Transient Altruist

[Question] What ex­actly did FTX do wrong?

[Question] What rea­son is there NOT to ac­cept Pas­cal’s Wager?

[Question] How valuable is it to at­tend a top global uni­ver­sity?

• Transient Altruist 5 Apr 2023 23:16 UTC

  8 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Karthik Tadepalli’s comment on: Four rea­sons I find AI safety emo­tion­ally compelling

  I also got the same feeling, but then discarded it because this is not supposed to be a prioritisation argument, simply motivation.

  It doesn’t need to (suspiciously) claim that AI safety so happens to also be best for your other interests, just that it helps there too, and that that’s nice to know :)

  So long as make your commitments based on solid rational reasoning, it’s ok to lean into sources of motivation that wouldn’t be intellectually persuasive, but motivate you nonetheless.

• Transient Altruist 21 Apr 2022 17:41 UTC

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Tiny Prob­a­bil­ities of Vast Utilities: De­fus­ing the Ini­tial Worry and Steel­man­ning the Problem

  I am not very experienced in philosophy but I have a question.

  You present a problem that needs solving: The funnel-shaped action profiles lead to undefined expected utility. You say that this conclusion means that we must adjust our reasoning so that we don’t get this conclusion.

  But why do you assume that this cannot simply be the correct conclusion from utilitarianism? Can we not say that we have taken the principle axioms of utilitarianism and, through correct logical steps, deduced a truth (from the axiomatic truths) that expected utility is undefined for all our decisions?

  To me the next step after reaching this point would not be to change my reasoning (which requires assuming that the logical processes applied were incorrect, no?) but rather to reject the axioms of utilitarianism, since they have rendered themselves ethically useless.

  I have a fundamental ethical reasoning that I would guess is pretty common here? It is this: Given what we know about our deterministic (and maybe probabilistic) universe, there is nothing to suggest any existence of such things as good/​bad or right choices/​wrong choices and we come to the conclusion that nothing matters. However this is obviously useless and if nothing matters anyway then we might as well live by a kind of “next best” ethical philosophy that does provide us with right/​wrong choices, just in case of the minuscule chance it is indeed correct.

  However you seem to have suggested that utilitarianism just takes you back to the “nothing matters” situation which would mean we have to go to the “next next best” ethical philosophy.

  Hmm I just realised your post has fundamentally changed every ethical decision of my life...

  It would be greatly appreciated if anyone answers my question not only the OP, thanks!

[Question] Is it ac­cu­rate to say that study­ing MORSE would be bet­ter than Maths+Stats for hav­ing an im­pact­ful ca­reer? (as­sum­ing equal in­ter­est and abil­ity)

• Transient Altruist 5 Aug 2022 16:52 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Linch’s comment on: What rea­son is there NOT to ac­cept Pas­cal’s Wager?

  Please could you elaborate on the relevance to Pascal’s Wager? I don’t see who is “out to get you” in Pascal’s Wager

• Transient Altruist 24 Apr 2022 7:26 UTC

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: kokotajlod’s comment on: Tiny Prob­a­bil­ities of Vast Utilities: De­fus­ing the Ini­tial Worry and Steel­man­ning the Problem

  Huh it’s concerning that you say you see standard utilitarianism as wrong because I have no idea what to believe if not utilitarianism.

  Do you know where I can find out more about the “undefined” issue? For me this is pretty much the most important thing for me to understand since my conclusion will fundamentally determine my behaviour for the rest of my life, yet I can’t find any information except for your posts.

  Thanks so much for your response and posts. They’ve been hugely helpful to me

[Question] Maths vs Eco­nomics de­gree?

[Question] Does study­ing stats rather than maths re­duce im­pact­ful ca­reer op­tions?

• Transient Altruist 31 Mar 2024 20:37 UTC

  2 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Lukas_Gloor’s comment on: What ex­actly did FTX do wrong?

  Thanks, I appreciate the explanation.

  I think the tone I wrote it in gave the impression that I was saying “I don’t see how what they did is illegal” rather than “what did they do that was illegal”. I try and avoid that kind of thing next time.

