Ofer

• Ofer 6 Dec 2024 16:39 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Greg_Colbourn’s comment on: Is it a fed­eral crime in the US to de­velop AGI that may cause hu­man ex­tinc­tion?

  My understanding is that the term “domestic terrorism” as defined in the linked page can only apply to activities that:

  appear to be intended—

  (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

  (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

  (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping;

  This does not apply to the activity in the hypothetical situation that I’m considering here.

  (I am not a lawyer.)

[Question] Is it a fed­eral crime in the US to de­velop AGI that may cause hu­man ex­tinc­tion?

• Ofer 30 Oct 2024 13:54 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Stable to­tal­i­tar­i­anism: an overview

  Totalitarian regimes have caused enormous suffering in the past, committing some of the largest and most horrifying crimes against humanity ever experienced.

  How do totalitarian regimes compare to non-totalitarian regimes in this regard?

  Totalitarianism is a particular kind of autocracy, a form of government in which power is highly concentrated. What makes totalitarian regimes distinct is the complete, enforced subservience of the entire populace to the state.

  Notice that this definition may not apply to a hypothetical state that gives some freedoms to millions of people while mistreating 95% of humans on earth (e.g. enslaving and torturing people, using weapons of mass destruction against civilians, carrying out covert operations that cause horrible wars, enabling genocide, unjustly incarcerating people in for-profit prisons).

• Ofer 29 May 2024 11:46 UTC

  −49 points

  0 ∶ 12

  on: EA for Jews is hiring — ap­ply now!

  Who is running “EA for Jews”? I failed to find any info about that on EAforJews.org. Is it run by EA Israel? If so, I feel that that covert relationship is problematic. Israel ≠ Jews.

  Disclosure/​context: I’m Jewish, I live in Israel, and I’ve served for 3 years in IDF (mandatory service). I think there’s a substantial probability that most of the ~2M people who lived in the Gaza Strip when the war started will not be alive at the end of the war, due to genocidal officers in IDF (and other factors).

• Ofer 19 May 2024 13:04 UTC

  2 points

  2 ∶ 1

  on: Don’t panic: 90% of EAs are good people

  (haven’t read the entire post)

  I think the “good people″ label is not useful here. The problem is that humans tend to act as power maximizers, and they often deceive themselves into thinking that they should do [something that will bring them more power] because of [pro-social reason].

  I’m not concerned that Dario Amodei will consciously think to himself: “I’ll go ahead and press this astronomically net-negative button over here because it will make me more powerful”. But he can easily end up pressing such a button anyway.

  What links here?

  • What is malev­olence? On the na­ture, mea­sure­ment, and dis­tri­bu­tion of dark traits by David_Althaus (23 Oct 2024 8:41 UTC; 106 points)
  • What is malev­olence? On the na­ture, mea­sure­ment, and dis­tri­bu­tion of dark traits by David Althaus (LessWrong; 23 Oct 2024 8:41 UTC; 76 points)
  • quila's comment on What is malev­olence? On the na­ture, mea­sure­ment, and dis­tri­bu­tion of dark traits by David_Althaus (24 Oct 2024 13:35 UTC; 5 points)

• Ofer 14 May 2024 2:15 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: In DC, a new wave of AI lob­by­ists gains the up­per hand

  [brainstorming]

  It may be useful to consider the % of [worldwide net private wealth] that is lost if the US government commits to certain extremely strict AI regulation. We can call that % the “wealth impact factor of potential AI regulation” (WIFPAIR). We can expect that, other things being equal, in worlds where WIFPAIR is higher more resources are being used for anti-AI-regulation lobbying efforts (and thus EA-aligned people probably have less influence over what the US government does w.r.t. AI regulation).

  The WIFPAIR can become much higher in the future, and therefore convincing the US government to establish effective AI regulation can become much harder (if it’s not already virtually impossible today).

