Unable to work. Was community director of EA Netherlands, had to quit due to ME/CFS (presumably long covid). Everything written since 2021 with considerable brain fog, and bad at maintaining discussions/replying to comments 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. Interested in biomedical R&D reform.
There’s advantages to play money, such as that players don’t care as much about the time value of money (it’s also much easier to start and resolve markets, leading to many more markets)
I sometimes think of this idea and haven’t found anyone mentioning it with a quick AI search: a tax on suffering.
EDIT: there’s a paper on this but specific to animal welfare that was shared on the forum earlier this year.
A suffering tax would function as a Pigouvian tax on negative externalities—specifically, the suffering imposed on sentient beings. The core logic: activities that cause suffering create costs not borne by the actor, so taxation internalizes these costs and incentivizes reduction.
This differs from existing approaches (animal welfare regulations, meat taxes) by:
Making suffering itself the tax base rather than proxies like carbon emissions or product type
Creating a unified framework across different contexts (factory farming, research, entertainment, etc.)
Explicitly quantifying and pricing suffering
The main problems are measurement & administration. I would imagine an institute would be tasked with guidelines/a calculation model, which could become pretty complex. Actually administrating it would also be very hard, and there should be a threshold beneath which no tax is required because it wouldn’t be worth the overhead. I would imagine that an initial version wouldn’t right away be “full EA” taking into account invertebrates. It should start with a narrow scope, but with the infrastructure for moral circle expansion.
It’s obviously more a theoretical exercise than practical near-term, but here’s a couple of considerations:
it’s hard to oppose: it’s easier to say that carbon isn’t important or animals don’t suffer. It’s harder to oppose direct taxation of suffering
it’s relatively robust in the long-term: it can incorporate new scientific and philosophical insights on wild animal welfare, non-vertebrate sentience, digital sentience, etc.
it’s scale sensitive
it focuses the discussion on what matters: who suffers how much?
It incentivizes the private sector to find out ways to reduce suffering
What are the latest growth metrics of the EA community? Or where can I find them? (I searched but couldn’t find them)
Couple of thoughts, kinda long and rambly
This gets discussed occasionally on the Manifold Discord and I wanted to share some skeptical points that one of the top forecasters (Semiotic Rivalry) made there:
“for me to go >5% on this [authoritarian takeover/coup] i’d have to see them openly disobeying orders from the supreme court or like, the very least should be killing the filibuster”
“I feel like the lightest first step of the fascist takeover would be to have the VP overrule the senate parliamentarian on what can be permitted to go into a reconciliation bill, which is totally legal and tons of Dems wanted Biden to do, and they failed to even do this”
Supreme Court is still constraining him, e.g. Trump wasn’t allowed to fire Federal Reserve commissioner Lisa Cook
Revealed preferences suggest people don’t actually believe dictatorship/catastrophe to be very likely: they aren’t moving abroad or stocking up on guns. (To which people replied that it’s not easy to find a good place to live abroad due to economics, language)
This was largely in response to me saying that I find it hard to think through Trump/MAGA military (self-)coup possibilities. Because although military self-coups appear to be rare in consolidated or backsliding democracies, they’re not entirely unheard of, and it sure seems like Hegseth, Trump, etc. are working towards this. They are systematically dismantling military guardrails:
They keep pushing the envelope on deploying military domestically (in conflict with the Posse Comitatus Act), which blurs lines among the population and the military for this
They’ve fired a lot of military leadership as well as all Judges Advocate General (JAGs) which generally serve as a constraint on executive overreach.
The pardoning of war criminals, the broader pardoning of J6′ers and Trump allies, and the commands to engage in war crimes like shooting down a boat of non-combatants (allegedly drug-traffickers)
The general pattern of purging appears to be that Trump/the administration gives an illegal/norm-breaking order which functions as a loyalty test: it forces everyone involved to either comply, step down, or refuse to obey (which tends to get you fired—something that the Supreme Court hasn’t been adequately protecting besides the Fed).
The coup form I expect, if it happens, would not be a direct command to military generals, but to order his most loyal militarized groups (e.g. red states National Guard, ICE) to take control of the democratic/election process. Opposing military would then have to coordinate on action, which would be very difficult. The general population could resist en masse (South Korea 2024-style), but so far protests have been small, and in the US there’s a vocal and dangerous base supporting Trump. That said, base rates suggest a coup is still very unlikely, and coups are difficult. I don’t know what probability I would give it, I’m mainly trying to understand the mechanisms here.
Other thoughts:
Trump attempted to overthrow an election before
Orbán is often mentioned as comparison (rightly so), but he was able to amend the Constitution in the first year due to Hungarian law, which is a major difference
An economic crisis would be a major cause of discontent and the AI boom is really unfortunate
Protests so far have been small, No Kings Protests of “5 million” was [greatly exaggerated](https://bsky.app/profile/siebepersists.bsky.social/post/3lruu445wgk27) (posted on BlueSky but I’m not at all active there otherwise). I think bigger protests will be necessary (but not sufficient)
I haven’t even talked about AI but it’s a wild card, probably would favor Trump. Executives are largely very appeasing (OpenAI, xAI), appeasing (Google, Meta), or softly defiant (Anthropic)
People think Trump is too old and a unique figure, but I’m not confident that a successor wouldn’t be as bad. At some point, they either put a successor on the ballot or Trump himself. A successor could pull away power from Trump and then lose. There’s generally a lot of possibility around this to dis-unite any coup-interested faction. However, I find the sentiment that “Trump is uniquely bad and his successor will not have the same power and therefore it’s not a concerning scenario” overconfident, and there’s plenty of systemic reasons to expect a successor to be pretty bad
Pet peeve: stop calling short timelines “optimistic” and long timelines “pessimistic”. These create unwarranted connotations that day AI progress is desirable. Most people concerned about AI safety find short timelines dangerous! Instead, use “bullish” vs. “bearish”, or just “short timelines” vs. “long timelines”.
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:
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.
Sounds like this would benefit from this method of analyzing online anecdotes to estimate effect sizes, which showed good results in early data and is being expanded:
https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~nikita/natural/