Timothy Chan

My fa­vorite ar­ti­cles by Brian To­masik and what they are about

• Timothy Chan 4 Mar 2023 19:24 UTC

  51 points

  26 ∶ 20

  on: Nick Bostrom should step down as Direc­tor of FHI

  I think it’s beneficial for the community if someone presented a very different view (publicly):

  While I don’t know enough to comment on the ‘pre-existing issues’ section of your post, my view is that Bostrom’s apology was sufficient.

  I think a lot of people might be reacting excessively to mistakes that he made more than two decades ago.

  Some words may be considered particularly inappropriate in certain socioeconomic and cultural contexts. However, it’s important to recognize that others may be acting and speaking from a different background with different norms and values that one isn’t familiar with. Bostrom isn’t from the Anglosphere, probably isn’t very neurotypical, and grew up as part of another generation.

  Furthermore, I’m concerned about contemporary authoritarian trends encouraged by some individuals who identify as social justice activists. While these trends may make the immediate environments of some individuals more pleasant, they can also have consequences (political or otherwise) that could place the world on a riskier trajectory. I think EAs need to reflect on these risks and avoid contributing to them.

SBF in­ter­view with Tif­fany Fong

• Timothy Chan 2 Jul 2022 14:35 UTC

  35 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: James Özden’s comment on: The Fu­ture Might Not Be So Great.

  Honestly, I’m new—I only just became aware of all this. I think I haven’t had enough time to make a judgment myself.

  But what I do know is that John’s initial claim that Jacy ‘admitted to several instances of sexual harassment’ seemed misleading, and I decided to point that out because there was a lack of people who did so, which seems harmful to community norms.

  Note: Some of the replies below conflate the more stringent notion of ‘judgment’ that I’m referring to, with a less stringent notion of ‘update’. The evidence should certainly update us, but there is a higher bar for judgments.

• Timothy Chan 21 May 2022 9:32 UTC

  35 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Ar­gu­ments for Why Prevent­ing Hu­man Ex­tinc­tion is Wrong

  I agree there should be more reflection (moral or factual) into the assumption that we should prioritize preventing human extinction. :)

  That being said, we should emphasize that some of the risk factors for extinction also seem to be risk factors for more suffering and s-risks—which suggests that negative utilitarians as well as s-risk reducers wouldn’t support shifting focus away from those dealing with those risk factors—unless there are better opportunities for impact. Examples of these risk factors include more conflict, polarization and the unsafe development of AI, especially without concern for cooperative aspects to prevent potential conflict between different AI or their operators.

  Of course, this might not apply to all risk factors of extinction. Still, s-risk reducers and suffering reducers might think that it’s bad to (intentionally or otherwise) act in a way that results in people trying to bring it about (see https://​​www.utilitarianism.com/​​nu/​​nufaq.html#3.2 ) which might raise the question of precisely how much emphasis to put on this as a community.

  More considerations include whether other civilizations exist (e.g. aliens), and if so, how many. This also makes it unclear what antinatalism suggests. If the focus is on fewer births then we need to find out whether human civilization would increase or decrease the total number of births in the future compared to alternative scenarios where, e.g., aliens own the resources humans would have owned.

  Also remember that an existential risk (x-risk) is a “risk of an existential catastrophe, i.e. one that threatens the destruction of humanity’s longterm potential”. This means existential risks aren’t the same as extinction risks. S-risks that destroy humanity’s longterm potential are also x-risks.

In­ver­te­brate pain and suffer­ing: What do anal­gesic stud­ies tell us?

• Timothy Chan 1 May 2023 13:03 UTC

  28 points

  5 ∶ 1

  in reply to: titotal’s comment on: Bridg­ing EA’s Gen­der Gap: In­put From 60 Peo­ple

  There might be differences between identifying with feminism and ‘being open to scholars of feminism, queer studies and gender studies’ though. Most Americans probably aren’t familiar with academia to know of its latest thinking.

  And like how different people have different notions of what counts as discriminatory, racist, sexist, or not discriminatory, racist, sexist, it’s possible that different people have different notions of what ‘feminism’ means. (Some might consider it a position supporting equal rights between the sexes—others a position supporting women’s rights. They might be thinking of the second, third, or fourth wave etc.)

  The supplementary document containing the survey questions suggests the question asked was “How well, if at all, do each of the following describe you?” followed by “Environmentalist”, “Feminist” and “A supporter of gun rights” (in random order), which doesn’t seem to specify one specific notion of ‘feminist’ for survey participants to consider.

  Although, to be fair, maybe there’s actually more agreement among Americans on the definition of feminist (in the year of the survey, 2020) than I’m expecting.

  In any case, I expect the differences in preferences of elite Anglosphere/​U.S. women, and not-necessarily-elite, non-Anglosphere/​non-U.S. women in general (e.g., in Europe, Asia, South America) would still be quite large.

