SaraAzubuike

Karma: 313

SaraAzubuike 5 Dec 2021 18:49 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Rhyss’s comment on: Might stopping miscarriages be a very important cause area?
Hey, thanks for answering my post. Means a lot, especially since you seem to be more familiar with philosophy than me.
“Total utilitarians care about intrinsic value of outcomes.”
- But a) death is painful b) death is the loss of future life c) parents grieve over miscarriages just as people grieve over the loss of a friend.
“Embryos must have an interest in continued existence.”
- Hm, but I argue this is a temporary state. Say I give that mother nutrition and I wait 9 months. That embryo now has an interest in continued existence. In a similar vein, suicidal people have no interest in continued existence. But if I give that suicidal person therapy and wait some time, that person now has an interest in continued existence.

SaraAzubuike 5 Dec 2021 19:11 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: jasonk’s comment on: Might stopping miscarriages be a very important cause area?
Thanks for the link. It’s good to get a sense of the scale of things. I hadn’t realized that induced abortions were such a large number.
The reason I wanted to use the “human” bit was that I think the argument about “potential” is flawed. If we care about depriving the future potential of something, then we would oppose girls education on the basis that it reduces fertility (i.e. potential human beings). See https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YSz8JsCi3u7fupWHX/is-ea-just-about-population-growth.
If we care only about human beings that are already in existence, (which I think is something that most people can agree on), what then matters is what counts as a human being.
In a more political vein, I personally am staunchly in the camp of increased birth control, though my views on abortion (as shown here) are tenuous at best. There are many birth control methods, such as IUDs, that dramatically decrease the chance of an unintended pregnancy (to near 0), yet the public decides to promote greater condom use for their ability to protect against STDs. Both are needed.

SaraAzubuike 5 Dec 2021 21:26 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Might stopping miscarriages be a very important cause area?
Hey, thanks for the reply. I had read Toby’s piece some time ago, but didn’t cite it because I couldn’t find it. Now editing the original. Overall, I think Toby’s article is very pertinent, but potentially wrong. The very fact that many people do not support the “Conclusion” implies that there is a prevailing problem with the way people perceive the consequences of what they actually believe.
“The argument then, is as follows. The embryo has the same moral status as an adult human (the Claim). Medical studies show that more than 60% of all people are killed by spontaneous abortion (a biological fact). Therefore, spontaneous abortion is one of the most serious problems facing humanity, and we must do our utmost to investigate ways of preventing this death—even if this is to the detriment of other pressing issues (the Conclusion). I do not expect many people to accept the Conclusion.” [my addition: but perhaps they should?]
Regarding your other points on tractability, I personally find quite strong evidence that contraception, rather than legal barriers to abortion are the way to improve this. (see prior point about IUDs, or vasectomies)

SaraAzubuike 5 Dec 2021 21:32 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Might stopping miscarriages be a very important cause area?
My bad, I meant to say, “If we can all agree to care about human beings that are already in existence, what then matters is what counts as a human being.” The split between many EAs is just as you say—some care about future lives a lot; some don’t. However, I think what we all can agree upon is that humans that exist now are extremely important. Thus, what then matters is what counts as a human being.

SaraAzubuike 5 Dec 2021 21:36 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Question Mark’s comment on: Might stopping miscarriages be a very important cause area?
I refer you to Toby’s piece, from Larks’s reply to this post.
However, while many cases of spontaneous abortion do indeed result from chromosomal defects, this is not enough to undermine the main argument in this article. There are several reasons for this. First, it is important to note that some chromosomal defects are non-fatal, such as Down syn- drome (which involves three copies of chromosome 21). We rightly value people with Down syndrome and so, if the Claim is correct, we should also value and protect embryos with similar chromosomal abnormalities. Secondly, we may well be able to make great progress in curing chromosomal diseases through gene therapy or a similar technique. This would be difficult, but if the Claim is correct, then it would also be of overwhelming importance. For comparison, it is clearly very difficult to find a cure for cancer and we cannot be certain that a cure is even possible. However, because it is so critically important, there is still a moral imperative to continue the research. Thirdly, we may be able to use tech- niques such as sperm sorting to avoid some of the chromo- somal defects occurring in the first place. While this would not save pre-existing lives, it could prevent a vast amount of embryo death and may be technically easier than fixing an existing defect.

