Radical Empath Ismam

• Radical Empath Ismam 22 Aug 2022 23:39 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Protest move­ments: How effec­tive are they?

  Many successful protests have had some element of striking/​boycott/​business or economic disruption.

  Is it possible to examine whether this specifically improves the effectiveness of protests? This would be my working hypothesis.

• Radical Empath Ismam 24 Aug 2022 1:32 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Minh Nguyen’s comment on: Protest move­ments: How effec­tive are they?

  Good points.

  Small-scale targeted labour disputes tend to not have that much broad support. The 2021 John Deere strike for example did not have that broad societal support. There may have been some support from the wider labour movement, but also opposition from the local court system, and business groups/​ chamber of commers etc.

  But it is hard to think of this happening at a larger scale, without broad support. I can’t think of any examples.

  There are examples I can think where economic disruption has helped for minority rights, although some of these would for sure have had some level of popular societal support.
  - In Bolivia, rural indigenous groups caused roadblocks bringing the economy to a standstill, and successfully were able to resume delayed elections.
  - Recent Chile constitutional changes include gender parity and indigenous issues, was the product of very disruptive protetsts
  - Longshoremen refusing to move cargo from South African ships during Apartheid.
  - The ILWU many activities, including desegregating work gangs. Also oppposed Japanese American internment and were involved in the civil rights movement but I don’t know if there particular efforts were effective.
  - The Tailoress strikes which led to pay equality for women

  Those are the sorts of examples on my mind.

  Sources:
  https://​​inthesetimes.com/​​article/​​dockworkers-ilwu-racism-workers-apartheid-black-freedom-movement-bay-area
  https://​​www.actu.org.au/​​about-the-actu/​​history-of-australian-unions
  

US House Vote on Sup­port for Ye­men War

• Radical Empath Ismam 12 Jan 2023 20:41 UTC

  9 points

  36 ∶ 44

  in reply to: freedomandutility’s comment on: CEA state­ment on Nick Bostrom’s email

  Influential EA philosophers having used racial slurs and saying they’re unsure about IQ and race is hurtful to black EAs, hurtful to black people outside EA and bad for future diversity in EA.

  It’s also pseudoscience.

• Radical Empath Ismam 12 Jan 2023 20:47 UTC

  25 points

  23 ∶ 4

  in reply to: freedomandutility’s comment on: A per­sonal re­sponse to Nick Bostrom’s “Apol­ogy for an Old Email”

  Given that debating race and IQ would make EA very unwelcoming for black people

  Or white people.

• Radical Empath Ismam 12 Jan 2023 23:04 UTC

  −46 points

  6 ∶ 27

  on: I am tired.

  Rich and powerful people have hijacked this movement.

• Radical Empath Ismam 14 Jan 2023 5:50 UTC

  −11 points

  6 ∶ 9

  in reply to: Kaspar Brandner’s comment on: CEA state­ment on Nick Bostrom’s email

  I say it is pseudoscience on the grounds that there is a scientific consensus that genetic explanations for racial iq-gaps are deemed pseudoscientific.

  https://​​en.wikipedia.org/​​wiki/​​Scientific_racism

  https://​​en.wikipedia.org/​​wiki/​​Race_and_intelligence

  To anyone who sincerely wonders if there’s anything to the “race-iq realism” theory, I ask you to consider this great point point made Ezra Klein to Sam Harris when Harris embraced The Bell Curve: very rarely will you see any serious consideration of the possibility that environmental factors explain >100% of the black-white iq gap. In other words, on a purely genetic basis that black people may be more intelligent than white people is alien to the discourse.

  And of course there’s all sorts of other issues that cloud this discussion about the arbitrariness of race, the poor correlation between “race” and genetics, black americans having substantial european ancestry owing to slavery etc etc.

  https://​​www.vox.com/​​the-big-idea/​​2017/​​6/​​15/​​15797120/​​race-black-white-iq-response-critics

  The science is clear, it’s pseudoscience folks.

  Thank you Bob Jacobs for your resources.

  What links here?

  • Radical Empath Ismam's comment on CEA state­ment on Nick Bostrom’s email by Shakeel Hashim (14 Jan 2023 6:39 UTC; 2 points)

• Radical Empath Ismam 14 Jan 2023 6:39 UTC

  2 points

  2 ∶ 7

  in reply to: Lukas_Gloor’s comment on: CEA state­ment on Nick Bostrom’s email

  You and I have a very opposite reflection of the Sam Harris vs Ezra Klein fiasco.

  I’d like to hear what you think about Klein’s point that environmental factors explain may >100% of the black-white iq gap, and yet this is alien in the race realism discourse. https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​posts/​​ALzE9JixLLEexTKSq/​​cea-statement-on-nick-bostrom-s-email?commentId=YN85c93DD3EiNLFfo

  counterproductive for the goal of fighting racism to stake your case on scientific claims that could turn out to be false.

  There is so much evidence at this point against race realism/​ HBD. There is no possibility of it “could be false” without evoking some grand conspiracy. Can we never call it pseudoscience? My goal is to fight for scientific truth, not some anti-racist agenda. Check out Ben Jacob’s great resources.

• Radical Empath Ismam 14 Jan 2023 9:46 UTC

  −15 points

  1 ∶ 3

  in reply to: Kaspar Brandner’s comment on: CEA state­ment on Nick Bostrom’s email

  And why do you presume your sources are better.