  If at some future point WIFPAIR gets sufficiently high, the anti-AI-regulation efforts may become at least as intense as the anti-communist efforts in the US during the 1950s.

• Ofer 12 Mar 2024 19:38 UTC

  15 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Neel Nanda’s comment on: Has An­thropic already made the ex­ter­nally leg­ible com­mit­ments that it planned to make?

  Thanks!

  Follow up questions to anyone who may know:

  Is METR (formerly ARC Evals) meant to be the “independent, external organization” that is allowed to evaluate the capabilities and safety of Anthropic’s models? As of 2023-12-04 METR was spinning off from the Alignment Research Center (ARC) into their own standalone nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, according to their website. Who is on METR’s board of directors?

  Note: OpenPhil seemingly recommended a total of $1,515,000 to ARC in 2022. Holden Karnofsky (co-founder and co-CEO of OpenPhil at the time, and currently a board member) is married to Daniela Amodei (co-founder of Anthropic and sibling of the CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei) according to Wikipedia.

[Question] Has An­thropic already made the ex­ter­nally leg­ible com­mit­ments that it planned to make?

• Ofer 4 Feb 2024 16:43 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ofer’s comment on: EA thoughts from Is­rael-Ha­mas war

  I failed to mention in the parent comment that the prime minister of Israel (Netanyahu) would plausibly not survive politically without the support of Ben-Gvir, which may have allowed the latter to have a lot of influence over the behavior of the Israeli government w.r.t. the war. Quoting from a WSJ article that was published today:

  The differing paths present a stark choice for Netanyahu, who now risks heightening Israel’s international isolation if he continues the war, or potentially losing power if Ben-Gvir withdraws his Jewish Power party’s six lawmakers from the governing coalition.

  “Ben-Gvir has huge leverage over Netanyahu,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Jerusalem-based think tank the Israel Democracy Institute. “The last thing Netanyahu needs is an early election and Ben-Gvir knows that.”

• Ofer 3 Feb 2024 14:02 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Wei Dai’s comment on: Manag­ing risks while try­ing to do good

  There’s also the unilateralist’s curse: suppose someone publishes an essay about a dangerous, viral idea that they misjudge to be net-positive; after 20 other people also thought about it but judged it to be net-negative.

• Ofer 31 Jan 2024 20:25 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Gavin’s comment on: EA and the United Nations

  In 2018, two years before it won a Peace Prize,[3] the World Food Programme was ranked worst of 40 largest aid agencies on the QuODA scale (decent proxies for aid quality).

  Quoting form the linked page (from the website of The Center for Global Development):

  QuODA’s 24 aid effectiveness indicators are listed below and we’ve published a detailed methodology along with the data.

  I suppose that the claim in the parent comment that the WFP “was ranked worst of 40 largest aid agencies” is based on that “data” spreadsheet. But notice that 27 of those 40 “aid agencies” are not aid agencies but rather countries (e.g. Australia, United States). So this is already a big red flag. For each agency/​country, the spreadsheet provides 7 indicators that are grouped under the title “Maximising Efficiency”. One of those indicators is called “ME4” according to which the WFP performed 3rd worst among all 40 agencies/​countries. Quoting from the “detailed methodology” PDF (removing footnote references):

  Indicator ME4: High Country Programmable Aid Share

  [...] The [OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC)], recognizing the need for a metric that reflects the amount of aid that is received and recorded by partner country governments, constructed a measure called country programmable aid. CPA is a measure of development assistance that excludes funding that does not flow to partner countries (e.g. donor administrative costs and imputed student costs), unpredictable flows (e.g. humanitarian assistance), and transfers that are not discussed between donors and partner countries (e.g. food assistance). [...]

  So if I understand correctly, the the QuODA scale seems to “punish” agencies that spend money on food assistance directly (rather than giving the money to the host state), and therefore does not seem like a good scale for evaluating the World Food Programme. (To be clear, I’m not overall familiar with QuODA scale; I’m just reporting what seems to me like a very big red flag).