SaraAzubuike 12 Jul 2022 23:14 UTC
8 points
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on: EA for dumb people?
I don’t like how all the comments basically reiterate that smart people have more impact. Of course smart people do. But one avenue for EA to actually make a difference—is to appeal to the masses. For policy to change, you have to appeal to the body politic. And for that, we do need a diverse range of skillsets from people that are much different than the average EA (for example, having more super-social salesperson types in EA would be a net positive for EA)

SaraAzubuike 15 Jul 2022 17:38 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: blonergan’s comment on: Crypto markets, EA funding and optics
Perhaps it was intentionally provocative, but from the transcript of the interview, you can read SBF admitting that cryptocurrencies are like a useless box that gains value because other people want to profit off of said useless box...
current EA spending is a small percentage of EA wealth
I would tend to disagree. This is like saying to an individual that donates 5% of their income that since 5% of annual income is a small percentage of their total wealth (which might include their house and other assets) that a 90% decline in their income would not affect future donations. Of course it would.
I agree that there are massive benefits to having big donors on EA’s side. But that’s like saying of a politician there are massive benefits to have pharma or oil donating to your election campaign. I don’t really have a particular solution here, but one can simultaneously be cognizant of the risks and benefits at the same time.

SaraAzubuike 15 Jul 2022 17:39 UTC
7 points
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in reply to: DC’s comment on: Crypto markets, EA funding and optics
I think this ignores the central thesis of this post.

SaraAzubuike 15 Jul 2022 17:40 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: titotal’s comment on: Crypto markets, EA funding and optics
don’t see where you get the 99.9% number, but yes, it does seem crypto is commonly used in scams.

SaraAzubuike 17 Jul 2022 16:06 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: blonergan’s comment on: Crypto markets, EA funding and optics
I mean, ok, to be more technical SBF is “charging commissions to people in the ponzi and trading against them”.
This is like being the owner of a casino, which is itself a perhaps benign thing. Let’s say poor uneducated people lose billions of dollars of wealth at said casino. Regardless of the casino owner’s admitting that his business is a speculative bubble or a ponzi scheme or whatever, he’s still profiting off of peoples’ losses at said casino.
most crypto projects are at least trying to do something.
But whether something amounts to anything is the true question, right? There are so few uses for cryptocurrencies, and nearly none of the people that invest in them are truly invested in the mission of decentralized finance.
as a rough guess, 40% of EA wealth is in crypto
Woah...if 40% of wealth were wiped out, that would have no impact on investment? I think we have different assumptions about the elasticity between wealth and donations (my prior is that it’s fairly elastic). This is an empirical question, but I would tend to be more biased in favor of over-estimating the negative effects of wealth depletion on investment.
I think whether crypto is a bubble—whether crypto is a ponzi scheme—are irrelevant. The key is that crypto is an extremely volatile asset that is now a significantly sizeable portion of EA wealth, and has negative optics implications (all of which you agree with), and when it falls, has negative implications on future funding flows (which you disagree with).

SaraAzubuike 18 Jul 2022 1:44 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: blonergan’s comment on: Crypto markets, EA funding and optics
fair. let’s agree to disagree.

SaraAzubuike 1 Aug 2022 19:31 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Ben Stewart’s comment on: Button for controversial posts
sigh

SaraAzubuike 31 Aug 2022 6:06 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Emrik’s comment on: Where is the best place to post butterfly ideas?
agree with this. ea forum ideas shouldn’t have to be polished. the more platforms we use, the less easy it is to find everything.

SaraAzubuike 11 Nov 2022 17:35 UTC
33 points
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on: The FTX Future Fund team has resigned
I’ve made this into a post on the forum, because I’m afraid it’ll get buried in the comments here. Please comment on the forum post instead.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9YodZj6J6iv3xua4f/another-ftx-post-suggestions-for-change
I suggested that we would have trouble with FTX and funding around 6 months ago.
SBF has been giving lots of money to EA. He admits it’s a massively speculative bubble. Crypto crash hurts the most vulnerable, because poor uneducated people put lots of money into it (Krugman). Crypto is currently small, but should be regulated and has potential contagion effects (BIS). EA as a whole is getting loose with it’s money due to large crypto flows (MacAskill). An inevitable crypto crash leads to either a) bad optics leading to less interest in EA or b) lots of dead projects.
It was quite obvious that this would happen—although the specific details with Alameda were not obvious. Stuart Buck was the only one who took me seriously at the time.
Below are some suggestions for change.

