TruePath

Karma: 56

TruePath 13 Oct 2022 19:02 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 1
on: Just Look At The Thing! – How The Science of Consciousness Informs Ethics
I feel like there is some definitional slipping going on when you suggest that a painful experience is less bad when you are also experiencing a pleasurable one at the same time. Rather, it seems to me the right way to describe this situation is that the experience is simply not as painful as it would be otherwise.

To drive this intuition consider S&M play. It’s not that the pain of being whipped is just as bad...it literally feels different than being whipped in a different context that simply makes it less painful.

Better yet notice the way opiates work that leaves you aware of the physical sensation of the pain but mind it less. Isn’t it just that when we experience a pleasure and pain at the same time the nuerochems created by the pleasure literally blunt the pain much like opiates would.

On a related note I’m a bit uncomfortable about inferring too much about the structure of pain/pleasure based on our evolved willingness to seek it out/endure it and worry that also conflates reward and pleasure but it’s a hard problem.

TruePath 24 Sep 2022 0:18 UTC
4 points
2 ∶ 0
on: Announcing the Future Fund’s AI Worldview Prize
The “go extinct” condition is a bit fuzzy. It seems like it would be better to express what you want to change your mind about as something more like (forget the term for this). P(go extinct| AGI)/P(go extinct).

I know you’ve written the question in terms of go extinct because of AGI but I worry this leads to relatively trivial/uninformative about AI ways to shift that value upward.

For instance, consider a line of argument:
1. AGI is quite likely (probably by your own lights) to be developed by 2070.
2. If AGI is developed either it will suffer from serious alignment problems (so reason to think we go extinct) or it will seem to be reliable and extremely capable so will quickly be placed into key roles controlling things like nukes, military responses etc...
3. The world is a dangerous place and there is a good possibility that there is a substantial nuclear exchange between countries before 2070 which would substantially curtail our future potential (eg by causing a civ collapse which, due to our use of all much of the easily available fossil fuels/minerals etc we can’t recover from).
4. By 2 that exchange will, with high probability, have AGI serving as a key element in the causal pathway that leads to the exchange. Even tho the exchange may we’ll have happened w/o AGI it will be the case that the ppl who press the button relied on critical Intel collected by AGI or AGI was placed directly in charge of some of the weapons systems involved in one of the escalating incidents etc...
I think it might be wise to either

a) Shift to a condition in terms of the ratio between chance of extinction and chance of extinction conditional on AGI so the focus is on the effect of AGI on likelihood of extinction.

b) If not that at least clarify the kind of causation required. Is it sufficient that the particular causal pathway that occured include AGI somewhere in it? Can I play even more unfairly and simply point out that by butterfly effect style argument the particular incident that leads to extinction is probably but for caused by almost everything that happens before (if not for some random AI thing years ago the soldiers who provoked the initial confrontation would probably have behaved/been different and instead of that year and incident it would have been one year before or hence).

But hey, if you aren’t going to clarify away these issues or say that you’ll evaluate to the spirit of the Q not technical formulation I’m going to include in my submission (if I find I have the time for one) a whole bunch of technically responsive but not really what you want arguments about how extinction from some cause is relatively likely and that AGI will appear in that causal chain in a way that makes it a cause of the outcome.

I mean I hope you actually judge on something that ensures you’re really learning about impact of AGI but gotta pick up all the allowed percentage points one can ;-).

TruePath 5 Oct 2021 15:34 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: The Elevator Pitch for why Mental Health should get more attention in EA
I think all the problems with involving EA with causes that require political changes (increase gov funding for mental health...even all Gates’ billions wouldn’t go very far if he tried to directly fund a substantial slice of the mental health healthcare expenditures for first world) apply to changing gov funding and many of the issues are even harder because they derive from hard to shift societal attitudes. These make even direct funding of many types of research difficult.

For instance, a big problem (imo) with the way depression drugs are researched is that it sets as it’s goal finding a drug that makes depressed people feel better without improving the mood of non-depressed individuals (is we impose a higher standard in terms of safety and risk of abuse for these drugs than similarly serious conditions). Yes, I agree that depression involves a cluster of symptoms but you could say the same about the disorders that result from the failure to produce various growth hormones but it doesn’t follow that the treatment of such conditions should be possible using medications that wouldn’t make normal people grow larger or produce more muscle or whatever.

