The low number of human-shrimp connections may be due to the attendance dip in 2020. Shrimp have understandably a difficult relationship with dips.
Tobias Häberli
I looked into evidence for the quote you posted for one hour. While I think the phrasing is inaccurate, I’d say the gist of the quote is true. For example, it’s pretty understandable that people jump from “Emile Torres says that Nick Beckstead supports white supremacy” to “Emile Torres says that Nick Beckstead is a white supremacist”.
White Supremacy:
In a public facebook post you link to this public google doc where you call a quote from Nick Beckstead “unambiguously white-supremacist”.
You reinforce that view in a later tweet:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1509948468571381762
You claim that the writing of Bostrom, Beckstead, Ord, Greaves, etc. is “very much about the preservation of white Western civilization”:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1527250704313856000
You also tweeted about a criticism of Hilary Greaves in which you “see white supremacy all over it”:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1229107714015604736
Genocide:
On another facebook post you agree with Olle Häggström [note: Häggström actually strongly disagrees with this characterization of their position] that Bostrom’s idea of transhumanism and utilitarianism in Letters from Utopia “is a recipe for moral disaster—for genocide, white supremacy, and so on.”
Eugenics:
In your Salon article you call some of Bostrom’s ideas “straight out of the handbook of eugenics”.
https://www.salon.com/2022/08/20/understanding-longtermism-why-this-suddenly-influential-philosophy-is-so/
You reinforce this view in the following tweet:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1562003541539037186
You also say that “Longtermism is deeply rooted in the ideology of eugenics”.
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1557338332702572545
Racism:
You called Sam Harris “quite racist”:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1384425549091774466
In this tweet you strongly imply that some of Bostrom’s views are indistinguishable from scientific racism:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1569365203049140224
There’s also this tweet that describes the EA community as welcoming to misogynists, neoreactionaries, and racists:
https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1510708370285776902
“Profits for investors in this venture [ETA: OpenAI] were capped at 100 times their investment (though thanks to a rule change this cap will rise by 20% a year starting in 2025).”
I stumbled upon this quote in this recent Economist article [archived] about OpenAI. I couldn’t find any good source that supports the claim additionally, so this might not be accurate. The earliest mention I could find for the claim is from January 17th 2023 although it only talks about OpenAI “proposing” the rule change.If true, this would make the profit cap less meaningful, especially for longer AI timelines. For example, a 1 billion investment in 2023 would be capped at ~1540 times in 2040.
Hey Rupert
[I just want to clarify that, of the large existing diets, I think that vegans probably have the morally best diet. I also don’t want to discourage anyone from becoming vegan or vegetarian. I just want to somewhat push back at the idea that being vegan comes at trivial personal costs.]
Yes, I was vegetarian for around 5 years, 2 of which I was vegan. I’ve since become what you might call reducetarian (of which no chicken or pork, mainly milk, sometimes beef and eggs).
Personally, I can say that the costs of transitioning are quite high. I guess that during the whole transition it took me around 30 to 150 hours of work, which I wouldn’t have had with a standard diet (it’s hard to quantify in retrospect and depends on how you define work). But transitioning has also quite some fun aspect, restricting your diet forces your creativity, you get to know new people etc. So I’d say that costs of transitioning are hard to evaluate.
I suspect that I would pay anywhere from $400 to $1200 per year from my non-altruistic budget to keep my standard diet (depending on lots of factors, especially income at the time). The main reasons for reverting were taste, ease and nutritional value. I could well be that my WTP for a standard diet is higher than average. I also suspect that this cost estimate will dramatically decrease over the next years as vegan products become tastier and more available, and this could very well mean I’ll become vegan again.
For some people, like Michael, the costs involved appear to be rather small. But it doesn’t seem very plausible that 84% of vegans, or so, revert to consuming animal products if they typically perceive the cost of not eating meat to be only $100 per year (let’s say adjusted to an average american income).
