Suffering should not exist.
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Karma: 327
Why I’m skeptical of moral circle expansion as a cause area
Brian Tomasik wrote this article on his donation recommendations, which may provide you with some useful insight. His top donation recommendations are the Center on Long-Term Risk and the Center for Reducing Suffering. In terms of the long-term future, reducing suffering in the far future may be more important than reducing existential risk. If life in the far future is significantly bad on average, space colonization could potentially create and spread a large amount of suffering.
How does this compare to violence against men and boys as a cause area? Worldwide, 78.7% of homicide victims are men. Female genital mutilation is also generally recognized as being a human rights violation, while forced circumcision of boys is still extremely prevalent worldwide. For various social reasons, violence against males seems to be a more neglected cause area compared to violence against females.
A fourteenth theory you should consider adding to your list is the possibility of AGI leading to S-risks. This could be considered similar to #3, but astronomical suffering has the potential to be far worse than extinction. One possible way this could come about is through a “near miss” in AI alignment.
Brian Tomasik wrote something similar about the risks of slightly misaligned artificial intelligence, although it is focused on suffering risks specifically rather than on existential risks in general.
On the topic of the Amish, I found this article “Assortative Mating, Class, and Caste”. In the article, Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran argue that the Amish are undergoing selection pressure for increased “Amishness” which is essentially truncation selection. The Amish have a practice known as “Rumspringa” in which Amish young adults get to experience the outside world, and some fraction of Amish youths choose to leave the Amish community and join the outside world every generation. The defection rate among the Amish has been decreasing over time. The defection rate in recent years has been around 10-15%, but was around 18-24% in the past. Because of this, your assertion that decreasing religiosity will outpace high fundamentalist population growth seems questionable.
From the article:
The Amish marry within their faith. Although they accept converts, there are very few, so there is almost no inward gene flow. They descend almost entirely from about 200 18th century founders. On the other hand, there is considerable outward gene flow, since a significant fraction of Amish youth do not choose to adopt the Amish way of life. In recent years, something like 10-15% of young Amish leave the community In the past, the defection rate seems to have been higher, more like 18-24%. Defection is up to the individual – there are no exterior barriers against Amish who want to participate in modern society.
Since the Amish have very high birth rates ( > 6 children per family), their numbers have increased very rapidly, even though there is a substantial defection rate. There were about 5,000 descendants of the original 200 by 1920, and today [2013] there are about 280,000 Amish.Regarding the implications of future demographics for Effective Altruism/Longtermism, Robin Hanson wrote this article “The Insular Fertile Future”. Robin Hanson talks about ways modern values could be preserved in light of these demographic shifts. One possible strategy to preserve modern values could be to encourage the creation of new subcultures that inherit most of their cultural elements from the dominant culture, but also have high fertility and the adaptive characteristics that insular, religious subcultures with high fertility have.
Also worth reading is Anatoly Karlin’s article series on the Age of Malthusian Industrialism, particularly the article “Breeders’ Revenge”. Karlin argues that a reverse of the demographic transition and a “breeder transition” where there is a resurgence of high fertility due to selection for “breeders” is a mathematical inevitability. Karlin also talks about how France has a fertility rate that is roughly 1.5x that of Germany, which Karlin argues may be the result of France having an earlier demographic transition than other countries, and therefore has had more time for selection for “breeders” to take place.
One animal welfare strategy EAs should consider promoting in the short term is getting meat eaters to eat meat from larger animals instead of smaller ones, i.e. beef instead of chicken and fish. With larger animals, it takes fewer animals to produce a unit of meat compared to smaller animals. Vitalik Buterin has argued that doing this may be 99% as good as veganism. Brian Tomasik compiled this chart of the amount of direct suffering that is caused by consuming various animal products, and beef and dairy are at the bottom. For lacto-ovo vegetarians, they should also be encouraged to consume more dairy and fewer eggs, since battery-cage eggs involve significant suffering.
Some may argue that convincing people to substitute other animal products for beef will contribute to climate change, but I’m skeptical that the additional suffering caused by the marginal increase in climate change will outweigh the suffering prevented by the drastic decrease in the number of animals subjected to factory farming. In the long term, cultured meat and/or genetically engineering farm animals to not have nociceptors are better solutions.
Vegetarians/vegans should consider promoting eating only beef/dairy as the only animal products they consume as a potential strategy to have people cause less suffering to livestock with a high retention rate. I suspect that the average person would be much more willing to give up most animal products while still consuming beef and dairy, compared to giving up meat entirely. Since cows are big, fewer animals are needed to produce a single unit of meat, compared to meat coming from smaller animals. Vitalik Buterin has argued that eating big animals as an animal welfare strategy could be 99% as good as veganism. Brian Tomasik also compiled this list of different animal products ranked by the amount of suffering they cause per kilogram, and beef and milk are at the bottom.