Sure, those drugs will likely have side effects when taken at high levels (mania has lots of drawbacks even when without the depressive part) and concerns about abuse aren’t unfounded but if we were willing to treat the loss of QALYs from depression as seriously as we take those from a heart attack there would be no question we would risk it. As is, however, we have a culture in which doctors which treat mental health are more responsible to the families of those suffering (who may sue if their loved one uses medication to commit suicide...but more importantly will be seen as having failed their patient in the way the oncologist whose patient dies because of well-judged risks they took wouldn’t be).

Unfortunately, I think the combination of general discomfort with anything that sounds transhumanist (would it be so bad if some ppl were a bit unnaturally happier) plus the fact that the majority of society is more interested in what makes them feel good (lack of guilt and keeping that friend or family member around) than in making the depressed feel better when that involves risk.

And I’m afraid this is a broader issue in EA for mental health. Too often the real limitations are hard to change social attitudes and hard to fix with charitable donations.

TruePath 5 Aug 2021 19:20 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Ramiro’s comment on: The Cryonics reductio against pure time preference: a rhetorical low-hanging fruit—or “Do we discount the future only because we won’t live in it?”
I’m not sure I complete followed #1 but maybe this will answer what you are getting at.

I agree that the following argument is valid:

Either the time discounting rate is 0 or it is morally preferable to use your money/resources to produce utility now than to freeze yourself and produce utility later.

However, I still don’t think you can make the argument that I can’t think that time discounting is irrelevant to what I selfishly prefer while believing that you shouldn’t apply discounting when evaluating what is morally preferable. And I think this substantially reduces just how compelling the point is. I mean I do lots of things I’m aware are morally non-optimal. I probably should donate more of my earnings to EA causes etc.. etc.. but sometimes I choose to be selfish and when I consider cryonics it’s entirely as a selfish choice (I agree that even without discounting it’s a waste in utilitarian terms).

(Note that I’d make a distinction between saying something is morally favorable and that it is bad or blameworthy to do it but that’s getting a bit into the weeds).

—-

Regarding the theoretical problems I agree that they aren’t enough of a reason to accept a true discounting rate. Indeed, I’d go further and say that one is making a mistake to infer things about what’s morally good because we’d like our notion of morality to have certain nice properties. We don’t get to assume that morality is going to behave like we would like it to …we’ve just got to do our best with the means of inference we have.

TruePath 4 Aug 2021 10:29 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
on: The Cryonics reductio against pure time preference: a rhetorical low-hanging fruit—or “Do we discount the future only because we won’t live in it?”
I ultimately agree with you (pure time discounting is wrong…even if our increasing wealth makes it a useful practical assumption) but I don’t think you’re argument is quite as strong as you think (nor is Cowan’s argument very good).

In particular, I’d distinguish my selfish emotional desires regarding my future mental states from my ultimate judgements about the goodness or badness of particular world states. But I think we can show these have to be distinct notions[1]. Someone who was defending pure time discounting could just say: well while, as far as my selfish preferences go, I don’t care whether I have another 10 happy years now or in 500 years it’s nevertheless true that morally speaking the world in which that utility is realized now is much better than the one it is realized later.

This is also where Cowan’s argument falls apart. The pareto principle is only violated if a world in which one person is made better off and everyone else’s position is unchanged isn’t preferable to the default. But he then makes the unjustified assumption that Sarah isn’t ‘made worse off’ by having her utility moved into the future. But that just begs the question since,if we believe in pure time discounting, Sarah’s future happiness really is worth only a fraction of what it would be worth now. In other words we are just being asked to assume that only Sarah’s subjective experience and not the time at which it happens affect her contribution to overall utility/world value.