One bad aspect of the vegan movement is the insistance that personal costs are very small. Claims that are often made circle around “You won’t miss the taste of animal products after a while.”, or “Having a healthy vegan diet is easy.”. I believe that both these points are simply untrue for many people.
My hope and expectation is that neither will be focused on EA
I’d be surprised [p<0.1] if EA was not a significant focus of the Michael Lewis book – but agree that it’s unlikely to be the major topic. Many leaders at FTX and Alameda Research are closely linked to EA. SBF often, and publically, said that effective altruism was a big reason for his actions. His connection to EA is interesting both for understanding his motivation and as a story-telling element. There are Manifold prediction markets on whether the book would mention 80′000h (74%), Open Philanthropy (74%), and Give Well (80%), but these markets aren’t traded a lot and are not very informative.[1]
This video titled The Fake Genius: A $30 BILLION Fraud (2.8 million views, posted 3 weeks ago) might give a glimpse of how EA could be handled. The video touches on EA but isn’t centred on it. It discusses the role EAs played in motivating SBF to do earning to give, and in starting Alameda Research and FTX. It also points out that, after the fallout at Alameda Research, ‘higher-ups’ at CEA were warned about SBF but supposedly ignored the warnings. Overall, the video is mainly interested in the mechanisms of how the suspected fraud happened, where EA is only one piece of the puzzle. One can equally get a sense of “EA led SBF to do fraud” as “SBF used EA as a front to do fraud”.
ETA:
The book description[2] “mentions “philanthropy”, makes it clear that it’s mainly about SBF and not FTX as a firm, and describes the book as partly a psychological portrait.- ^
I also created a similar market for CEA, but with 2 mentions as the resolving criteria. One mention is very likely as SBF worked briefly for them.
- ^
“In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system. Both psychological portrait and financial roller-coaster ride, Going Infinite is Michael Lewis at the top of his game, tracing the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own—until it all came undone.”
- ^
The only source for this claim I’ve ever found was Emile P. Torres’s article What “longtermism” gets wrong about climate change.
It’s not clear where they take the information about an “enormous promotional budget of roughly $10 million” from. Not saying that it is untrue, but also unclear why Torres would have this information.
The implication is also, that the promotional spending came out of EA pockets. But part of it might also be promotional spending by the book publisher.ETA: I found another article by Torres that discusses the claim in a bit more detail.
MacAskill, meanwhile, has more money at his fingertips than most of us make in a lifetime. Left unmentioned during his “Daily Show” appearance: he hired several PR firms to promote his book, one of which was paid $12,000 per month, according to someone with direct knowledge of the matter. MacAskill’s team, this person tells me, even floated a total promotional budget ceiling of $10 million — a staggering number — thanks partly to financial support from the tech multibillionaire Dustin Moskovitz, cofounder of Facebook and a major funder of EA.
Arrest this man!
Release shocking results of an undercover investigation ~2 weeks before the vote. Maybe this could have led to a 2-10% increase?
My understanding is, that they did try to do this with an undercover investigation report on poultry farming. But it was only in the news for a very short time and I’m guessing didn’t have a large effect.
A further thing might have helped:Show clearly how the initiative would have improved animal welfare.
The whole campaign was a bit of a mess in this regard. In the “voter information booklet” the only clearly understandable improvement was about maximum livestocks – which only affected laying hens. This lead to this underwhelming infographic in favour of the initiative [left column: current standards, righ column: standards if initiative passes].
The initiative committee does claim on their website, that the initiative will lead to more living space for farmed animals. But it never advertised how much. I struggled to find the space requirement information with a quick google search, before a national newspaper reported on it.
Nice analysis – thank you for posting!
While I agree that bivalves are very likely at most minimally sentient, I’d feel more comfortable with people promoting bivalve aquaculture at scale if the downside risks are clearer to me.
Do you have any sense of exactly how unlikely it is that bivalves suffer?
For many non-native speakers having a conversation in English is quite cognitively demanding – especially when talking about intellectual topics they just learned about. Even reasonably proficient speakers often struggle to express themselves as clearly as they could in their native language, there is a trade-off between fluent speech and optimal word choice/sentence construction. If given 2x more time, or the chance to write down their thoughts, they would possibly not misuse the jargon to the same degree.