• Timothy Chan 1 Jul 2022 16:39 UTC

  28 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: John G. Halstead’s comment on: The Fu­ture Might Not Be So Great.

  1 - CEA says that the complaints relate to inappropriate behaviour in the sexual realm which they found ‘credible and concerning’ and which he pretends to apologise for in the apology post, presumably to avoid a legal battle

  I still don’t see where ‘he admitted to several instances of sexual harassment’ as you’ve claimed.

Com­mon-sense sen­tience is dubious

• Timothy Chan 9 Mar 2023 0:33 UTC

  23 points

  5 ∶ 0

  in reply to: SoniaAlbrecht’s comment on: EA needs Life-Veter­ans and “Less Smart” people

  Not American, but I’m from Hong Kong and the higher acceptability of “saying things in a blunt way” in the socioeconomic circles I grew up in rings true to me. A caveat that traditional Chinese culture makes it more uncommon for discussions to center around sexual things. That said, it seems that if sexual things do come up, people aren’t super averse to it in the way that people in elite Western circles are. (Except in and around church. I grew up Protestant.)

  The main (economic) factor might be that my parents and relatives all grew up poor (a common background for many people in HK) and that I have a sort-of-working class background (parents still broke but relatives became better off—got a great education with help from relatives but lived relatively worse off with my parents -it’s complicated). My sense is that my priorities are very different from Western EAs with more money, or actually, even other people in my home city with more money.

  I’m guessing that for the generation before me, growing up in a small flat with 6 other siblings, it just doesn’t really matter if someone’s kind of “vulgar” or speaks kind of bluntly. And if people deliberately offend you with a comment, sure enough, you might get angry at that person—but it’s unlikely that you’ll find what they said paralyzing.

  I myself grew up in better conditions, but maybe the cultural memory of severe material hardship persists, at least for a while. I didn’t really care that much when friends from school used explicit language. Because it frequently happened on a daily basis. Some of my (~middle class) friends and I often said “offensive things” to each other in the past for fun, and sometimes I kind of miss the opportunity to do that (sometimes not though) since now my social circles mostly consist of people from the upper/​upper middle classes.

• Timothy Chan 1 Jul 2022 22:04 UTC

  22 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: John G. Halstead’s comment on: The Fu­ture Might Not Be So Great.

  Then I think it’d be more accurate if you write ‘he admitted to several instances of what I consider to be sexual harassment’.

  At the moment, your claim that ‘he admitted to several instances of sexual harassment’ seems very misleading. You haven’t provided evidence that supports the claim that he confessed to committing such crimes.

  EDIT: I’m approaching this issue with much less lived experience than some of the other commenters here. There appear to be more individuals than just John who are confident in the allegations, so perhaps ‘what [John considers] to be sexual harassment’ is not enough, and instead ‘what [X, Y and so on...] consider to be sexual harassment’ is better. (From what I can tell, the apology post also features some comments that push back on that confidence, to varying extents, and it may be worth mentioning that too. I’m not following this issue extensively and I don’t know if there have been any updates since that post.) I still think John’s comment, as it stands, (‘he admitted to several instances of sexual harassment’) is misleading and harmful to community norms. I think people should point out bad epistemics despite possible social pressures to do otherwise.

• Timothy Chan 18 Feb 2023 23:16 UTC

  21 points

  7 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Peo­ple Will Some­times Just Lie About You

  Yes, I was aware of that. Nonetheless, the article chose to use the “grooming” framing to describe the scenario, as well as put special emphasis on the “groomer” being “nearly twice her age”. It’s clear that the TIME journalist is trying to communicate personal opinions and/​or appeal to crowds that stigmatize relationships between adults who have large age differences:

  “One recalled being “groomed” by a powerful man nearly twice her age… Another told TIME a much older EA recruited her to join his polyamorous relationship while she was still in college.”

  “Joseph was 22 and still in college; he was nearly twice her age.”

  (emphasis mine)

• Timothy Chan 12 Dec 2022 6:12 UTC

  21 points

  7 ∶ 4

  in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Kurzge­sagt’s most re­cent video pro­mot­ing the in­tro­duc­ing of wild life to other planets is un­eth­i­cal and irresponsible

  I think in context, i.e. following OP’s sentence “If the key decision makers of the future decide they have to bring animals to other planets … introducing herbivores would be preferred …”—by ‘every individual animal’, OP means every individual animal brought to other planets—not every single animal in existence. OP also seems to focusing on terraforming rather than space colonization.