  A 2008 study found that UN agencies were by far the least efficient agencies, with the WFP disbursing just $30,000 per employee, where the average was $1,000,000.

  Maybe the WFP employs many locals in low-GPD-per-capita states as part of their efforts to distribute food and the salaries are not a large % of WFP’s budget? (I don’t know whether that is the case; I’m just pointing out that that metric does not seem useful here.)

• Ofer 15 Dec 2023 20:01 UTC

  3 points

  1 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Cornelis Dirk Haupt’s comment on: EA thoughts from Is­rael-Ha­mas war

  It’s possible that if the UN had not existed, we would have already had a third world war. The UN is obviously not optimal but may be a lot better than nothing (w.r.t. allowing humanity to coordinate on important issues). EDIT: ‘Making the UN better’ may be an important cause area from an EA perspective.

• Ofer 12 Dec 2023 20:39 UTC

  −4 points

  3 ∶ 3

  in reply to: Guy Raveh’s comment on: EA thoughts from Is­rael-Ha­mas war

  If Russia and China are worse offenders (which I doubt, if the metric is “atrocities per capita”) and have been treated less severely by the UN, this seems to point at a bias in favor of permanent members of the UN Security Council /​ superpowers, rather than a bias against Israel in particular.

• Ofer 12 Dec 2023 6:22 UTC

  6 points

  6 ∶ 2

  in reply to: Larks’s comment on: EA thoughts from Is­rael-Ha­mas war

  And one of the major drivers of the conflict is the UN policy towards palestinian refugees, which has encouraged revanchism over integration for decades, unlike their policy towards other descendants of refugees.

  Many policies that seek to hold states accountable for committing atrocities can be accused of encouraging revanchism. Nonetheless, the international community should probably coordinate to prevent states from doing things like conquering land and then effectively throwing hundreds of thousands of natives outside their new borders (causing them to be stateless), killing those who try to return, destroying/​stealing almost all of their property without providing any compensation, etc.

  I think this is verified by the very anomalous way the UN treats Israel, like repeatedly condemning Israel while neglecting far worse offenders,

  Can you give an example of a state that was clearly a “worse offender” than Israel and yet was clearly treated less severely by the UN?

• Ofer 11 Dec 2023 14:18 UTC

  24 points

  11 ∶ 8

  in reply to: Guy Raveh’s comment on: EA thoughts from Is­rael-Ha­mas war

  I don’t really appreciate Ofer’s comments, because they present the war effort as one combined front and do not really tell you how much influence different agents have.

  The OP includes arguments for why people should not support a ceasefire, while not providing ~any info about the incentives of people/​factions within Israel or the relevant historical context. I agree that such info is important. Summarizing all the relevant info in a reliable/​legible way is hard (and both I and the OP failed to do so here). This problem probably often exists w.r.t. conflicts at that scale. Humanity should nonetheless attempt to coordinate somehow to make the world peaceful and avoid situations in which humans are doing terrible things to each other as they compete over resources and power.

  Your comment mentions in passing “UN orgs of questionable independence and reliability”. This is a good place to argue that most people should probably just defer to relevant UN institutions on questions such as whether a certain ceasefire is net-positive. Quoting from the UN website (published 3 days ago):

  The Secretary-General went before the Security Council today to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza to avert a humanitarian catastrophe that could have ramifications for peace and security in the region and beyond, two days after he invoked Article 99 of the United Nations Charter.

  Is anyone on this forum in a better position than the Secretary-General of the UN to analyze, for example, the impact of Israel’s actions on future, unrelated conflicts? (E.g. imagine that next year some state/​org will set out to starve millions of people etc. as part of some total war, while claiming that their actions are at least as justified as the US-supported actions of Israel in the Gaza strip.)

