Unable to work. Was community director of EA Netherlands, had to quit due to long covid. Everything written since 2021 with considerable brain fog, and bad at maintaining discussions since.
I have a background in philosophy, risk analysis, and moral psychology. I also did some x-risk research. Currently most worried about AI and US democracy. (Regarding the latter, I’m highly ranked on Manifold).
As a non-engineer not working in this space, I can’t say much but I’ve had a lot of similar thoughts (ceiling mounted, outer casing, non-HEPA). I do have my question about your design (and GPT o4-mini-high is pretty skeptical), wondering whether the fan really draws all the air through the filters. This design also doesn’t work well in smaller rooms? I personally like “fandeliers” or ceiling-mounted CR boxes that include lighting and actually look decent.
I agree that there seems to be a lot of improvement up for grabs, and I would love to see a company start innovating here and—most importantly—scale up production.
The problem, however, seems like it would be demand: air purifiers aren’t in high demand, and consumers don’t notice the difference between high and low CADR (they do notice noise). A company could bet on creating a large, cheap stockpile to sell off at high prices during an epidemic, but I imagine it’d be hard to get investors on board for that. This space probably needs market-shaping, such as advance market commitments or indoor air quality regulations (e.g. mandated PM2.5 levels) creating demand.
Specifically, I think there are some random factors around luck, personal connections and timing that play a big role.
I don’t think that this is a point against DoTheMath. It’s just more information to learn from, but in this case learning that you can’t just copy the method (if they were lucky) or need to develop/find the right personal connections etc.
I haven’t looked into this literature, but it sounds remarkably similar to the literature of cognitive behavioral therapy and graded exercise therapy for ME/CFS (also sometimes referred to as ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’). I can imagine this being different for pain which could be under more direct neurological control.
Pretty much universally, this research was of low to very low quality. For example, using overly broad inclusion criteria such that many patients did not have the core symptom of ME/CFS, and only reporting subjective scores (which tend to improve) while not reporting objective scores. These treatments are also pretty much impossible to blind. Non-blinding + subjective self-report is a pretty bad combination. This, plus the general amount of bad research practices in science, gives me a skeptical prior.
Regarding the value of anecdotes—over the past couple of years as ME/CFS patient (presumably from covid) I’ve seen remission anecdotes for everything under the sun. They’re generally met with enthusiasm and a wave of people trying it, with ~no one being able te replicate it. I suspect that “I cured my condition X psychologically” is often a more prevalent story because 1) it’s tried so often, and 2) it’s an especially viral meme. Not because it has a higher succes rate than a random supplement. The reality is that spontaneous remission for any condition seems not extremely unlikely, and it’s actually very hard to trace effects to causes (which is why even for effective drugs, we need large-scale highly rigorous trials).
Lastly, ignoring symptoms can be pretty dangerous so I recommend caution with the approach and approach it like you would any other experimental treatment.
I’m starting a discussion group on Signal to explore and understand the democratic backsliding of the US at ‘gears-level’. We will avoid simply discussing the latest outrageous thing in the news, unless that news is relevant to democratic backsliding.
Example questions:
“how far will SCOTUS support Trump’s executive overreach?”
“what happens if Trump commands the military to support electoral fraud?”
“how does this interact with potentially short AGI timelines?”
“what would an authoritarian successor to Trump look like?”
“are there any neglected, tractable, and important interventions?”
You can join the group here. (If the link doesn’t work anymore in the future, DM me.)
For the record, by authoritarian takeover I mean a gradual process aiming for a situation like Hungary (which they’ve frequently cited as their inspiration and something to aspire to). Given that Trump has tried to orchestrate a coup the last time he was in office, I don’t think it’s a hyperbolic claim to say he’s trying again this time. I’m also not making any claims about the likelihood of success.
is only getting the upvotes (at the time I posted, it was all upvotes and “agree” reacts), because of the forum’s political bias.
I think this is very uncharitable to other Forum users. (Unless you meant “is getting only upvotes [..]”)
Oh I was just l looking through how much Trump is/isn’t discussed on the forum and came across this comment and saw the many disagrees for the first time.
I don’t think discussing authoritarian takeover is against Forum rules, though EA is not the ideal place for political resistance given its broad amount of causes for which it needs political tractability. However, it’s tricky because US political dynamics are currently extremely influential for EA cause areas, and I think we need to do better thinking through how various areas will be affected, and how policies might interact with the affect that the US administration is proto-authoritarian. We should not simply pretend the US administration is a normal one.
That said, in these discussion we should be careful to not descend into ‘mere partisanship’ though I don’t know where that line is. I wish the Forum team would give more guidance.
I don’t think it’s that misleading because
Will Manifold think Trump made a serious about to remain in charge? (35%, n=26, would be ~26% without my bets). Resolves via Manifold poll
Trump tried something arguably coup-like but it fails (25%, n=44) and the linked “Trump remains in office” is 15% (n=43), putting the total attempt probability at 40%. Other markets put success at lower rates though, which seems more realistic.
The President has also already tried a coup once (fake elector scheme, J6). There’s a much bigger case I could make but I don’t want to do that here
I appreciate you looking into the resolution criteria, because they matter. And yes, partisan SCOTUS rulings being included muddles the evidence somewhat. That said, I don’t think it’s that misleading because
Will Manifold think Trump made a serious about to remain in charge? (35%, n=26, would be ~26% without my bets). Resolves via Manifold poll
Trump tried something arguably coup-like but it fails (25%, n=44) and the linked “Trump remains in office” is 15% (n=43), putting the total attempt probability at 40%. Other markets put success at lower rates though, which seems more realistic.
In hindsight I would’ve referenced the Manifold poll resolution.