  So I’m not sure why you think that it’s “an unreasonably demanding standard”. There are certainly ways of assigning value that would say that creating additional lives with negative experiences makes it worse for those lives compared to refraining from creating them (e.g. minimalist axiologies). These may be rarer within the EA community, but they definitely exist outside of it (e.g. some forms of Buddhist ethics). If that’s the case, and we’re only talking about the lives created, then opposing bringing animals will indeed help every single animal involved.

  The implications of this is only that we find it preferable not to terraform—which isn’t paralysis—just opposition to that particular policy.

• Timothy Chan 6 Apr 2023 19:19 UTC

  20 points

  10 ∶ 9

  on: Things that can make EA a good place for women

  One reasonable, good-for-women social norm that is being questioned here: believing most women who make accusations of sexual misconduct.

  I think it’s not clear that ‘conventional social norms’ are all that conventional. Many of us live or grew up outside of the Anglo-American world (or grew up in another generation, or in less elite areas) and might place more importance to principles such as the presumption of innocence.

• Timothy Chan 1 Nov 2022 11:59 UTC

  20 points

  8 ∶ 2

  in reply to: David Mathers’s comment on: In­sect farm­ing might cause more suffer­ing than other an­i­mal farming

  Agreed.

  Also, those views are surprisingly common even though it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of justification to be certain (or actually even, let’s say, ~>90% confident) of them—which a lot of people seem to be.

  Humans making the claim that there’s “less sentience” or less intense pain in insects only have their mental experiences, combined with knowledge of their own nervous systems, as a reference.

  Some relevant posts:

  https://​​reducing-suffering.org/​​is-brain-size-morally-relevant/​​

  https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​posts/​​H7KMqMtqNifGYMDft/​​differences-in-the-intensity-of-valenced-experience-across

• Timothy Chan 1 Jul 2022 15:57 UTC

  17 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: John G. Halstead’s comment on: The Fu­ture Might Not Be So Great.

  Could you

  1. Quote where in the linked text or elsewhere ‘he admitted to several instances of sexual harassment’?

  2. As someone asked in another comment, ‘provide links or specific quotes regarding his claim of being a founder of EA?’

• Timothy Chan 11 Dec 2022 22:59 UTC

  15 points

  3 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Henry Howard’s comment on: Kurzge­sagt’s most re­cent video pro­mot­ing the in­tro­duc­ing of wild life to other planets is un­eth­i­cal and irresponsible

  I’m not sure eliminate is the right way to put it. Reducing net primary productivity (NPP) in legally acceptable ways (e.g. converting lawns into gravel) could end up being cost-effective, but eliminate seems too strong here.

  Doing NPP reduction in less acceptable ways could make a lot of people angry, which seems bad for advocacy to reduce wild animal suffering. As Brian Tomasik pointed out somewhere, most of expected future wild animal suffering wouldn’t take place on Earth, so getting societal support to prevent terraforming seems more important.

• Timothy Chan 4 Jan 2023 22:12 UTC

  14 points

  3 ∶ 0

  on: Bill Burr on Boiling Lob­sters (also man­li­ness and AW)

  Relatedly, it seems good to take efforts to present animal welfare in a less polarizing light, perhaps by avoiding lumping it with other cultural stances of the parts of the political spectrum that it’s most associated with.^[1]

  I’ve noted previously how polarization also happens on the international level. My basic model of the current situation is that (1) advocacy/​actions perceived to be extreme happens in the Anglo-American world → (2) a lot of people in, say, China find out about it and find such advocacy/​actions distressing and associate it with being “Western” , and then start resisting practices from the West (on the other hand, other people might find such advocacy/​actions appealing—but this, in some cases, also seems to come with polarization, which gives more reason for opponents to resist it).

  I think many positions considered progressive from perspectives outside of the Anglo-American world are important to advance, but there also seems to be an increased difficulty of doing so because of a perception (which may or may not be accurate) of how it changes a society in ways non-Anglo-American people fear. One solution might be that activists, from the Anglo-American world and elsewhere, should focus on issues closer to the center that are also particularly effective to work on.

  1. ^

     Disclaimer: I find myself leaning conservative with social issues, while leaning progressive with economic issues—using American politics as a baseline—although I also feel as if I should change my stances accordingly as EA-relevant macrostrategic insights are uncovered.

  What links here?

  • Timothy Chan's comment on Thread for dis­cussing Bostrom’s email and apology by Lizka (16 Jan 2023 22:31 UTC; 12 points)

• Timothy Chan 4 Jul 2022 19:09 UTC

  14 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: James Özden’s comment on: The Fu­ture Might Not Be So Great.

  Thank you for being more charitable after reading my comment, and for your effort in a detailed response.

  Again, I agree there are some epistemic benefits to calling out statements that don’t seem correct, but I think there are also some large downsides to this in this case.