Many people get excited about EA when they first hear about it and read a lot of materials. At this speed of learning retention of specific concepts is often not very good at first – but gets a lot better after a few repetitions.
It’s possible that they would be better off learning and using the concepts in a slower yet more accurate way. Misuse of concepts might be some evidence for them not being the most promising candidates for intellectual contributions. But there seem to be other characteristics that could easily compensate for a sub-optimal-but-good rate of learning (e.g. open-mindedness, good judgment, persistence, creativity).
Insiders know that EA NYC has ambitious plans to sprout a whole network of Bodhi restaurants. To those who might criticize this blossoming “bodhi count,” let’s not indulge in shaming their gastronomic promiscuity. After all, spreading delicious vegan dim sum and altruism is something we can all savour.
The report suggests that Roosevelt’s supposed accidental use of the term”unconditional surrender” and his subsequent failure to back down played a significant role in shaping the strategy that led to the launch of atomic bombs on Japan. I found this claim hard to believe – and after some research, I think it’s probably not correct.
Quite amazingly, the term ‘unconditional’ only entered into the Allied demands due to a verbal mistake made by Roosevelt when reading a joint statement in a live broadcast in January 1943, a fact that he later admitted. Churchill immediately repeated the demand, later saying: ‘Any divergence between us, even by omission, would on such an occasion and at such a time have been damaging or even dangerous to our war effort.’ Thus, the otherwise reasonable idea that the bombs needed to be dropped to avoid more deaths in an invasion, was only true due to an unreasonable demand that was created by an error people were too proud to step back from. (Lessons from the development of the atomic bomb, page 27)
The claim is repeated on page 35. I couldn’t easily find a copy of the original source for the claim[1].
But I could find three sources that seem to refute this interpretation.
The first non-primary source argues that Roosevelt supported the “unconditional surrender concept”.
The matter was also discussed in the fall of 1942 by the U.S. Chiefs of Staff who, at the end of December, recommended to the President that no armistice be granted Germany, Japan, Italy, and the satellites until they offered the “unconditional surrender” of their armed forces. The President in reply informed them on January 7, 1943 that he intended to support the “unconditional surrender concept” at the forthcoming Conference at Casablanca. (Balfour, 1979. Page 283)[2]
Secondly, Churchill sent the following report on January 20th, 1943 in Casablanca—just four days prior to Roosevelt’s alleged “verbal mistake”.
6. We propose to draw up a statement of the work of the conference for communication to the press at the proper time. I should be glad to know what the War Cabinet would think of our including in this statement a declaration of the firm intention of the United States and the British Empire to continue the war relentlessly until we have brought about the “unconditional surrender” of Germany and Japan. The omission of Italy would be to encourage a break-up there. The President liked this idea, and it would stimulate our friends in every country. [3]
(Churchill and Roosevelt were apparently confused about the specific procedures that should have led to the use of the term ’unconditional surrender. So that might be part of the reason why they gave different accounts over time.[4])
Thirdly, Roosevelt likely held Press Conference Notes that were drafted between 22. and 23. January 1943 during his statement on the 24. January 1943.[5] These notes called for the “unconditional surrender” of Germany, Japan, and Italy.
The President and the Prime Minister, after a complete survey of the world war situation, are more than ever determined that peace can come to the world only by a total elimination of German and Japanese war power. This involves the simple formula of placing the objective of this war in terms of an unconditional surrender by Germany, Italy and Japan. Unconditional surrender by them means a reasonable assurance of world peace, for generations. Unconditional surrender means not the destruction of the German populace, nor of the Italian or Japanese populace, but does mean the destruction of a philosophy hi Germany, Italy and Japan which is based on the conquest and subjugation of other peoples.
Based on this information, the timeline appears to be the following:
07.01.1943 – Roosevelt expresses support for the “unconditional surrender concept”.