• Ofer 7 Dec 2023 18:32 UTC

  18 points

  4 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ofer’s comment on: EA thoughts from Is­rael-Ha­mas war

  After learning some more about the topic, it now seems to me that the word “untrustworthy” in my comment above is a severe understatement. Quoting from a Washington Post article (emphasis added):

  The so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” took shape in the wake of the bruising 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. [...]

  The doctrine that emerged out of the conflict was most famously articulated by IDF commander Gadi Eisenkot. “We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases,” he told an Israeli newspaper in 2008. “This isn’t a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.” [...] Around the same time, former Israeli colonel Gabriel Siboni wrote a report under the aegis of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies that argued the necessary response to militant provocations from Lebanon, Syria or Gaza were “disproportionate” strikes that aim only secondarily to hit the enemy’s capacity to launch rockets or other attacks. Rather, the goal should be to inflict lasting damage, no matter the civilian consequences, as a future deterrent.

  “With an outbreak of hostilities, the IDF will need to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate to the enemy’s actions and the threat it poses,” he wrote. “Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes.”

  The doctrine appeared to be in operation during a round of hostilities between Hamas in Gaza and Israel at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009. A U.N.-commissioned report regarding that conflict, which saw the deaths of more than 1,400 Palestinians and Israelis, determined that Israel’s campaign was “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”

  The doctrine endured in the years since. [...]

• Ofer 6 Dec 2023 17:33 UTC

  113 points

  52 ∶ 13

  on: EA thoughts from Is­rael-Ha­mas war

  Disclosure (copying from a previous comment): I have served in Israel Defense Forces, I live in Israel, I feel horrible about what Israel has done in the past 75 years to millions of Palestinians and I do not want Israel to end up as a horrible stain on human history. I am probably unusually biased when dealing with this topic. I am not making here a claim that people in EA should or should not get involved and in what way.

  The author mentioned they do not want the comments to be “a discussion of the war per se” and yet the post contains multiple contentious pro-Israel propaganda talking points, and includes arguments that a cease-fire is net-negative. Therefore it seems to me legitimate to mention here the following.

  In interviews to foreign press, Israeli officials/​politicians often make claims to the effect that Israel is doing everything it can to minimize civilian casualties. Explaining why those claims are untrustworthy in a short comment is a hard task because whatever I’ll write will leave out so much important stuff. (Imagine you had to explain to an alien, in a short text, why a certain claim by Donald Trump is untrustworthy.) But I’ll give it a go anyway:

  • The current Minister of National Security in Israel is a far-right politician called Itamar Ben-Gvir. He has been convicted on at least eight charges, including supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism. For many years he has signaled admiration for a person that has massacred 29 Palestinians; he kept a portrait of that person in his living room. (He removed the portrait in 2020 because a prominent right-wing politician refused to run with him as part of an election.) As a member of the Security Cabinet of Israel, Ben-Gvir plausibly had^[1] a substantial, direct influence on Israel’s behavior in the Gaza strip. EDIT (2024-02-04): I failed to mention here that the prime minister of Israel (Netanyahu) would plausibly not survive politically without the support of Ben-Gvir, which may have allowed the latter to have a lot of influence over the behavior of the Israeli government w.r.t. the war. Quoting from a WSJ article that was published today:

  The differing paths present a stark choice for Netanyahu, who now risks heightening Israel’s international isolation if he continues the war, or potentially losing power if Ben-Gvir withdraws his Jewish Power party’s six lawmakers from the governing coalition.

  “Ben-Gvir has huge leverage over Netanyahu,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Jerusalem-based think tank the Israel Democracy Institute. “The last thing Netanyahu needs is an early election and Ben-Gvir knows that.”

  • It seems to me that when politicians from the ruling coalition communicate with the Israeli public (in Hebrew) about what Israel is doing in the Gaza strip, they ~never mention avoiding civilian casualties as a moral obligation. When they do mention steps that Israel takes to reduce civilian casualties, it is often presented as things that are done for the purpose of reducing international pressure and thereby allowing the war to continue. This is a good place to mention:

  1. This Hebrew article by a former Israeli Defense Minister, from 3 days ago, titled “[...] There are no innocents in Gaza” (Google Translated).

