Ulrik Horn

Karma: 1,031

I have received funding from the LTFF and the SFF and am also doing work for an EA-adjacent organization.

My EA journey started in 2007 as I considered switching from a Wall Street career to instead help tackle climate change by making wind energy cheaper – unfortunately, the University of Pennsylvania did not have an EA chapter back then! A few years later, I started having doubts about my decision that climate change was the best use of my time. After reading a few books on philosophy and psychology, I decided that moral circle expansion was neglected but important and donated a few thousand sterling pounds of my modest income to a somewhat evidence-based organisation. Serendipitously, my boss stumbled upon EA in a thread on Stack Exchange around 2014 and sent me a link. After reading up on EA, I then pursued E2G with my modest income, donating ~USD35k to AMF. I have done some limited volunteering for building the EA community here in Stockholm, Sweden. Additionally, I set up and was an admin of the ~1k member EA system change Facebook group (apologies for not having time to make more of it!). Lastly, (and I am leaving out a lot of smaller stuff like giving career guidance, etc.) I have coordinated with other people interested in doing EA community building in UWC high schools and have even run a couple of EA events at these schools.

Ulrik Horn 24 Apr 2024 14:12 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: SusannaF’s comment on: If You’re Going To Eat Animals, Eat Beef and Dairy
Ok that’s good to know—I will probably be pretty vegan going forward. By the way I love all the hard evidence here on the EAF about animal welfare. It really makes me viscerally upset about the scale of abuse we currently inflict on our feathered and four-legged friends. So thanks to you and everyone else on further opening my eyes and heart to this.

Ulrik Horn 24 Apr 2024 9:09 UTC
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on: If You’re Going To Eat Animals, Eat Beef and Dairy
Thanks for writing this, it drives home to me the point of taking a broad perspective when making ethical choices. I am wondering if you take animal product consumption a step further and look at only eating animal products where you know both of the below are true?
1. The animals have a very high degree of welfare (think small, local farms you can visit, you know the farmer, etc.)
2. The way they are slaughtered is the most humane possible, ideally on-farm etc. so they more or less have no idea what is coming for them until they are gone—in my mind this more or less has no suffering from a utilitarian perspective (unless the animals somehow are able to anticipate the slaughter and have increased anxiety throughout their lives because of it).
I have been pretty vegan so far, but people around me are arguing for the type of animal products above and I have a hard time pushing back on it.

Ulrik Horn 24 Apr 2024 9:05 UTC
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in reply to: Matthew Rendall’s comment on: If You’re Going To Eat Animals, Eat Beef and Dairy
Perhaps it is included in existing comments but there is a forum post on climate change vs global development showing that one should hesitate about always prioritizing the former. Then, as I understand it, if one gives only some weight to animals compared to people, I would expect is very roughly follows that one should definitely be cautious about prioritizing climate change over animal welfare. Hopefully we can find a solution that lets us avoid this trade-off though!

Ulrik Horn 23 Apr 2024 7:42 UTC
1 point
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on: Motivation gaps: Why so much EA criticism is hostile and lazy
I must admit I did not have time to re-read your post carefully, but thought it worth pointing out that after reading it I am left a bit confused by the multiple “culture wars” references. Could you please expand on this a bit?
I guess my confusion is that “culture wars” seem to be “attention grabbing” words you used in the beginning of your post, but I feel that after reading the full post that they were not fully addressed. I would be keen to understand if you only meant these to be rhetorical devices to make the reading more captivating, or if you have opinions on the frequent “white boys” criticisms of EA? It is fine if it is the former, I just felt a bit like I was left hanging after reading the post which I think otherwise did some good analysis on financial motives for criticism, comparing AI to e.g Climate Change.
I think others might be interested in this topic as well, especially as JEID concerns was raised by many EAs, and especially women and non-binary EAs. I also think some EAs might think that the “white boys”/culture wars criticisms of EA is actually criticism we should take seriously, although the tone in which these criticisms are made are often not the most optimal for engaging in fruitful dialogue (but I can understand if people with bad experiences can find it hard to suppress their anger—and perhaps sometimes anger is appropriate).

