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
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?
Screwworm Free Future is hiring for a Director
Launching Screwworm-Free Future – Funding and Support Request
Sorry if I am being unfair, but itseems to me a bit naïve to base all of your Structural Democratic Reforms project solely on election theory, and ignore other institutions that are extremely impactful, but more neglected by and less accountable to the wide public, such as Supreme Courts, Central Banks and regulatory authorities (and even Audit Institutions).
Before the Hamas’s attack, Israel was in political turmoil because a sort of constitutional crisis between its Supreme Court and the government regarding the 2023 Israeli judicial reform. Current US Supreme Court not only struck Roe v. Wade this year, but it also decided that, while the Head of the Executive is immune against prosecution for any official act (Trump v. U.S.), regulatory authorities (that ultimately respond to the President) have no power to issue binding interpretations of statutory law (Loper Bright Enterprises et al.), thus ending four decades of the Chevron deference doctrine. Now consider that Supreme Courts allegedly have a longevity problem—they used to serve for an average 17 years, and are now predicted to serve for 35 years. Other jurisdictions face similar issues (e.g.: Brazilian judiciary has had a tremendous political impact in the last 10 years, and now legislators want to restrict Supreme Court judges powers).
An obvious fix would be adopting term limits, but, though I am a passionate defender of judicial review, I think that centralizing so much power on such a small body is a mechanism design nightmare.And Central Banks face political scrutiny everywhere; yet, while Open Philanthropy did fund research on macroeconomics and there’s a consensus that monetary authorities must be insulated from the Executive, I am unaware of anyone in EA-space currently doing research on Central Bank politics (though, here, I would say it’s probably not a neglected topic—it’s just that the public tends to ignore it, and maybe crypto-friendly EAs just despise central bankers).
And public choice theory, too—the kind of “neoliberal cynic legalistic” branch of mechanism design. No point in having a great voting system if your authorities can benefit themselves scot-free.
It’s funny how EAs have been arguing about “improving institutional decision-making” for almost a decade (and even before that in LW) w/o reading the basic literature… personal story: I remeber I was fascinated with EY’s Inadequate Equilibria (a wonderful book I recommend even more than HPMOR) and found it super original… but actually it wasn’t nothing new once I discovered the literature in mechanism desing and, more recently, cyberneticists like S. Beer and H. Simon
I’d like to see an updated version of this—and, if possible, one that didn’t end up being categorized as “personal blog post”
Let me share SBTi’s requests for feeddback:
Financial Institutions Net-Zero (FINZ) Standard
Experts from the finance sector, academia, and civil society worldwide are invited to review and provide feedback on the Draft Financial Institutions Net-Zero (FINZ) Standard. The public consultation survey will be open until September 30.
The primary aims of this consultation survey are to gather input from external stakeholders on the FINZ Standard—Consultation Draft v0.1, with particular focus on:
The clarity
Specific approaches to:
Evidencing entity-level commitments and leadership
Determining and identifying exposure and portfolio emissions
Portfolio climate alignment target
Emissions-intensive sector targets
Reporting
The SBTi’s direction of travel regarding financial institutions
Areas of support and improvement
Complete the survey now and contribute to the development of this essential standard.
The SBTi will also host three in-person workshops at Climate Week NYC and in London to gather expert insight on two important topics: neutralization and net-zero finance.
The workshops will be held on the following dates:
The role of carbon dioxide-removal in corporate net-zero transitions: New York City, September 23 | 3:00-6:30pm ET
Financial Institutions Net-Zero Standard Consultation: New York City, September 25 | 3:30-5:30pm ET
The role of carbon dioxide-removal in corporate net-zero transitions: London, October 8 | 2:30-6:00pm BST
Experts in each field are invited to participate by registering their interest. The precise locations will be shared with selected attendees. Register your interest here.
Scope 3 Discussion Paper feedback form
The SBTi is in the process of revising its Corporate Net-Zero Standard and one of the channels through which stakeholders are encouraged to engage is via the Scope 3 Discussion Paper feedback form. The Scope 3 Discussion Paper outlines the SBTi’s initial thinking on potential changes being considered for scope 3 target setting, including key principles and concepts.
Thanks for the post. I suppose you’d agree that there’s a good chance that, once Uncle Sam gets unstable, many other countries will follow suit.
I’m not sure the problem is “EA neglects this” instead of something more like “SBF funded political campaigns and considered bribing Trump to avoid his re-election and this resulted in terrible optics...” Maybe EAs and politics don’t mix well?
Thanks a lot for this answer
From the report:
The experts we spoke to favored unilateral advocacy (targeting individual countries) over advocacy in multilateral organizations such as the UN. This was on the basis that domestic policy and priorities usually take precedence over international agreements, especially in a catastrophe.
I tend to agree, because there are many low-hanging fruits in in-country advocacy. However, I wonder if some food security policies could face obstacles from WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture, so that amending it could be highly effective.
I call dibs on writing an April Fool’s post to propose calling this pledge “effective tithe”
Nuka zaria: research if Chatgpt is quoting from a parallel universe
(Well, it’s already the cruelest month in UK, right?)