1. The new button of “support” is great, but I think EA forum should have a way to *sort* by controversiality. And, have the EA forum algorithm occasionally (some $ϵ$ % of the time), punt controversial posts back upwards to the front page. If you’re like me, you read the forum sorted by Magic (New and Upvoted). But this promotes herd mentality. The red-teaming and self-criticism are excellent, but if the only way we aggregate how “good” red-teaming is is by up-votes, that is flawed. Perhaps the best way to know that criticism has touched a nerve is to compute a fraction: how many members of the community disagree vs how many agree. (or, even better, if you are in an organization, use a weighted fraction, where you put lower weight on the people in the organization that are in positions of power (obviously difficult to implement in practice))

2. More of you should consider anonymous posts. This is EA forum. I cannot believe that some of you delete your posts simply because it ends up being downvoted. Especially if you’re working higher up in an EA org, you ought to be actively voicing your dissent and helping to monitor EA.

For example, this is not good:

“Members of the mutinous cohort told me that the movement’s leaders were not to be taken at their word—that they would say anything in public to maximize impact. Some of the paranoia—rumor-mill references to secret Google docs and ruthless clandestine councils—seemed overstated, but there was a core cadre that exercised control over public messaging; its members debated, for example, how to formulate their position that climate change was probably not as important as runaway A.I. without sounding like denialists or jerks.” (New Yorker)
What makes EA, *EA*, what makes EA antifragile, is its ruthless transparency. If we are self-censoring because we have *already concluded something is super effective*, then there is no point in EA. Go do your own thing with your own money. Become Bill Gates. But don’t associate with EA.

3. Finances should be partially anonymized. If an EA org receives some money above a certain threshold from an individual contribution, we should be transparent in saying that we will reject said money if it is not donated anonymously. You may protest that this would decrease the number of donations by rich billionaires. But take it this way: if they donate to EA, it’s because they believe that EA can spend it better. Thus, they should be willing to donate anonymously, to not affect how EA spends money. If they don’t donate to EA, then they can establish a different philanthropic organization and hire EA-adjacent staff, making for more competition.

SaraAzubuike 11 Nov 2022 17:50 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Sharmake’s comment on: The FTX Future Fund team has resigned
Hi, thanks for replying! I’ve made this into an EA forum post, instead because I’m afraid it’ll get buried in the comments here. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9YodZj6J6iv3xua4f/another-ftx-post-suggestions-for-change

SaraAzubuike 11 Nov 2022 22:13 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: blonergan’s comment on: Another FTX post: suggestions for change
Apologies. Yes, thanks for reading and responding to my prior post. I believe I haven’t edited it since we last spoke in the comments section, but I did edit it when you pointed them out.

SaraAzubuike 11 Nov 2022 22:14 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: Holly_Elmore’s comment on: Another FTX post: suggestions for change
Yes, I don’t really care about getting credit for predicting this; I pointed out my previous post mainly to give credence to my suggestions. And based on the comments of other people, maybe anonymous donations or not the best, most feasible, nor most practical way to do things. But, given that EAs focus very much on catastrophic tail risks, it should be the case that we not become overly reliant on single donations or donations which generate such large conflicts of interest. I don’t know what system would be best.

SaraAzubuike 11 Nov 2022 22:14 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Another FTX post: suggestions for change
Ok, I’m not too clear about the legal perspective. I guess my main purpose is this post was to start a dialogue about how we could have avoided such a situation with some preliminary suggestions.

SaraAzubuike 11 Nov 2022 22:17 UTC
10 points
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in reply to: sawyer’s comment on: Another FTX post: suggestions for change
Sorry that the post came off as very harsh and accusatory tone. I mainly meant to express my exasperation with how the situation unfolded so quickly. I’m worried about the coming months and how that will affect the community and in the long term.
Clearly, revealing who is donating is good for transparency. However, if donations were anonymized from the perspective of the recipients, I think that would help mitigate conflicts of interest. I think there needs to be more dialogue about how we can mitigate conflicts of interest, regardless of whether we anonymize. (in fact, perhaps anonymizing is not the most feasible option)
Regarding whether the crash is just normal financial chicanery, it’s kind of like saying the housing bubble wasn’t due to mortgage backed securities per se, but just financial engineering. Clearly there is much at play here, and some attributes are unique to crypto being such a new unregulated area.
You’re right about redflagging. I more meant general posts critiquing EA. Thanks for correcting.

SaraAzubuike 11 Nov 2022 22:37 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Peter S. Park’s comment on: Another FTX post: suggestions for change
I strongly agree with the spirit of the reforms being suggested here (although I might have some different opinions on how to implement it)
How would you do things differently?

SaraAzubuike

Below are some suggestions for change.