Tobias_Baumann

New book on s-risks

Space gov­er­nance is im­por­tant, tractable and neglected

Longter­mism and an­i­mal advocacy

Com­mon ground for longtermists

Thoughts on elec­toral reform

How the an­i­mal move­ment could do even more good

AMA: To­bias Bau­mann, Cen­ter for Re­duc­ing Suffering

• Tobias_Baumann 22 Jun 2020 16:42 UTC

  48 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Prob­lem ar­eas be­yond 80,000 Hours’ cur­rent pri­ori­ties

  Great post—I think it’s extremely important to explore many different problem areas!

  Some further plausible (in my opinion) candidates are shaping genetic enhancement, reducing long-term risks from malevolent actors, invertebrate welfare and space governance.

  What links here?

  • Pablo's comment on Prob­lem ar­eas be­yond 80,000 Hours’ cur­rent pri­ori­ties by Arden Koehler (23 Jun 2020 1:23 UTC; 73 points)

• Tobias_Baumann 20 Jun 2020 11:38 UTC

  47 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: EA con­sid­er­a­tions re­gard­ing in­creas­ing poli­ti­cal polarization

  Great work, thanks for writing this up! I agree that excessive polarisation is an important issue and warrants more EA attention. In particular, polarisation is an important risk factor for s-risks.

  Political polarization, as measured by political scientists, has clearly gone up in the last 20 years.

  It is worth noting that this is a US-centric perspective and the broader picture is more mixed, with polarisation increasing in some countries and decreasing in others.

  If there’s more I’m missing, feel free to provide links in the comment section.

  Olaf van der Veen has written a thesis on this, analysing four possible interventions to reduce polarisation: (1) switching from FPTP to proportional representation, (2) making voting compulsory, (3) increasing the presence of public service broadcasting, and (4) creating deliberative citizen’s assemblies. Olaf’s takeaway (as far as I understand it) is that those interventions seem compelling and fairly tractable but the evidence of possible impacts is often not very strong.

  I myself have also written about electoral reform as a possible way to reduce polarisation, and malevolent individuals in power also seem closely related to increased polarisation.

  What links here?

  • David_Althaus's comment on EA con­sid­er­a­tions re­gard­ing in­creas­ing poli­ti­cal polarization by Alfred Dreyfus (21 Jun 2020 11:00 UTC; 25 points)

How can we re­duce s-risks?

Risk fac­tors for s-risks

Rep­re­sent­ing fu­ture gen­er­a­tions in the poli­ti­cal process

• Tobias_Baumann 17 May 2020 10:29 UTC

  34 points

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  in reply to: Tobias Häberli’s comment on: How should longter­mists think about eat­ing meat?

  Peter’s point is that it makes a lot of sense to have certain norms about not causing serious direct harm, and one should arguably follow such norms rather than expecting some complex longtermist cost-benefit analysis.

  Put differently, I think it is very important, from a longtermist perspective, to advance the idea that animals matter and that we consequently should not harm them (particularly for reasons as frivolous as eating meat).

• Tobias_Baumann 10 Sep 2022 21:08 UTC

  32 points

  14 ∶ 0

  on: Could it be a (bad) lock-in to re­place fac­tory farm­ing with al­ter­na­tive pro­tein?

  Thanks for writing this up! It’s great to see more people think about the relationship between animal advocacy and longtermism.

  It seems important to distinguish between a) the abolition of factory farming and b) a long-term change in human attitudes towards animals (i.e. establishing antispeciesism). b) is arguably more important from a long-term perspective, and it is a legitimate concern cultivated meat (and similar technologies) would only achieve a).

  However, proponents of the “technology-based strategy” usually argue that a) also indirectly helps achieve b), as it allows people to endorse animal rights without cognitive dissonance. I am not entirely sure about this, but it’s at least a plausible counterconsideration.

  Even without this effect, I don’t really understand why you seem to think that abolishing factory farming through non-moral means would cause lock-in. Why can’t attitude change /​ moral progress still happen later?

• Tobias_Baumann 20 Aug 2019 14:21 UTC

  32 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: William_MacAskill’s comment on: Ask Me Any­thing!

  Very interesting points! I largely agree with your (new) views. Some thoughts:

  • If you think that extinction risk this century is less than 1%, then in particular, you think that extinction risk from transformative AI is less than 1%. So, for this to be consistent, you have to believe either

    • a) that it’s unlikely that transformative AI will be developed at all this century,

    • b) that transformative AI is unlikely to lead to extinction when it is developed, e.g. because it will very likely be aligned in at least a narrow sense. (I wrote up some arguments for this a while ago.)

  • Which of the two do you believe to what extent? For instance, if you put 10% on transformative AI this century – which is significantly more conservative than “median EA beliefs” – then you’d have to believe that the conditional probability of extinction is less than 10%. (I’m not saying I disagree – in fact, I believe something along these lines myself.)

  • What do you think about the possibility of a growth mode change (i.e. much faster pace of economic growth and probably also social change, comparable to the industrial revolution) for reasons other than AI? I feel that this is somewhat neglected in EA – would you agree with that?

  --

  I’d also be interested in more details on what these beliefs imply in terms of how we can improve the long-term future. I suppose you are now more sceptical about work on AI safety as the “default” long-termist intervention. But what is the alternative? Do you think we should focus on broad improvements to civilisation, such as better governance, working towards compromise and cooperation rather than conflict /​ war, or generally trying to make humanity more thoughtful and cautious about new technologies and the long-term future? These are uncontroversially good but not very neglected, and it seems hard to get a lot of leverage in this way. (Then again, maybe there is no way to get extraordinary leverage over the long-term future.)

  Also, if we aren’t at a particularly influential point in time regarding AI, then I think that expanding the moral circle, or otherwise advocating for “better” values, may be among the best things we can do. What are your thoughts on that?

Five recom­men­da­tions for bet­ter poli­ti­cal discourse

S-risk FAQ

A ty­pol­ogy of s-risks

• Tobias_Baumann 12 Nov 2019 16:07 UTC

  23 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: In­sti­tu­tions for Fu­ture Generations

  Here’s another proposal:

  We give every contemporary citizen shares in a newly created security. This security settles in, say, 100 years (in 2119), and its settlement value will be based on the degree to which 2119 people approve of the actions of people in the 2019-2119 timespan, as determined by a standardised survey—say, on a scale from 0 to 10.

  This gives contemporary people a direct financial incentive to do what future people would approve of, and uses market mechanisms to generate accurate judgments.

  (One might think that this doesn’t work because people will go “I’ll be dead before this settles”, but I think this isn’t really a problem—there is also an Austrian bond that settles in 100 years, and that doesn’t seem to be a problem.)

Thoughts on short timelines