20.01.1943 – Churchill proposes using “unconditional surrender” in a statement, and notes that the President [Roosevelt] liked the idea.
22.-23.01.1943 – Press Conference Notes drafted that call for the unconditional surrender of Germany, Italy, and Japan.
24.01.1943 – Roosevelt uses the term “unconditional surrender” in his statement, likely holding Press Conference Notes in his hand, that exactly asks for the same.
From this sequence of events, it does not appear that Roosevelt used the term mistakenly. If so, this anecdote likely doesn’t serve as an example of a slip-up and subsequent reluctance to back down from a mistake having severe consequences.
It’s also well possible that I’m missing something here. Would love to learn more.
- ^
Rhodes, Richard. 1986. The Making of the Atomic Bomb.
- ^
Balfour, M. (1979). The Origin of the Formula. Armed Forces & Society, 5(2), 281–301.
- ^
Churchill, Winston. 1950. Second World War: The Hinge of Fate Hardcover (pages 834 and 835)
- ^
Balfour (1979) has a confusing passage about the second explanation:
“When the draft of the Casablanca communiqué was submitted to Roosevelt and Churchill, it contained no reference to unconditional surrender and neither leader seems to have queried the omission. The obvious reason was that Roosevelt instead mentioned it in his talk to the press. After Churchill’s telegram to the Cabinet came to light, thus making it impossible to attribute his claimed surprise to the contention that the subject had not been discussed beforehand with him, the inference seems to be that the surprise lay in this manner of publication.
But the talk to the press was itself based upon a written text and one of the surviving drafts for this contains emendations which are said to be in Churchill’s own hand, and must have been made during the preceding forty-eight hours. 13 Either he did not read the draft carefully, or his memory slipped, or else he, like Roosevelt, wanted to cover his tracks. It is unlikely that we will ever know the exact truth.” - ^
“Photographs of the Roosevelt–Churchill press conference of January 24, 1943, such as that following p. 483, show Roosevelt holding a document, presumably the notes printed here.
Quick thing anyone could do, to make this book (or any other book you find valuable) more available.
Most university/city libraries offer the possibility to recommend books to them. I`ve done this myself many times (also for this book) and my university library sofar ordered every book I`ve recommended.
“Wischedag” isn’t really a last name and alliterates with “Waschke”. “Hans” is a german placeholder name.
According to this CSET report, Europe (especially the Netherlands, UK, Germany) plays a role in the semiconductor supply chain. Is this significant enough to grant Europe a “seat at the AI table” in the future?
I’d like to be able to search the “80000 hours” and the “Effective Altruism” LinkedIn groups for members from my city. The group member lists are only searchable for names.
I think it could be a good way to contact local EA-aligned people who aren’t on our radar.
Is there any workaround for doing this?
The “Personal Blogposts” section has recently become swamped with [Event] posts.
Most of them are irrelevant to me. Is there a way to hide them in the “All Posts”-view?
There is a comprehensive process in place… it is a cohesive approach to aligning font, but thank you for the drama!
[Edit after months: While I still believe these are valid questions, I now think I was too hostile, overconfident, and not genuinely curious enough.] One additional thing I’d be curious about:
You played the role of a messenger between SBF and Elon Musk in a bid for SBF to invest up to 15 billion of (presumably mostly his) wealth in an acquisition of Twitter. The stated reason for that bid was to make Twitter better for the world. This has worried me a lot over the last weeks. It could have easily been the most consequential thing EAs have ever done and there has—to my knowledge- never been a thorough EA debate that signalled that this would be a good idea.
What was the reasoning behind the decision to support SBF by connecting him to Musk? How many people from FTXFF or EA at large were consulted to figure out if that was a good idea? Do you think that it still made sense at the point you helped with the potential acquisition to regard most of the wealth of SBF as EA resources? If not, why did you not inform the EA community?
Source for claim about playing a messenger: https://twitter.com/tier10k/status/1575603591431102464?s=20&t=lYY65-TpZuifcbQ2j2EQ5w