An objection people might make to this is that eating more beef could contribute to climate change, but I’m skeptical that the amount of additional suffering caused by climate change will exceed the amount of suffering reduced by having less factory farming. It could also be argued that habitat loss may reduce wild animal populations, which may reduce wild animal suffering by preventing wild animals by being born.
As a side note, there needs to be some sort of name for the philosophy of eating big animals to reduce livestock suffering described above. Sizeatarianism? Beefatarianism? Big-animal-atarianism? Sufferingatarianism?
A major reason why support for eugenically raising IQs through gene editing is low in Western countries could be a backlash against Nazism, since Nazism is associated with eugenics in the mind of the average person. The low level of support in East Asia is more uncertain. One possible explanation is that East Asians have a risk-averse culture.
Interestingly, Hindus and Buddhists also have some of the highest rates of support for evolution among any religious groups. There was a poll from 2009 that showed that 80% of Hindus and 81% of Buddhists in the United States accept evolution, while only 48% of the total US population accepts evolution. Another poll showed that 77% of Indians believe that there is significant evidence to support evolution. The high rate of acceptance of gene editing technology among Hindu Indians could therefore be a reflection of greater acceptance of science in general.
As a side note, I found this poll of public opinion of gene editing in different countries. India apparently has the highest rate of social acceptance of using gene editing to increase intelligence of any of the countries surveyed. This could have significant geopolitical implications, since the first country or countries to practice gene editing for higher intelligence could have an enormous first-mover advantage. Whatever countries start practicing gene editing for higher intelligence will have far more geniuses per capita, which will greatly increase levels of innovation, soft power, effective governance, and economic efficiency in general. The countries that increase their intelligence through gene editing will likely end up having a massive advantage over countries that don’t.
What do you think of the Humane Slaughter Association? The HSA is focused on reducing livestock suffering, and is trying to have livestock be slaughtered in less painful ways. Brian Tomasik has also endorsed it.
If one values reducing suffering and increasing happiness equally, it isn’t clear that reducing existential risk is justified either. Existential risk reduction and space colonization means that the far future can be expected to have both more happiness and more suffering, which would seem to even out the expected utility. More happiness + more suffering isn’t necessarily better than less happiness + less suffering. Focusing on reducing existential risks would only seem to be justified if either A) you believe in Positive Utilitarianism, i.e. increasing happiness is more important than reducing suffering, B) the far future can be reasonably expected to have significantly more happiness than suffering, or C) reducing existential risk is a terminal value in and of itself.
While it’s true that women are more likely to be victims of sexual violence, men are more likely to be victims of non-sexual violence, such as murder and aggravated assault.
Even if you value reducing suffering and increasing happiness equally, reducing S-risks would likely still greatly increase the expected value of the far future. Efforts to reduce S-risks would almost certainly reduce the risk of extreme suffering being created in the far future, but it’s not clear that they would reduce happiness much.
Targeting Celebrities to Spread Effective Altruism
Hacking Weirdness Points
… which arguably gives circumcised males the benefit of longer sex ;-)
Not necessarily. Male circumcision may actually cause premature ejaculation in some men.
More seriously: FGM can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths (WHO).
Other than complications in childbirth, male circumcision can also cause all of these complications. According to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is herself a victim of FGM, boys being circumcised in Africa have a higher risk of complications compared to girls subjected to FGM. Circumcisions/mutilations in Africa are often performed in unsanitary conditions, which is true for both boys and girls subjected to genital mutilation.
Getting people to eat more beef/dairy and less chicken/fish is one animal welfare strategy that EAs should consider promoting. Since cows are large, it takes fewer animals to produce a single unit of food. Brian Tomasik compiled this list of the amount of suffering generated by different animal foods, and beef/dairy are ranked the lowest. Vitalik Buterin has argued that eating only cow products may be 99% as good as veganism. In addition to this, getting people to eat only beef/dairy may have more mass appeal. Few people are willing to become vegan, but far more people may be willing to give up animal products with the exception of beef/dairy.
Brian Tomasik’s essay “Why I Don’t Focus on the Hedonistic Imperative” is worth reading. Since biological life will almost certainly be phased out in the long run and be replaced with machine intelligence, AI safety probably has far more longtermist impact compared to biotech-related suffering reduction. Still, it could be argued that having a better understanding of valence and consciousness could make future AIs safer.
Brian Tomasik wrote a similar article several years ago on Predictions of AGI Takeoff Speed vs. Years Worked in Commercial Software. In general, AI experts with the most experience working in commercial software tend to expect a soft takeoff, rather than a hard takeoff.