Lawyer from New Zealand. Currently trying to shift into AI governance, and particularly thinking about the likely role (if any) of small states (e.g. New Zealand and small pacific states) in multilateral fora.
Tyrone-Jay Barugh
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Introducing ‘Playpumps Productivity System’
Legal support for EA orgs—useful?
Thanks, Devansh. Scaling a traditional law firm definitely requires that ‘pyramid’ approach—but it isn’t unusual for boutique firms (both in law, and in other professional services areas) to be mostly comprised of reasonably experienced folk. I’m reluctant to think about scaling up too much (although have of course given it some consideration) as my focus is on seeing whether the idea has merit at a more modest scale, but the composition of a more scaled up org providing legal services (and/or other professional services) might be determined by the interest EA lawyers had in doing that work—I’m speculating that if there are lots of people in the intersection of those three sets I described above, you might see more within-community growth versus hiring outside. But all of this is just a guess—focus at first would be on testing the merits with one or a small number of people.
Thanks for the suggestion, Luke. I hadn’t considered this. I’m going to have a go at the Open Phil Calibration Training applet first, and will scour the forum and Lesswrong for other useful training.
I’ve had mixed experiences using probabilistic language in my legal advice. It really depends on the client and the advisor being able to think like that. But I’ve got some internal clients who have responded well to this sort of advice—explaining things in terms of expected value can be especially good when giving advice about counterparties who won’t tell us what they’re thinking (e.g. in litigation or commercial negotiations). It would be excellent to work with EAs who think like this without prompting, and who actually expect that kind of advice.
Austin, what sorts of legal needs did you have (/currently still have) in setting up Manifold Markets? Jurisdiction aside, anything not in the list above?
Kia ora Markus, thanks very much. I’d be grateful for a chat—will get in touch.
I’m a non-vegan who is pretty confident animals are moral patients.
I would not object to humans being farmed by non-humans provided that the result is more utils being created than the counterfactual (perhaps some utils being enjoyed by the non-human farmers/eaters, but most utils being enjoyed by the humans who are being brought into existence by farming and who would not counterfactually exist).
FWIW, I do think there are instrumental reasons for humans not to subjugate other humans—and those instrumental reasons are very strong—and so of course I would not endorse slavery or cannibalism.
I am a pretty committed total view utilitarian on intuition, which is where this position comes from (but think that to be more confident I should engage at some point with metaethics and try to test how confident I am in this particular ethical framework). If you are a prior existence utilitarian or if you have some non-utilitarian tendencies, farming humans might seem much worse and I should take those intuitions seriously.
Applying this to animals, I feel very comfortable drinking milk or eating grass-fed beef raised here in New Zealand. I am soon relocating to London, and will need to reconsider the specific suffering/pleasure involved in animal products produced there.
Disclaimer: I previously worked on a dairy/beef farm in New Zealand, so there is some risk that my thinking on this topic has been biased by that experience.
Others will have better answers, but I have decided to keep donating some if my income to global health and development orgs (despite leaning pretty strongly longtermist) on the basis that:
a) non-longtermist orgs are, AFAIK, not totally funded; and
b) I won’t miss it that much, and so it won’t really impact any direct work I do
Even if some of the big near termist stuff is funded enough in the near future (e.g. LLIN distribution), seems like there could still be lots of cool unfunded opportunities (e.g. paying for mental health support for people in low to middle income countries).
Survey: Legal needs in EA and longtermism
Thanks Ruth. I’ve updated the post to be clearer that we want feedback from the community generally, including from people who haven’t been doing direct work so far—but that we also have specific questions for people with relevant backgrounds.
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I think I could be a useful advisor to an initiative that CE is considering starting, but am already committed to a project of my own and so won’t apply to the CE program. Is there a way to register my interest in helping? Would CE find that useful?
The answer might be signing up to be a mentor (https://www.charityentrepreneurship.com/mentorship), but that seemed targeted at folks with experience starting/managing orgs.
This is not a criticism (think that it’s sick you do this survey, and grateful for your work), but I’m curious whether Rethink (or anyone else) has had a go at adjusting for a non-random sample of the total EA community (however that is defined) being made aware of the survey and choosing to participate.
Probably out of scope for this project—and maybe not even that useful—but I wonder whether it could be useful to survey a sample from an actually random frame to just get some approximate idea of the size and demographics of the EA community. That might help inform EA orgs in working out how much to update based on the survey responses.
credence: not a stats guy, maybe this has been done already, maybe it doesn’t matter very much, open to being told why this doesn’t matter actually.
Edit:
sorry, I see now that you’ve discussed the point in my comment below (which I’ve now put in italics) in the linked document. I’m grateful for, but not surprised at, the care and thought that’s gone into this.