Ulrik Horn 11 Apr 2024 7:26 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Ives Parr’s comment on: Should I donate my kidney or part of my liver?
I want to gently push back on this being more EA than not undergoing surgery and removing important parts of one’s body. I think you might be influenced a lot by your feelings (I know I am despite trying to be rational—I am rational about how irrational I am!). Therefore, I could imagine myself in your situation feeling a strong pull to be an organ donor because you feel like you are not giving enough otherwise. I therefore strongly advice to wait a few years after you have graduated and you have a comfortable, stable income. This way you will have compassion for your future self which is likely to most of the time have a stable and comfortable income—the student years pass quickly! Take care of yourself whatever you do, this is a marathon, not a sprint (unless we are unlucky with AGI timelines and alignment).

Ulrik Horn 10 Apr 2024 11:35 UTC
2 points
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on: The Bunker Fallacy
I am curious what you think of a first-principled approach to resiliency/preparedness? I wrote a blog post on this on LessWrong. I still have a feeling that from an individual, and perhaps from a nation state’s perspective, one will arrive at quite different resiliency measures if one carefully starts with the likelihood of different disasters affecting one’s loved ones, then the likelihood and cost of different interventions mitigating these disasters and in the end having a prioritized list of most cost-effective preparedness actions. It would, for example, surprise me if digging a hole would be a cost-effective way to avert death or permanent damage.

Ulrik Horn 4 Apr 2024 10:51 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: David Mathers’s comment on: Quick Update on Leaving the Board of EV
Am I correct in interpreting your comment as something like “Rebecca says it’s costly to say more which might imply she is sitting on not yet disclosed information that might put powerful EAs in a bad light”? I did not really pick up on this when reading the OP but your comment got me worried that maybe there is some information that should be made public?

Ulrik Horn 31 Mar 2024 11:05 UTC
10 points
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on: Why we’re entering a new nuclear age — and how to reduce the risks (Christian Ruhl on the 80k After Hours Podcast)
I loved this episode as it clearly laid out the challenges with nuclear weapons and looked at possible interventions. I am a bit curious why it was “demoted” to after hours—it felt perhaps more relevant than some recent “main show” episodes on evolutionary X (evolutionary history, evolutionary psychology, etc.). Or maybe you are trying to draw in a wider audience by covering a wider array of topics, including topics starting to fall outside of priority causes.

Ulrik Horn 28 Mar 2024 13:02 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Vasco Grilo’s comment on: Why are you reluctant to write on the EA Forum?
Thanks! That does seem super relevant. Is my understanding below roughly correct?

”A post on a non-community topic that receives ~500 karma is roughly equivalent in impact to a high quality research paper in a peer reviewed journal. And such a post receiving about 100 karma or a bit below is about 1-10% of the impact of such a journal article.”

Ulrik Horn 25 Mar 2024 17:29 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: TJ2’s comment on: Why I care so much about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in EA
I was wondering if our continued conversation would be better as a new post using the conversation format if that’s still in use? That said,I only want to do that if people find it helpful—I got pretty down voted including by people of the marginalized groups that I feel “bad because of”.

Ulrik Horn 20 Mar 2024 13:38 UTC
10 points
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on: Updates on Community Health Survey Results
Fantastic work. Would you be able to, if you think it is advisable, to have some sort of “adjusted JEID” score? I am thinking that since EA is mostly white and male, that if the community, in its current form, had been more “equally distributed across gender, race, etc”, that the JEID concerns would have loomed even larger?

Very simplified, something like if 20% of respondents identified as POC, and JEID issues were raised by 15% of respondents, that we could do something like “if EA was 50% POC, the JEID issues would be raised by 37.5% of respondents”. This is wrong math, I know, but meant to give an example to point in the direction of what I am thinking about.

And if any readers did not pick up on this already—I am potentially very interested to chip in on any JEID efforts where you think perhaps my privileges (or lay DEI expertise) might be of some use.

