, I’d recommend providing a brief heading for each section for people who are heavy skimmers.

nathan98000 9 Mar 2023 21:51 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: mikbp’s comment on: “Is this risk actually existential?” may be less important than we think
I’m not sure I understand your point then...
Surely a future in which humanity flourishes into the longterm future is a better one than a future where people are living as “ants.” And if we have uncertainty about which path we’re on and there are plausible reasons to think we’re on the ant path, it can be worthwhile to figure that out so we can shift in a better direction.

nathan98000 9 Mar 2023 19:41 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: “Is this risk actually existential?” may be less important than we think
For example: Does it make any difference whether a non-alligned superintelligent AGI will actively try to kill all humanity or not? If we are certain that it won’t, we would still live in a world where we are the ants and it is humanity.
This misunderstands what an existential risk is, at least as used by the philosophers who’ve written about this. Nick Bostrom, for example, notes that the extinction of humanity is not the only thing that counts as an extinction risk. (The term “existential risk” is unfortunately a misnomer in this regard.) Something that drastically curtails the future potential of humanity would also count.

nathan98000 5 Mar 2023 16:51 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Things I recommend you buy and use.
I have no idea, I’ve spent less than a half hour looking into this. The Cochrane Review shows that there’s maaaybe an advantage to water flossing, but there just haven’t been that many studies on it. And the studies do assume that participants are flossing/water flossing at the same frequency. If the pleasant sensation you get from water flossing motivates you to keep doing it, I think that’s great!

nathan98000 5 Mar 2023 1:13 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Things I recommend you buy and use.
I like this list!
Just a heads up for the studies about water flossing:
Two of them were funded by WaterPik and another is published in the “Journal of Baghdad College of Dentistry,” which looks… suspicious from my naive perspective.
A recent Cochrane Review compares toothbrushing against tooth brushing + water flossing (aka “oral irrigating”):
Very-low certainty evidence suggested oral irrigators may reduce gingivitis measured by GI at one month (SMD −0.48, 95% CI −0.89 to −0.06; 4 trials, 380 participants), but not at three or six months. Low-certainty evidence suggested that oral irrigators did not reduce bleeding sites at one month (MD −0.00, 95% CI −0.07 to 0.06; 2 trials, 126 participants) or three months, or plaque at one month (SMD −0.16, 95% CI −0.41 to 0.10; 3 trials, 235 participants), three months or six months, more than toothbrushing alone.
It also compares water flossing with regular flossing:
Low- to very low-certainty evidence suggested oral irrigation may reduce gingivitis at one month compared to flossing, but very low-certainty evidence did not suggest a difference between devices for plaque.