Having said all this, I think that every reason one has for adopting something like utilitarianism (or hell any form of consequentialism) screams out against accepting pure time preferences even if not formally required. The only reason people are even entertaining pure discounting is that they are worried about the paradoxes you get into if you end up having infinite total utility (yes, difficulties remain even if you just try and directly define a preference relation on possible worlds)
—-

^1: I mean your argument basically assumes that, other things being equal, if a world where my selfish desires are satisfied is better than one in which it is not. While that is a coherent position to hold (it’s basically what preference satisfaction accounts of morality hold) it’s not (absent some a priori derivation of morality) required.

For instance, I’m a pure utilitarian so what I’d say is that while I selfishly wish to continue existing I realize that if I suddenly disappeared in a poof of smoke (suppose I’m a hermit with not affected friends or relatives) and was replaced by an equally happy individual that would be just as good a possible world as the one in which I continued to exist.

TruePath 4 Aug 2021 9:44 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
on: This Can’t Go On
Could you provide some evidence that this rate of growth is unusual in history? I mean it wouldn’t shock me if we looked back at the last 5000 years and saw that most societies real production grew at similar rates during times of peace/tranquility but that resulted in small absolute growth that was regularly wiped out by invasion, plague or other calamity. In which case the question becomes whether or not you believe that our technological accomplishments make us more resistant to such calamities (another discussion entirely).

Moreover, even if we didn’t see similar levels of growth in the past there are plenty of simple models which explain this apparent difference as the result of a single underlying phenomenon. For instance, consider the theory that real production over and above subsistence agricultural level grows at a constant rate per year. As this value was almost 0 for the past 5,000 years that growth wouldn’t be very noticeable until recently. And this isn’t just some arbitrary mathematical fit but has a good justification, e.g., productivity improvements require free time, invention etc.. etc.. so only happens in the percent of people’s time not devoted to avoiding starving.

Also, it’s kinda weird to describe the constant rate of growth assumption as business as usual but then pick a graph where we have an economic singularity (flat rate of growth gives a exponential curve which doesn’t escape to infinity at any finite time). Having said all that, sure it seems wrong to just assume things will continue this way forever but it seems equally unjustified to reach any other conclusion.

TruePath 4 Aug 2021 9:27 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Kirsten’s comment on: The Importance of Truth-Oriented Discussions in EA
I thought the archetypal example was where everyone had a mild preference to be with other members of their race (even if just because of somewhat more shared culture) and didn’t personally really care if they weren’t in a mixed group. But I take your point to be that, at least in the gender case, we do have the preference not to be entirely divided by gender.

So yes, I agree that if the effect leads to too much sorting then it could be bad but it seems like a tough empirical question whether we are at a point where the utility gains from more sorting are more or less than the losses.

TruePath 4 Aug 2021 9:16 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Utilitarianism Symbol Design Competition
Could you say a bit more about what you want this flag to symbolize/communicate? Flags for nations need to symbolize what holds the members of that country together and unifies them but, when it comes to an idea, it seems the flag is more a matter of what you want to communicate to others about the virtues of your idea. I mean I’m having trouble imagining that a utilitarian flag could do $1000 worth of good unless it does some important PR work for utilitarianism.

If it was me I’d be trying to pick a flag to communicate the idea that utilitarianism is (or well a natural consequence of/close too) universal love/empathy/concern. My sense is that opposition to utilitarianism seems frequently rooted in this idea that it’s cold, uncaring calculation. But since you are the one putting up the money maybe you can lay out a bit more what you want to communicate and what use you see this flag being put to.

TruePath 29 Apr 2021 7:32 UTC
−1 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Paul_Christiano’s comment on: Integrity for consequentialists
Re your first point yup they won’t try to recruit others to that belief but so what? That’s already a bullet any utilitarian has to bite thanks to examples like the aliens who will torture the world if anyone believes utilitarianism is true or ties to act as of it is. There is absolutely nothing self defeating here.

Indeed if we define utilitarianism as simply the belief that ones preference relation on possible worlds is dictated by the total utility in then it follows by definition that the best act an agent can take are just the ones which maximize utility. So maybe the better way to phrase this is as: why care what the agent who pledges to utilitarianism in some way and wants to recruit others might need to do or act that’s a distraction from the simple question of what in fact maximizes utility. If that means convincing everyone not to be utilitarians then so be it.