  2. The Deputy Knesset Speaker has tweeted in Hebrew that Israel had to do “no less than burn Gaza”, according to the The Jerusalem Post.

  • The right-wing prime minister of Israel (Netanyahu) is probably more concerned right now with surviving politically (and saving his legacy, and maybe also avoiding going to jail due to his unrelated trial) than he is concerned with minimizing Palestinian civilian casualties.

  • From the perspective of the Israeli government, even if this is not consciously optimized for, more Palestinian civilian casualties probably means a greater deterrence effect (and a greater revenge). In the Qibya massacre that occurred in 1953, 69 Palestinian villagers were killed, two thirds of which were women and children—according to an extended-protected Wikipedia entry—as a response to an attack in which an Israeli woman and her two children were killed. The international outcry seemingly caused Israel to no longer carry out such similarly orchestrated massacres. But during the current war, the Israeli government has the ability to act (perhaps subconsciously) in a way that is functionally similar to the Qibya massacre—at a much larger scale—while claiming (perhaps without technically lying^[2]) that all the civilian casualties are killed in Israeli attacks with civilian casualties are attacks on “legitimate military targets”.

  (The Qibya massacre was led by Ariel Sharon, who at the time was a Major in the IDF. Sharon personally ordered his troops to achieve “maximal killing and damage to property” (quoting from the extended-protected Wikipedia entry). Sharon later served as the prime minister of Israel from 2001 to 2006 and played a major role in Hamas taking over the Gaza strip; see my previous comment for more info on the incentive that Israel had to empower Hamas while weakening the much more peaceful Palestinian National Authority; while trying to avoid a peace process and its obligations to the Palestinian refugees.)

  ---

  1. ↩︎

     EDIT: ~5 days after the war started a new, smaller version of the Security Cabinet was created without Ben-Gvir. The larger version of the Security Cabinet (which Ben-Gvir is part of) is now referred to as ‘the extended cabinet’. I don’t know how much power the extended cabinet currently has. I think at minimum members are getting updates and can use their position to “shame” the top decision makers for not being sufficiently ‘tough’ from the perspective of right-wing voters (e.g. if the decision makers allow certain humanitarian aid). In any case, I think it’s plausible that the general tone of this war was set during its first days and still has a lot of influence on Israel’s current behavior in the Gaza strip. UPDATE: This Hebrew article (published ~4 hours after this comment) says that the extended cabinet has approved doubling the amount of fuel that is allowed to enter the Gaza strip (for the operation of water desalination and sewage treatment systems, to prevent spread of diseases) due to pressure from the US. Ben-Gvir voted against.

  2. ↩︎

     EDIT: What I mean here is that Israel can internally make claims such as: “We are bombing that building with about X civilians inside because based on certain evidence it is more than 5% likely that a Hamas commander with such and such rank is currently there, which makes the building a legitimate military target”. (I don’t know much about international law but my best guess is that there is a huge gray area in which claims like that can be made while no one is consciously lying.)

• Ofer 22 Nov 2023 16:30 UTC

  4 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Ques­tions for Reflec­tion on Gaza

  I’m trying to make a general point about improving Israel’s incentives, not about whether one should press a button that magically makes Israel declare a ceasefire right now.

  The way that the international community handles this situation may influence whether states/​governments/​politicians can expect to benefit from acting on incentives in a way that violates ~universal norms related to justice and human decency.

  I feel like a lot of your comment is not really very relevant to this discussion. For example, in the same way that I don’t think the My Lai massacre provides much evidence about the contemporary US military, I don’t think Qibya, which took place 70 years ago, tells us much about contemporary IDF doctrine.