If it’s not too much of your time, I just am curious about one more thing. Is the paragraph below saying that surveying the general population would not provide useful information, or is it saying something like ‘this would help, but would not totally address the issue’. Like, is there any information value in doing this—or would it basically be pointless/pseudoscientific?Surveying the general (non-EA) population as part of larger representative surveys to get a sense of the overall composition of EAs (e.g., the gender ratio). However, differential non-response, to these larger surveys would again throw this in doubt. Standard corrections may not be easy: and relative non-response among EAs (e.g., male versus female EAs) may differ from the relative non-response to such surveys in other populations.
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Original comment:
Thanks for the in depth response, David.The difficulty here is that it doesn’t seem to be possible to actually randomly sample from the EA population
Sorry, I explained poorly what I meant. What I meant to ask was whether you could randomly sample from a non-EA frame, identify EAs based on their responses (presumably a self identification question), and then use that to get some sense of the attributes of EAs.
One problem might be that the prevalence of EAs in that non-EA population might be so minuscule that you’d need to survey an impractical number of people to know much about EAs.Another response is that it just wouldn’t be that useful to know, although the cost involved in hiring polling companies in a few places to do this maybe is not that much when weighed against the time cost of lots of EAs doing the survey at 10min/response.
I was a pretty motivated EA (donated, sometimes read EA literature) who did consider myself an EA but was entirely disengaged from the community from 2013-2017, and then barely engaged from 2017-2020. Additionally, when I speak with other lawyers it’s not uncommon to hear that someone is either interested in EA or has begun donating to an EA charity, but that they haven’t gotten involved with the community because they don’t see how that would help them or anyone else do more good.I don’t know how useful you think it would be to know more about the makeup and size of that population of unengaged EAs (or EA-adjacent folk, or whatever the label). Maybe it just wouldn’t be very decision-relevant for the orgs who have expressed interest in using the data. My initial sense is that it would be useful, but I don’t really know.
Thanks for taking the time to explain, David!
Edit: see Cate Hall’s comment for a better summary of the position under US law, and Molly’s comment re further information OP intends to share from its external counsel shortly.
Epistemic status: I am not a lawyer in either the United States, or in Antigua and Barbuda (where FTX Trading Ltd was registered). I’m also not an insolvency expert. Take all this with a grain of salt. This comment is not legal advice.There are lots of things that might make answering this question in theory tricky, including identifying:
which FTX entity paid your grant;
which jurisdiction’s insolvency law applies;
whether that FTX entity was insolvent at the time it paid you;
whether the relevant insolvency law allows for clawing back payments made prior to filing for bankruptcy/liquidation/etc.
There are also practical questions—if there is a multibillion dollar hole arising from illegitimate payments from FTX entities to Alameda, then would the liquidator/US trustee (etc) bother coming after small amounts (e.g. a $25,000 grant)? This isn’t me suggesting that they wouldn’t—I genuinely do not know.
It looks as though the law in Antigua and Barbuda differs quite a bit from the United States law. This article suggests that Antigua and Barbuda law is that losses lie where they fall once the music stops.
I received a grant in March 2022, and I don’t feel especially worried right now. Even if it turns out that some FTX entities were insolvent then, my rough sense is that either Antigua and Barbuda law applies and losses lie where they fall or that if US law applies then the transfer won’t be considered a preferential transfer subject to clawback because it occurred more than 90 days before any filing for bankruptcy. (I don’t know if I am understanding the 90 day rule correctly, so please seek advice or look for yourself before making any decisions—this comment isn’t legal advice.)
If I had received a grant more recently, then I would feel less confident. I might avoid spending the grant until learning more.
If any insolvency lawyers read this, consider commenting (even if not under your actual name) - or PM me to suggest any corrections/clarifications.
This looks like the position under Bahamian law (which might be the relevant law, not Antigua and Barbuda law or US law, given FTX was operating in the Bahamas—I just don’t know how this actually works).
Re the 90 day rule in the United States, see here under the heading ‘Avoidable Transfers’: https://www.uscourts.gov/services-forms/bankruptcy/bankruptcy-basics/chapter-11-bankruptcy-basics
Just to reiterate, I’m not a US, Antigua+Barbuda or Bahamas lawyer, and this isn’t legal advice.
Do you know how likely it is that United States law applies? I haven’t thought about this properly, but it seems like the main entity that is insolvent is a Antigua and Barbuda company doing business in the Bahamas? And I’m also uncertain which FTX entities were actually distributing the grants.
Logging back in for the first time in a while (regular reader, less regular poaster) - if anyone returns here, I wanted to note that the Triple-P enjoyed a 100% success rating (n=1, not including myself). I’m conscious that even very high quality social science research doesn’t always easily replicate, but caution anyone reading this not to ignore such a powerful result.