--

And yes re the rest of your points I guess I just don’t see why it matters what would be good to do if other agents respond in some way you argue would be reasonable. Indeed, what makes consequentialism consequentialism is that you aren’t acting based on what would happen if you imagine interacting with idealized agents like a Kantianesque theory might consider but what actually happens when you actually act.

I agree the caps were aggressive and I apologize for that and I agree I’m not trying to produce evidence which says that in fact how people respond to supposed signals of integrity tends to match what they see as evidence you follow the standard norms. That’s just something people need to consult their own experience and ask themselves if, in their experience, thay tends to be true. Ultimately I think that it’s just not true that a priori analysis of what should make people see you as trustworthy or have any other social reaction is a good guide to what they will do?

But I guess that is just going to return to point 1 and our different conceptions of what is utilitarianism requires.

TruePath 29 Apr 2021 7:07 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Julia_Wise🔸’s comment on: A mental health resource for EA community
Yes and reading this again now I think I was way too harsh. I should have been more positive about what was obviously an earnest concern and desire to help even if I don’t think it’s going to work out. A better response would have been to suggest other ideas to help but other than reforming how medical practice works so mental suffering isn’t treated as less important than being physically debilitated (docs will agree to risky procedures to avoid physical loss of function but won’t with mental illness …likely because the family doesn’t see the suffering from the inside but do see the loss in a death so are liable to sue/complain if things go bad).

TruePath 29 Apr 2021 7:00 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jon_Behar’s comment on: The Importance of Truth-Oriented Discussions in EA
I apparently wasn’t clear enough that I absolutely agree and support things like icebreakers etc. But we shouldn’t either expect them to or judge their effectiveness based on how much it increases female representation. Absolutely do it and do it for everyone who will benefit but just don’t be surprised if even if we do that everywhere it doesn’t do much to affect gender balance in EA.

I think if we just do it because it makes ppl more comfortable without the gender overlay not only will it be more effective and more widely adopted but avoid the very real risk of creep (we are doing this to draw in more women but we haven’t seen a change so we need to adopt more extreme approaches). Let’s leave gender out of it when we can and in this case we absolutely can because being welcoming helps lots of ppl regardless of gender.

TruePath 29 Apr 2021 6:53 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Kirsten’s comment on: The Importance of Truth-Oriented Discussions in EA
No I didn’t mean to suggest that. But I did mean to suggest that it’s not at all obvious that this kind of Schelling style amplification of preferences is something that would be good to do something about. The archetypal example of Schelling style clustering is a net utility win even if a small one.

TruePath 29 Apr 2021 6:46 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Defusing the mitigation obstruction argument against geoengineering and carbon dioxide removal
I fear that we need to do Geoengineering right away or we will be locked into never undoing the warming. Problem is a few countries like russia massively benefit from warming and once they see that warming and then take advantage of the newly opened land they will see any attempt to artificially lower temps as an attack they will respond to with force and they have enough fossil fuels to maintain the warm temps even if everyone else stops carbon emissions (which they can easily scuttle).

IMO this concern is more persuasive than the risk of trying Geoengineering.

But I disagree that Geoengineering isnt going to happen soon. All the same reasons we aren’t doing anything about global warming now are reasons that we’ll flip on a dime when we start seeing real harms.

TruePath 29 Apr 2021 6:39 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Defusing the mitigation obstruction argument against geoengineering and carbon dioxide removal
I ultimately agree with you but I think you miss the best argument for the other side. I think it goes like this:
1. Humans are particularly bad at coordinating to reduce harms that are distant in time or are small risks of large harms. In other words out of sight out of mind. We are much better at solving problems which we experience at least some current harm from but prefer to push off harms into the future or a low probability event.
The argument for this point is buttressed by the very fact that we aren’t doing anything about warming right now.
1. Geoengineering takes the continuous harms of from increasing temperatures and renders them discontinuous and increases the risk of sudden major negative effects.
The argument here is that Geoengineering let’s us eliminate all negative effects as long as it is effective but if the Geoengineering mechanism ever fails we experience all the built up warming at once. Maybe we get hit by a bit solar flare and can’t launch our sunshade or shoot our sulfur into the stratosphere.