  Unlike the My Lai massacre (which seemingly resulted from a command by a captain of infantry in the US Army), the Qibya massacre resulted from an order that was given by the Defense Minister of Israel in coordination with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. The raid was led by Ariel Sharon, who at the time was a Major in the IDF. Sharon personally ordered his troops to achieve “maximal killing and damage to property” (quoting from the extended-protected Wikipedia entry). Later, as Minister of Defense, Sharon bore personal responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982, according to the official Israeli commission that investigated the cause and circumstances of the massacre. Sharon later served as the prime minister of Israel from 2001 to 2006 (and played a major role in Hamas taking over the Gaza strip).

• Ofer 22 Nov 2023 2:46 UTC

  8 points

  2 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Ques­tions for Reflec­tion on Gaza

  There is some amount of fighting required to destroy Hamas, and some amount of collateral damage that will result.

  Though pressure from the international community can cause Israel to be more careful about avoiding civilian casualties and to provide more humanitarian aid. Israel has an incentive to cause many civilian casualties for the sake of deterrence (which is an incentive that Israel has acted on in the past^[1]), and perhaps in order to cause Palestinians to flee to Egypt at a later point in time.

  My best guess is that in the current war ~every deadly attack by IDF is carried out by people who believe that the target they are attacking is definitely/​possibly a “legitimate military target”. But it is Netanyahu and other politicians who get to decide how many civilians the IDF is generally willing to kill to achieve a military objective X. If those numbers are sufficiently large, the outcome can be indistinguishable from a genocide.

  Disclaimer: I have served in Israel Defense Forces, I live in Israel, I feel horrible about what Israel has done in the past 75+ years to millions of Palestinians and I do not want Israel to end up as a horrible stain on human history. I am probably unusually biased when dealing with this topic.

  ---

  1. ↩︎

     In its early years, Israel Defence Forces committed massacres of Palestinians as acts of retaliation. This included the Qibya massacre (that was committed in 1953 under the command of Ariel Sharon) in which more than 69 Palestinian villagers where killed, two thirds of which were women and children, according to the extended-protected Wikipedia entry. This was a response to an attack that killed an Israeli woman and her two children. The prime minister Ben-Gurion (the primary national founder of the State of Israel) lied about that massacre and claimed it was done by civilians.

• Ofer 15 Nov 2023 17:04 UTC

  1 point

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Daniel_Eth’s comment on: Naive ap­pli­ca­tion of the ITN frame­work on a situ­a­tion like the one in Gaza might lead us wrong

  I think the general question about voting norms w.r.t. conflicts of interest—and the more specific questions that are relevant here—are important and very hard, and I don’t think I currently have good/​well-thought-through answers.

  My current, tentative perspective/​intuition/​feelings on this is something like:

  The point of this forum is to do good effectively. If the karma of a post on a sensitive topic is determined mostly by, say, the number of Israelis vs. number of Palestinians that are involved in the EA community (and have access to electricity + internet), that seems like a problem.

  In the Guide to norms on the Forum (that is linked to from the about page) there is a section called Voting norm. It says:

  Voting on a post helps to organize the Frontpage — it’s a signal of what you think would be useful for others to read in order to do more good — and provides feedback to the poster.

  But then the guide lists things that users should not do, followed by the sentence “Other than that, you can vote using your preferred criteria.” That list of things that users should not do does not seem to cover things like [casting votes that promote international legitimacy for the actions of my government in a deadly conflict that I have extreme emotions about].

  Take for example this post titled “I’m a Former Israeli Officer. AMA”. It seems to me reasonable to describe what the author did in that AMA as an attempt to promote ‘pro-Israel propaganda’. So far the author never wrote anything on this forum (from that account) outside that AMA. That post currently has 64 karma points. Should Israelis feel welcome to strong-upvote such posts?

  Finally, another relevant consideration: If we ask people to (not) vote in a particular way, but then we do not enforce that request, we can end up in a situation where only some users—ones that are more scrupulous than others—adhere to the request.