  Your source is a fringe twitter account, followed by alt-right accounts, cherry picking bits and pieces from journals. It doesn’t even properly link to the primary sources so I can’t even examine the the weakness/​ context.

  Worry more about my Jacobs’s sources contradicting your sources.

Ex­is­ten­tial Risk Model­ling with Con­tin­u­ous-Time Markov Chains

• Radical Empath Ismam 24 Jan 2023 4:20 UTC

  6 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: NunoSempere’s comment on: Ex­is­ten­tial Risk Model­ling with Con­tin­u­ous-Time Markov Chains

  The diagonal entries are defined in another way. See the link:

  https://​​en.wikipedia.org/​​wiki/​​Transition_rate_matrix#:~:text=In%20probability%20theory%2C%20a%20transition,Markov%20chain%20transitions%20between%20states.

  Apologies, I could have made this clearer. It is only those diagonal entries which are allowed to be negative. In fact they must be negative (or zero).

  Technically, the diagonal entries are transitions from state i to i (ie. they are not really transitions but rather a measurement of “retention”). You can think of the positive or negative sign as indicating if it is a measure of transitioning away from the state, or retention in the state.

Pro­tect Our Fu­ture’s Crypto Politics

• Radical Empath Ismam 30 Jan 2023 2:35 UTC

  24 points

  15 ∶ 3

  in reply to: Lizka’s comment on: Pro­tect Our Fu­ture’s Crypto Politics

  Is there any chance you could reconsider? This post is not about my personal politics, or advocacy about any political candidates.

  It’s about the perceived misuse of an EA-linked fund called Protect Our Future.

• Radical Empath Ismam 30 Jan 2023 3:20 UTC

  19 points

  3 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Linch’s comment on: Pro­tect Our Fu­ture’s Crypto Politics

  I could only find one, Robert Menendez, with positions that might be deemed anti-crypto before the FTX collapse. He sponsored some anti-money laundering some bills taking aim against Russia, Venezuela, El Salvador https://​​www.coinbase.com/​​public-policy/​​legislative-portal/​​nj/​​senate/​​n6vBNOTG2gwWQ1c3jOQqn

  A handful of these candidates have also become anti-crypto post-FTX collapse, and beginning to return/​donate the money recevied from FTX/​SBF. Chuy Garcia is one example.

• Radical Empath Ismam 2 Feb 2023 7:39 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Mau’s comment on: Pro­tect Our Fu­ture’s Crypto Politics

  Thank you for this. I think you’re right.

  I’ll issue a correction.

• Radical Empath Ismam 2 Feb 2023 7:57 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: PeterSlattery’s comment on: Ex­is­ten­tial Risk Model­ling with Con­tin­u­ous-Time Markov Chains

  Hi Peter,

  Is knowledge of/​aptitude with CTMC common among actuaries?

  Yes, it’s required learning for actuaries, they may just need to brush up on their lecture notes.

  Also, have you considered doing some more work to apply it to ER with expert support?

  Absolutely. I think, before I embark on further work, I would really like to talk with cause prioritisers/​grant-makers to confirm that they would have confidence in this kind of modelling, and to understand what kinds of outputs they would value.

  Very much agree RE time-inhomogenous. Some people may see them as a bug (fair) but in many ways they are a feature. I’ve said in the post that CTMCs can help disagreeing X-Risk modellers understand the precise source of their disagreements (ie differing time-inhomogeneity assumptions).

• Radical Empath Ismam 25 Feb 2023 3:23 UTC

  7 points

  1 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Xavier_ORourke’s comment on: “EA is very open to some kinds of cri­tique and very not open to oth­ers” and “Why do crit­i­cal EAs have to use pseudonyms?”

  I’m not the author, but there was a very prescient critique submitted to the EA criticism contest, that went underappreciated. https://​​medium.com/​​@sven_rone/​​the-effective-altruism-movement-is-not-above-conflicts-of-interest-25f7125220a5

  UPDATE: actually I realised did specifically mention this critique as an example.

• Radical Empath Ismam 27 Feb 2023 0:20 UTC

  3 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Xavier_ORourke’s comment on: “EA is very open to some kinds of cri­tique and very not open to oth­ers” and “Why do crit­i­cal EAs have to use pseudonyms?”

  I felt the article was pretty concrete in saying exactly that,”crypto is bad …”. It didn’t strike me as high level/​ abstract at all.

• Radical Empath Ismam 14 Apr 2023 10:49 UTC

  9 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: All AGI Safety ques­tions wel­come (es­pe­cially ba­sic ones) [April 2023]

  Is there anything that makes you skeptical that AI is an existential risk?

• Radical Empath Ismam 15 Apr 2023 4:17 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Riccardo’s comment on: All AGI Safety ques­tions wel­come (es­pe­cially ba­sic ones) [April 2023]

  One of the reasons I am skeptical, is that I struggle to see the commercial incentives to develop AI in a direction that is X-risk level.

  e.g. paperclip scenario, commercially, a business would use an ai to develop and present a solution to a human. Like how google maps will suggest the optimal route. But the ai would never be given free reign to both design the solution and to action it, and to have no human oversight. There’s no commercial incentive for a business to act like that.

  Especially for “dumb” AI as you put it, AI is there to suggest things to humans, in commercial applications, but rarely to implement (I can’t think of a good example—maybe automated call centre?) the solution and to implement the solution without oversight by a human.

  In a normal workplace, management signs off on the solution suggested my juniors. And that seems to be how AI is used in business. AI presents a solution, and then a human/​ approves it and a human implements it also.