Brazilian legal philosopher, postdoc in intergenerational justice, financial supervisor, GWWC Pledger Bachelor of Laws, Master and Doctor of Philosophy from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), having published articles and translations in the areas of Political Philosophy, Applied Ethics and Philosophy of Economics – with a recent focus on climate risks, Environmental and Social Responsibility, and intergenerational justice. Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, integrating the Ethics and Political Philosophy Laboratory (EPLAB) and the project Present Democracy for Future Generations. Also a member of the Graduate Committee and Special Studies Analyst in the area of supervision of non-banking institutions at the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB). Member of the Inclusive and Sustainable Solutions association (SIS) and of the Effective Altruism community in Brazil (AE Brasil). https://philpeople.org/profiles/ramiro-avila-peres
Ramiro
This should have way more attention than it’s currently receiving
Or: people care about relative income because: a) it entails more wealth (as capital gains accumulate faster than returns on work) which entails more power, like the possibility of funding intellectuals to say that inequality doesn’t matter; and b) it signals status, or it is used to buy status-goods, such as buying a nice house in a rich neighborhood without fearing your neighbors wanting to sack it (since they might care about relative income, even if you don’t)
Btw I just realized I can totally bite this bullet: I have lived in 4 cities in the last decade, and I prefer to live in the cheap one not only because of the low cost of living (like many online workers have been doing), but also because I never feel poor in relation to others...Which results in mixed feelings, though, as I don’t want to feel much wealthier than the surroundings—it makes me wonder of I should be paying more for services and taxes etc.
At least in this case, common sense might save thou a lot of time
Imagine someone receives a string of 95% of 111111… which is coming from a messenger funded by pro-Unity Inc., and when you point out that it might be biased because of its funding source, you hear the reply “oh but I only care about the message, and it’s a sound string of 1′s”
Don’t you think a similar objection would apply to Caplan’s “proof” that people don’t move to poorer neighborhoods because something something externalities?
(Moreover, I just realized thata “realists say that people only care about relative wealth” is a remarkable strawman, and it’s refutation does not entail that people barely care about relative income—and this is the first time I see an Economics professor mixing claims about wealth and income in the same argument)
Caplan says that Schooling is Mostly Signaling—Econlib
If I told him “since education in US is just about signaling, an American should move to a place where their degree + alma mater would be regarded as more valuable—e.g., a developing country, or a poorly educated area, etc.”, d’you think he’d agree?
It reminded me this: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal—Wishes
Tbh, I barely care about what economists in Koch’s pockets claim (something Caplan apparently doesn’t consider worth denying)
EA Brazil announcing the Effective Article Prize
What about funding a project trying to end tax-deductible donors-advised funds? Things like DonorsTrust are what brought us here
Nuka zaria: research if Chatgpt is quoting from a parallel universe
(Well, it’s already the cruelest month in UK, right?)
Red teaming and cause area investigation: challenges for screwworm (NWS) eradication
My conjecture is that you cannot fully separate MA and AI safety / alignment—or worse, solve AI safety first and then ask AI to solve values for you. We should solve them together, as some sets of values will be incompatible w some approaches to safety, and some AI development pathways will make some sets of values inaccessible (e.g., I don’t think that an egalitarian world for our descendants is a likely outcome w the current trend)
Great post, thanks.
Did your search for a new intervention include control / eradication of NWS (C. hominivorax)? It’s an endemic parasite in French Guayane (actually, I suspect that’s where Coquerel first identified it in XIX century), affecting wild and farmed animals alike (and killing at the very least 100 humans/year), any large scale policy would eventually depend on / benefit from French (and perhaps EU) support, and almost no one is working on that from a animal welfare / rights POV (except for Screwworm Free Future is hiring for a Director — EA Forum).
Is Climate-sensitivity super-wrong?
Thomas Homer-Dixon on why James Hansen’s latest climate findings matter
“The bottom line is startling: Hansen’s team argues that mainstream climate science, as reflected in the IPCC’s reports, underestimates climate sensitivity to CO2 by about 50 percent. Their research suggests that the “short-term”—century time scale—equilibrium warming from a doubling of CO2e should be 4.5 degrees C, not the standard estimate of 3 degrees.The reason for this error, in the view of Hansen and his team, is that conventional climate science, which is almost wholly wedded to climate models, has miscalculated the past impact of aerosols on warming trends. Now that shipping aerosols have declined dramatically across the north Pacific and Atlantic, that extra climate forcing is being revealed—ergo the acceleration. Paleoclimatic data, they argue, also support a substantially higher estimate of climate sensitivity.”
https://chalkboard.cascadeinstitute.org/a-climate-science-wake-up-call-james-hansens-latest-research/
SBF was willing to bribe Trump w $5bi so he wouldn’t run in 2024. That’s not what I’d call “undervalue”.
thanks. seems to be way better than the new Mission Impossible plot. you could send it to Nature Futures: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03507-x
Non-opioid painkiller wins approval
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved the non-opioid painkiller suzetrigine for short-term pain management. Suzetrigine is the first pain drug given a regulatory nod in more than 20 years that works through a brand-new mechanism, without the risks of addiction or sedation. Unlike opioids, the drug doesn’t act in the brain, instead blocking certain sodium channels in pain-sensing cells in the peripheral nervous system. When it comes to chronic pain — where the need for safer, non-opioid alternatives is most pressing — trials haven’t proven suzetrigine’s efficacy, nor were they long enough to rule out side effects from long-term use.
Also, how much do sexing strains in SIT facilities reduce the cost of SIT?
Probably can’t cut costs by more than half, right? Assuming the sex ratio is 1:1, now you can double the production of flies with the same input, I guess?
Reading this made me want to revoke my GWWC pledge (or at least cancel my account). I’ve been a pledger since 2018, and I will continue donating at least 10% of my income to the charities I find most effective and register it on a spreasheet. I just don’t think it is appropriate that GWWC’s operations take more credit than it’s due for whatever good comes from this, and I would like to be sure they are not using my data—as I doubt that donation records go through rigorous reconciliation. I’d probably already have done it if GWWC webpage allowed it—at least I can find no “delete my account button”.