TruePath 14 Mar 2019 17:38 UTC
10 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jon_Behar’s comment on: The Importance of Truth-Oriented Discussions in EA
The parent post already responded to a number of these points but let me give a detailed reply.
First, the evidence you cite doesn’t actually contradict the point being made. Just because women rate EA as somewhat less welcoming doesn’t mean that this is the reason they return at a lower rate. Indeed, the alternate hypothesis that says it’s the same reason women are less likely to be attracted to EA in the first place seems quite plausible.
As far as the quotes we can ignore the people simply agreeing that something should be done to increase diversity and talk about the specific reactions. I’ll defer the one about reporting a sexist remark till the end and focus on the complaints about the environment. These don’t seem to be complaints suggesting any particular animus or bad treatment of women or other underprivileged groups merely people expressing a distaste for the kind of interactions they associate with largely male groups. However, other people do like that kind of interaction so, like the question of what to serve for dinner or whether alcohol should be served, you can’t please everyone. While it’s true that in our society there is a correlation between male gender and a preference for a combative, interrupting challenging style of interaction there are plenty of women who also prefer this interaction style (and in my own experience at academic conferences gay men are just as likely as straight men to behave this way). Indeed, the argument that it’s anti-woman to interact in a way that involves interrupting etc.. when some women do prefer this style is the very kind of harmful gender essentialism that we should be fighting against.
Of course, I think everyone agrees that we should do what we can to make EA more welcoming *when that doesn’t impose a greater cost than benefit.* Ideally, there would be parts of EA that appeal to people who like every kind of interaction style but there are costs in terms of community cohesion, resources etc.. etc..
The parent was arguing, persuasively imo, that imposing many of the suggested reforms would impose substantial costs elsewhere not that it might not improve diversity or offer benefits to some people. I don’t see you making a persuasive case that the costs cited aren’t very real or that the benefits outweigh them.
This finally brings us to the complaint about where to report a sexist comment. While I think no one disagrees that we should condemn sexist comments creating an official reporting structure with disciplinary powers is just begging to get caught up in the moderators dilema and create strife and argument inside the community. Better to leave that to informal mechanisms.

TruePath 13 Nov 2018 1:12 UTC
−2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Wireheading as a Possible Contributor to Civilizational Decline
Also, your concern about some kind of disaster caused by wireheading addiction and resulting deaths and damage is pretty absurd.
Yes, people are more likely to do drugs when they are more available but even if the government can’t limit the devices that enable wireheading from legal purchase it will still require a greater effort to put together your wireheading setup than it currently does to drive to the right part of the nearest city (discoverable via google) and purchasing some heroin. Even if it did become very easy to access it’s still not true that most people who have been given the option to shoot up heroin do so and the biggest factor which deters them is the perceived danger or harm. If wireheading is more addictive/harmful it will discourage use.
Moreover, for wireheading to pose a greater danger than just going to buy heroin it would have to give greater control over brain stimulation (i.e. create more pleasure etc..) and the greater our control over the brain stimulation the greater the chance we can do so in a way that doesn’t create damage.
Indeed, any non-chemical means of brain stimulation is almost certain to be crazily safe because once monitoring equipment detects a problem you can simply shut off the intervention without the concern of long-halflife drugs remaining in the system continuing the effect.

TruePath 13 Nov 2018 1:04 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Wireheading as a Possible Contributor to Civilizational Decline
You make a lot of claims here that seem unsupported and based on nothing but vague analogy with existing primitive means of altering our brain chemisty. For instance a key claim that pretty most of your consequences seem to depend on is this: “It is great to be in a good working mood, where you are in the flow and every task is easy, but if one feels “too good”, one will be able only to perform “trainspotting”, that is mindless staring at objects.
Why should this be true at all? The reason heroin abusers aren’t very productive (and, imo, heroin isn’t the most pleasurable existing drug) is because of the effects opiates have as depressants making them nod off etc.. The more control we achieve over brain stimulation the less likely wireheading will have the kind of side-effects which limit functioning. Now one might have a more subtle argument that suggests the ability of even a directly stimulated brain to feel pleasure will be limited and thus if we directly stimulate too much pleasure we will no longer have the appropriate rewards to incentivize work but it seems equally plausible that we will be able to seperate pleasure and motivation/effort and actually enhance our inclination to work while instilling great pleasure.