I recommend everyone in this thread looking at the US Democracy topic on Manifold which I have added all relevant questions to that I could find (and also look elsewhere, e.g. Metaculus, which has much fewer questions but arguably better incentives for long-term questions)
P.S.
I also have a separate question for specifically a controversial SCOTUS ruling in favor of Republicans but it doesn’t have enough traders.
Oh boy, this wasn’t my best take!
I hope we’re due for an updated calculation now the tariffs have been implemented! Or maybe good to wait until the back and forth reciprocal tariffs have settled..
The link to your Substack doesn’t work by the way.
The current US administration is attempting an authoritarian takeover. This takes years and might not be successful. My manifold question puts an attempt to seize power if they lose legitimate elections at 30% (n=37). I put it much higher.[1]
Not only is this concerning by itself, this also incentivizes them to achieve a strategic decisive advantage via superintelligence over pro-democracy factions. As a consequence, they may be willing to rush and cut corners on safety.
Crucially, this relies on them believing superintelligence can be achieved before a transfer of power.
I don’t know how much the belief in superintelligence has spread into the administration. I don’t think Trump is ‘AGI-pilled’ yet, but maybe JD Vance is? He made an accelerationist speech. Making them more AGI-pilled and advocating for nationalization (like Ashenbrenner did last year) could be very dangerous.
So far, my pessimism about US Democracy has put me in #2 on the Manifold topic, with a big lead over other traders. I’m not a Superforecaster though.
You make a lot of good points—thank you for the elaborate response.
I do think you’re being a little unfair and picking only the worst examples. Most people don’t make millions working on AI safety, and not everything has backfired. AI x-risk is a common topic at AI companies, they’ve signed the CAIS statement that it should be a global priority, technical AI safety has a talent pipeline and is a small but increasingly credible field, to name a few. I don’t think “this is a tricky field to make a robustly positive impact so as a careful person I shouldn’t work on it” is a solid strategy at the individual level, let alone at the community level.
That said, I appreciate your pushback and there’s probably plenty of people working on either cause area for whom personal incentives matter more than philosophical ones.
A lot of post-AGI predictions are more like 1920s predicting flying cars (technically feasible, maximally desirable if no other constraints, same thing as current system but better) instead of predicting EasyJet: crammed low-cost airlines (physical constraints imposing economic constraints, shaped by iterative regulation, different from current system)
Here’s an argument I made in 2018 during my philosophy studies:
A lot of animal welfare work is technically “long-termist” in the sense that it’s not about helping already existing beings. Farmed chickens, shrimp, and pigs only live for a couple of months, farmed fish for a few years. People’s work typically takes longer to impact animal welfare.
For most people, this is no reason to not work on animal welfare. It may be unclear whether creating new creatures with net-positive welfare is good, but only the most hardcore presentists would argue against preventing and reducing the suffering of future beings.
But once you accept the moral goodness of that, there’s little to morally distinguish the suffering from chickens in the near-future from the astronomic amounts of suffering that Artificial Superintelligence can do to humans, other animals, and potential digital beings. It could even lead to the spread of factory farming across the universe! (Though I consider that unlikely)
The distinction comes in at the empirical uncertainty/speculativeness of reducing s-risk. But I’m not sure if that uncertainty is treated the same as uncertainty about shrimp or insect welfare.
I suspect many people instead work on effective animal advocacy because that’s where their emotional affinity lies and it’s become part of their identity, because they don’t like acting on theoretical philosophical grounds, and they feel discomfort imagining the reaction of their social environment if they were to work on AI/s-risk. I understand this, and I love people for doing so much to make the world better. But I don’t think it’s philosophically robust.
Have you weighed the potential reputational risks if AI development follows a more moderate trajectory than anticipated? If we see AI plateau at impressive but clearly non-transformative capabilities, this strategic all-in approach could affect 80,000 Hours’ credibility for years to come.
I feel like this argument has been implicitly holding back a lot of EA focus on AI (for better or worse), so thanks for putting it so clearly. I always wonder about the asymmetry of it: what about the reputational benefits that accrue to 80K/EA for correctly calling the biggest cause ever? (If they’re correct)
One perspective one could have is that this is a positive-sum approach to influence-/power-seeking: supporting neglected policies that would benefit large amounts of the US public buys goodwill, helps develop connections with other funders, and might put people in positions of power that are highly sympathetic to EA ideas. With the current state of the EA brand, this might not be such a bad idea.
There are other ways of seeking influence but they tend to have fewer positive effects (donating to politicians, trying to run one’s own candidates for office) and solely relying on the strategy “become experts and try to convince those in power of the necessary policies” isn’t really bearing fruit. And it seems increasingly untenable to ignore politics, with US & UK (and Netherlands) already drastically slashing international aid and the AGI trajectory depending heavily on those in power.
It is of course different from the default EA strategy of “do the actual thing you believe is directly most cost-effective and communicate very explicitly about your theory of change”. But I don’t think that explicitly communicating this would be well-received by third parties. Even explicitly thinking of it this way internally is risky PR-wise.
It does seem important to clearly delineate within EA when and whose communication is meant to be representative of one’s thinking, and which communication isn’t. Muddying this could be quite detrimental to EA in the long-term. I’m not sure how OpenPhil should’ve acted here. Perhaps better if they had not posted it to the EA Forum so that they don’t signal “we believe this is good on EA grounds”.
All in all, I’m positively inclined towards this fund though.
I don’t think I follow: why can only political moderates make it to the final four?
(It does seem like there are better ways to implement RCV than this though, because it still has many First past the post dynamics)
Ah, good post! I should probably just have refrained from commenting on the design given my limited knowledge. For benchmarking purposes, perhaps these designs are better than the one from Wirecutter:
https://housefresh.com/quiet-air-purifiers/