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
My research group is designing a course on Global Risks for academic students in Brazil. I am looking for syllabi and teaching materials that could help inspire us. Right now I am using the WEF report, the Global Challenges report, the Legal Topics in Effective Altruism |and taking a look at the more practical topics in teaching materials from GPI. But I would like to see something from CSER, maybe? Anyone has any tips?
Thanks for this. i just had a similar idea, and ofc I’m glad to see another EA had a similar insight before. I am no expert on the field, but I agree that this “atemporal avg utilitarianism” seems to be underrated; I wonder why. The greatest problem I see with this view, at first, is that it makes the moral goodness of future actions depend on the population and the goodness of the past. I suspect this would also make it impossible (or intractable) to model goodness as a social welfare function. But then… if the moral POV is the “POV of the universe”, or the POV of nowhere, or of the impartial observer… maybe that’s justified? And it’d explain the Asymmetry and the use of thresholds for adding people.
I suspect this view is immune to the repugnant conclusion / mere addition paradox. The most piercing objection from total view advocates against avg utilitarianism is that it implies a sadistic conclusion: adding a life worth living makes the world worse if this life is below the average utility; and adding a life with negative value is good if it is superior to the world average. But if the overall avg utility is positive, or if you add a constraint forbidding adding negative lives… this makes it less likely to find examples where this view implies a “sadistic” conclusion
Two “non-spoilers” for the movie Oppenheimer
Since the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Elders have been talking about this lately…1) “Now I become Death, the destroyer of worlds”
The famous passage from Bhagavad Gita (BG), the Hindu religious epic. It suggests that Nolan is associating Oppie with the terrible form of Vishvaruppa – call this the “promethean” interpretation. But Oppie is actually more similar to prince Arjuna: the hero with a crisis of conscience who doesn’t want to join the battlefield of Kurukshetra because it will bring incontrollable destruction—but ends up doing it anyway, because that’s his destiny, as explained by Krishna / Vishnu, the “destroyer of worlds”. This “fatalistic” interpretation is reinforced by other scenes – e.g., Oppie’s visions of destruction, and a conversation where President Truman basically tells Oppie that he’s not that important…
Enrico Fermi, one of the brightest among so many geniuses on screen, doesn’t have enough screen time to state his famous paradox. Given that the universe is 13.7 bi years old, and that there are so many stars in the galaxy, and certainly many of them are able to evolve intelligent life just like ours… where’s everyone? certainly, we should be seeing evidence of alien life somewhere by now—like radio waves, space structures, or a party invitation. So, why this silence? Are aliens avoiding us?
One of the main explanations is that life might be self-defeating: as technology progress, the capacity of a species to destroy itself increases faster than the capacity to mitigate this risk.
So, ok, this movie is astonishing… but dear Chris Nolan, if you ever consider to extend it or turn it into a series… there are many things you might want to do. But two short scenes explaining for the viewer (1) the BG’s quotation, and (2) Fermi’s paradox would greatly improve the understanding of one the tenets of the movie—Oppie’s concern that they may start an unstoppable “chain reaction that’ll consume the world”
Thanks for this! Vegan pets is awesome (even a “not so strictly carinvore” would be super great”, but I still think feral cats might be a worse (and more neglected) issue
I was wondering if you considered anyway to take into account “adversarial dynamics” (i.e., the industry increasing its investments in lobbying against such measures) and substitution effects (e.g., people spending more on other harmful products, such as alcohol)
[...] this post is a high-level summary intended for busy forum readers who are definitely not browsing the forum when they should actually be working.
You have just become my favorite EA-charity.
Thanks for the post. I find it weird that we sort of neglect scalable interventions regarding non-communicable diseases (except for tobacco).
I was hoping that after covid-19 this would become a priority. Btw, I noticed that you do not use evidence associated with the pandemic—even though DMT was one of the main predictors of mortality:
Diabetes is most important cause for mortality in COVID-19 hospitalized patients: Systematic review and meta-analysis—PMC (nih.gov)Diabetes prevalence and mortality in COVID-19 patients: a systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression—PubMed (nih.gov)
Of course, the main datasets on the burden of DMT-2 will not include covid mortality. But have tried looking into this?
Thanks for the post.
Maybe the answer is more mundane than you imagine: light pollution
I’m only half-joking. If you think about it, we are sort of the 1st or 2nd generation to have lived most of their waking lives indoors, without really looking at the stars—without ever perceiving why we call this galaxy Milky Way.
Thanks for the post! When I first started studying intergenerational justice, I was kind of surprised that political philosophers in the area pay little attention to the debate on discount rates (not even to argue about how to decide it democratically), and put a lot of pressure on discussios on representation and on the so-called “boundary problem”. (which is sort of curious: most of the scholars I’ve talked to buy the consequences of the nonidentity problem, and so conclude that future people don’t really have rights… and yet, they think it’s ok to discuss how they should be represented, etc.) I became a bit disillusioned. On the other hand, I became more hopeful with some initiatives that are likely too recent to have figured on your reviews, and I was wondering if you have any opinion on them: a) the Vanuatu initiative: a UN resolution asking ICJ for a opinion on legal responsibilities regarding climate change—explicitly mentioning future generations; b) the GCR management act in US.
+1 for the pun ‘Costco Shareholders Cry “Fowl” Over Chicken Neglect’
Congratulations! you’re on The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/09/australia-and-new-zealand-best-placed-to-survive-nuclear-apocalypse-study-finds
oh i thought effective tourism would take care of making your post-EAG time awesome just imagine how an EAG Torres del Paine could be ;)
Because of timezones, the date of this post is displayed as Apr 2nd for me, and I read it while listening to a sad song saying “I’ve got this funny feeling that the end is near” (From “Mayflower, New york”) - making it all a bit funnier
New cause area: analyzing lyrics of Bahia Axé songs for hidden apocalyptical prophecies—or “Netinho predicted our doom in 1996”
not being fooled (even by yourself) to work on capabilities R&D
Btw, I just noticed that the GCR Act is followed by Subsection B—Technological Hazards
Preparedness and Training that nobody is talking about…And preceded by Sec. 7201-7211: Intragovernmental Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act and Sec. 7221-7228: Advancing American AI Act
Hi. I’ll have to present WWOTF’s first chapter to a class of philosophers and economists… I was wondering if someone has any ”.pptx” about the book they’d be willing to share, pretty plz? 😅
Hi. I’ll have to present WWOTF’s first chapter to a class of philosophers and economists… I was wondering if someone has any ”.pptx” about the book they’d be willing to share, pretty plz?
Come to Brazil. We can make room for +1bi individuals, easy. With nuclear winter, we may even manage to get some ski resorts ;)
(Ofc if we don’t start a war w Argentina. That’s the problem w South America)