TruePath 31 Dec 2017 8:23 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MetricSulfateFive’s comment on: Where can I donate to support insect welfare?
I’m disappointed that the link about which invertebrates feel pain doesn’t go into more detail on the potential distinction between merely learning from damage signals and the actual qualitative experience of pain. It is relatively easy to build a simple robot or write a software program that demonstrates reinforcement learning in the face of some kind of damage but we generally don’t believe such programs truly have a qualitative experience of pain. Moreover, the fact that some stimuli are both unpleasant yet rewarding (e.g. encourage repetition) indicates these notions come apart.

TruePath 31 Dec 2017 8:17 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Where can I donate to support insect welfare?
While this isn’t an answer I suspect that if you are interested in insect welfare one first needs a philosophical/scientific program to get a grip on what that entails.

First, unlike other kinds of animal suffering it seems doubtful there are any interventions for insects that will substantially change their quality of life without also making a big difference in the total population. Thus, unlike large animals, where one can find common ground between various consequentialist moral views it seems quite likely that whether a particular intervention is good or actually harmful for insects will often turn on subtle questions about one’s moral views, e.g., average utility or total, does the welfare of possible future beings count, is the life of your average insect a net plus or minus.

As such simply donating to insect welfare risks doing (what you feel is) a great moral harm unless you’ve carefully considered these aspects of your moral view and chosen interventions that align with them.

Secondly, merely figuring out what makes insects better off is hard. While our intuitions can go wrong its not too unreasonable to think that we can infer other mammals and even vertebrates level of pain/pleasure based on analogies to our own experiences (a dog yelping is probably in pain). However, when it comes to something as different as an insect its unclear if its even safe to assume an insect’s neural response to damage even feels unpleasant. After all, surely at some simple enough level of complexity, we don’t believe those lifeform’s response to damage manifests as a qualitative experience of suffering (even though the tissues in my body can react to damage and even change behavior to avoid further damage without interaction with my brain we don’t think my liver can experience pain on its own). At the very least to figure out what kinds of events might induce pain/pleasure responses in an insect would require some philosophical analysis of what is known about insect neurobiology.

Finally, it is quite likely that it will be the indirect effects of any intervention on the wider insect ecosystem rather than any direct effect which will have the largest impact. As such, it would be a mistake to try and engage in any interventions without first doing some in depth research into the downstream effects.

Point of this all is that with respect to insects we need to support academic study and consideration more before actually engaging in any interventions.

TruePath 29 Aug 2017 6:59 UTC
0 points
0 ∶ 0
on: High Time For Drug Policy Reform. Part 4/4: Estimating Cost-Effectiveness vs Other Causes; What EA Should Do Next
I’m a huge supporter of drug policy reform and try to advocate it as much as I can in my personal life. Originally, I was going to post here suggesting we need a better breakdown of particular issues which are particularly ripe for policy reform (say reforming how drug weights are calculated) and the relative effectiveness of various interventions (lobbying, ads, lectures etc..).

However, on reflection I think there might be good reasons not to get involved in this project.

Probably the biggest problem for both EA and drug policy reform is the perception that the people involved are just a bunch of weirdos (we’re emotionally stunted nerds and they are a bunch of stoners). This perception reduces donations to EA causes (you don’t get the same status boost if its weird) and stops people from listening to the arguments of people in dpr.

If EA is seen as being a big supporter of DPR efforts this risks making the situation worse for both groups. I can just imagine an average lesswrong contributor being interviewed on TV as to why he supports dpr and when the reporter asks him how this affects him personally he starts enthusiastically explaining his use of nootropics and the public dismisses the whole thing as just weird druggies trying to make it legal to get high. This doesn’t mean those of us who believe in EA can’t quietly donate to dpr organizations but it probably does prevent us from doing what EA does best, determining the particular interventions that work best at a fine grained level and doing that.

This makes me skeptical this is a particularly good place to intervene. If we are going to work in policy change at all we should pick an area where we can push for very particular effective issues without the risk of backlash (to both us and dpr organiations).