  I asked this question on the EA Forum just because EA is why I’m interested in the story, and I trust the EA Forum to produce good discussion that gets to heart of what I’m interested in, compared to the only other place where I know I can ask a direct question, which is Reddit. Any implication that there was still a mystery to be figured out was accidental.

  As for the half-baked takes—actually I don’t think I gave any. None of what I said was an opinion it was simply an account of the easily findable facts.

• Transient Altruist 9 Apr 2023 15:59 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Quadratic Reciprocity’s comment on: Is it ac­cu­rate to say that study­ing MORSE would be bet­ter than Maths+Stats for hav­ing an im­pact­ful ca­reer? (as­sum­ing equal in­ter­est and abil­ity)

  Well I’m currently taking Economics A-level and I do find it really interesting so I can see myself pursuing economics in the future, but I don’t plan on it specifically. That’s why I thought it might be good to be able to do a bit of it to know whether to do it at masters? Maybe the A-level is enough though

• Transient Altruist 31 Jul 2023 9:57 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Larks’s comment on: How valuable is it to at­tend a top global uni­ver­sity?

  As I mentioned in a different thread, I want to study both Maths and Economics because I don’t know whether I will want to go into stats stuff or policy stuff, but I now think that this is not as important as I thought it was.

• Transient Altruist 15 Jul 2023 20:27 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Shap­ley val­ues: Bet­ter than counterfactuals

  Sorry there’s something really basic I don’t get about Example 1. There is a good chance I am mistaken but I think this confusion will be shared by many so I think it’s worth commenting.

  Your point is that Scenario 1 is what they would come to if they each try to maximise their personal counterfactual impact. In your example, Alice and Bob are calculating their counterfactual impact in each scenario on the basis that the other person’s decision is not affected by theirs. But if both are trying to maximise their personal counterfactual impact, then the other person’s decision IS affected by theirs! So their calculations of counterfactual impact were wrong!

  Each person can say to the other “I’ll donate to P if you donate to P, otherwise I’ll donate to Q/​R” (because that is what would maximise their counterfactual impact). Each will then see that donating to P provides a counterfactual impact of 5 (utility of 15 is created rather than 10), while donating to Q/​R gives a counterfactual impact of 10 (20 is created rather than 10). They will both donate to Q/​R, not P like you suggest.

  (You CAN make it so that they can’t communicate and they each THINK that their decision doesn’t affect the other’s [even though it does], and this WOULD make the counterfactual impact in each scenario the same as the ones you give. BUT you would have to multiply those impacts by the probability that the other person would make the given choice, and then combine it with the situation where they don’t… so it doesn’t work the same and even then it would be an information issue rather than a problem with maximising counterfactual impact...)

• Transient Altruist 8 Apr 2023 17:53 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Linch’s comment on: Is it ac­cu­rate to say that study­ing MORSE would be bet­ter than Maths+Stats for hav­ing an im­pact­ful ca­reer? (as­sum­ing equal in­ter­est and abil­ity)

  Oh I had assumed that was more of a secondary consideration because of being hard to predict well. I’ll make sure to talk to some more people.

• Transient Altruist 8 Apr 2023 16:58 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Quadratic Reciprocity’s comment on: Is it ac­cu­rate to say that study­ing MORSE would be bet­ter than Maths+Stats for hav­ing an im­pact­ful ca­reer? (as­sum­ing equal in­ter­est and abil­ity)

  The only modules you can’t do at Oxford are the Economics ones. I hear it’s relatively easy to switch into Economics from Maths, but maybe it would be good to be able to try it out earlier?

• Transient Altruist 4 Aug 2022 16:58 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Dov’s comment on: What rea­son is there NOT to ac­cept Pas­cal’s Wager?

  I mean accepting that the way to do the most good (in terms of expected value) is to prevent as many people as possible from going to hell and cause as many as possible to go to heaven.

  As for what this would entail, I have no idea because I’m pretty uninformed when it comes to religion.

• Transient Altruist 5 Jun 2022 8:25 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: EA Sur­vey 2020: Cause Prioritization

  It would be great to see stats for how many people identify whether longtermism, shorttermism, or neither.

  This seems to be a major divide in cause prioritisation and questions are often raised about how much of the community are longtermist so it seems like this information would be very valuable.