  I think I still prefer to challenge a claim that quite blatantly (but probably unintentionally) misleads people into thinking that someone confessed to committing a crime, a claim placed in the highest upvoted comment on a post receiving a lot of attention. I think we should be suspicious of thinking ‘let bad arguments persist because criticizing them would be bad’.

  I lean towards disagreeing with your claim that it’s net negative overall to point out that inaccuracy but caveat that I’m not certain of how confident I should be in that position.

  One reason I think there are positives is that there are indeed cases in which allegations don’t hold up, and innocent people get hurt (note I’m not saying that this necessarily applies to this case, and from what I can tell it seems to constitute a low percentage of cases). It makes sense to consider the interests of those accused but innocent, in addition to the interests of sexual harassment victims and potential victims.

  I think ensuring we aren’t overzealous requires us to uphold certain norms, even when it’s challenging to do so socially. For context, I’m not in the Anglosphere at the moment—but I do see some trends there involving strong emotions and accompanying criticisms that do worry me, and I don’t think this community should be overly concerned with potential criticism so as to not speak up to uphold those norms.

  I had to make several comments following up on the misleading statement because John didn’t deliver on the statement, nor take note and rephrase his writing to be less misleading. Unfortunately, he still hasn’t done so.

  is that it brings about an element of questioning

  On how I’ve phrased a possible rephrasing (and the updated possible rephrasing in the edited part of the comment) of John’s statement, to reduce the misleadingness, I wasn’t as aware as you were of your concerns and didn’t know it has risks of making people feel questioned/​not taken seriously when I wrote that. Your concerns make sense and I’ll keep them in mind. But I also haven’t made up my mind on the extent to which it’s important to be mindful of how I should present what I consider truthful statements (i.e. we are the ones deciding on what to make of the available evidence—so we are in fact the ones who ‘consider’ whether it constitutes sexual harassment) - in order to reduce the risk of such feelings.

  I think the fact that you also said “I think I haven’t had enough time to make a judgment myself.” adds to this… To not update towards this after even a short consideration...

  I think we have different understandings of the term ‘judgment’ here. In this quite serious context (which sometimes involves the law), I take ‘judgment’ to mean much more (as in ‘pass judgment’) than updating beliefs. I didn’t say that the evidence didn’t update my views (actually I think it’ll be absurd if it didn’t), nor did I imply that the views of one accused ‘deserves equal or greater weight’ than the testimony of multiple accusers (as Khorton wrote). That multiple people have made complaints should indeed update us towards thinking that sexual harassment happened.

  But again, I take ‘judgment’ to mean much more than ‘updating’. When I said that “I think I haven’t had enough time to make a judgment myself”, I meant there wasn’t enough time to make a solid conclusion about these especially troubling allegations (edit: time isn’t the only thing you need—it also depends on whether there’s sufficient information to analyze). This might not be the approach some people take, but there are huge personal costs at stake for the parties involved, and I don’t want to condemn anyone so quickly. Also, realize that I wrote that “I think I haven’t had enough time to make a judgment myself” within one day of learning of the allegations. I think it’s reasonable to be cautious of confidence.

  Unfortunately, I won’t be able to comment much more. I’m a slow writer and I’m exhausted from having to follow up so much. I only wanted to make that point about John’s comment and get him to follow better practices—but that’s been unsuccessful. I hope our future interactions could be under better circumstances.

• Timothy Chan 19 Mar 2024 22:01 UTC

  13 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: The Scale of Fe­tal Suffer­ing in Late-Term Abortions

  Thank you for bringing attention to fetal suffering—especially the possibility of suffering of <24 weeks fetuses.

  Others have already pointed out that the interventions of applying anaesthetics to fetuses has issues of political tractability, but I think there’s also a dynamic that could result in backfire on moral circle expansion efforts to include fetuses and/​or other “less complex” entities.

  Most people haven’t spent time thinking about whether simpler entities can suffer and haven’t formed an opinion so it seems like they’re particularly susceptible to first impressions. The suggestion that less developed fetuses can suffer would likely imply to them that early abortions are wrong. People who don’t like this normative implication might decide (probably unjustifiably) to think less developed fetuses and by extension other “less complex” entities cannot suffer to absolve themselves of acting in ways that might increase fetal suffering. “Early abortions are not wrong → early fetuses cannot suffer → anything of “lower complexity” cannot suffer”. On the other hand, first introducing the ideas abstractly and suggesting that we should care about simple entities “in general” sidesteps this and could lead people to eventually care about fetal suffering in an, admittedly indirect, but less politically charged way.

  So between two strategies, (1) advocate for lower complexity entities in general, and (2) advocate for less developed fetuses, those concerned with moral circle expansion to fetuses and/​or other simpler entities should probably focus on the first strategy.

  (Personally, I’d prefer if people accepted that they act in ways that might increase suffering, while simultaneously aim to decrease suffering.)