Ulrik Horn 20 Mar 2024 9:41 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: TJ’s comment on: Why I care so much about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in EA
I will answer as briefly as I can so please double click on anything you would like me to respond to in more detail. And I think the value of me responding here is to let others know better how I feel and the mechanisms at work in making me feel alienated from EA.
Is Heightism even a thing?
2 responses:
1. One can assume that a person of shorter stature has heard comments on their height many times before. And I think few such people find it flattering. I am interested here in describing my emotions and how EA differs from other spaces I am used to navigate, thus leading to my feeling of not belonging.
2. Height does correlate with race, so in that sense, it can cause emotional “spillover” or something like that.
Did you in fact go ask this person for water as your friend suggested? If so, how did this person respond? Did they threaten you with the shotgun, or give you water, or what?
Yes I went, as I judged that my friend was likely to be correct and I did not want to sleep in the bush (we did not have money to be towed). Nope, it went just fine when I went there. In fact, they were super friendly. Again, I do not trust my memory here 100% but if this is a crux for people in understanding my general feeling of being alienated from EA (which I do not suspect) I can see if I can confirm the story with my friends. And on the larger point about whether such fears are justified—I do not think that matters much for actions EAs can take. This is because we have 2 choices:
1. Work to convince all potential POC/women candidates for EA that their concerns about racism/sexism/etc. are unjustified. After we have convinced them they are not, they will naturally help increase diversity in EA.
2. Assume that their feelings are true and tell them this, maybe even believing it ourselves. Then act accordingly to make them feel at home in EA.
I have never seen option 1 successfully implemented, I think for obvious reasons. The reason to not go with either option would be because one does not think we need more diversity. That said, having too much complaints about diversity likely works against any work to increase diversity, see my other comment here on 3 options for EA “leadership”.
On the “airplane incident”: You might be right. But I both think “whiteness is true” and am embedded in a social circle that is super diverse. So if I have to choose between stopping to see the world through a racial/gender/LGBTQ+/etc. lens or stop being an EA, I will always, always chose the latter. Seeing the world through such a lens, or seeing it as much as I can from the vantage point of the people I love, is critical to my closeness to them. I really like who I am and the people I love. I would like to be an EA too, but that comes second.
Your second last paragraph: I think I answered this already. If I were to do this, which I also think is a less true view of the world, I would not be close to my loved ones, potentially even losing them. Not an option. And I do apologize for the unpolished/offensive nature of the post—I think I could have re-worded it much better but was encouraged to publish it unpolished. I really do not want people to feel like I am ascribing agendas to people—that was the whole point of the airplane incident—I know one can be totally “woke” and still have feelings that can result in behavior that other perceive to be racist/sexist etc. And I am largely uninterested in people’s intentions. The sole point of this post was to give an anecdote/some more detail on why a person might feel alienated in EA—the idea was that this might be helpful for EAs to take action and to bridge understanding. But it is a minefield because we so quickly start playing “the victim” instead of engaging in solving the issue. And my wording and tone might have contributed to this victim competition and that is not my intention. I would rather like to see EA being the victim if I left—I am very happy with my non-EA life. I guess if it is down to wording, tone and so on in my post I just cowardly seek draft amnesty!

Actually there were some instances of jerkiness/conflict at that workplace too. Actually someone there did comment on someone’s height difference. And another incident I remember is one where someone was allergic to perfume and someone wore thick perfume in the office. So not utopia but the feeling I got was in general one of belonging a lot more. And I think other EAs who feel alienated in the same way I do also have been in other spaces where they felt much more at home. And I am sure this is studied well—there is a large body of research and lots of work on implementing best practices in DEI. But this is easy to find by asking GPT/Googling.

Just let me know if I missed anything. Just keep in mind that I am really not interested in talking about politics. This for me is deeply personal and I only mean to describe why I care and I think attempts at convincing me, or the people close to me to feel differently is just likely to increase the feeling of not belonging. The best first step if one is trying to convince someone of something after they are hurt, is to acknowledge their feelings, maybe with a scout mindset. Of course you could play that ball back to me, saying it is my who do not understand and we can play ball like that and that is likely why maybe the best option is just for “leadership” to take a stance so that at least someone feel like they belong. But I do not want to advocate too hard for this—I am largely a lay person in these matters. And I would ideally like women/POC EAs to guide any actions I take and to let me know what I should endorse or not.

Ulrik Horn 19 Mar 2024 8:00 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: TJ’s comment on: Why I care so much about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in EA
Thanks for spending time to respond. Currently I will respectfully decline to engage further and I think I can sum it up briefly:
You offer alternative framings but unfortunately it does not sway how I feel. Not sure I can control my emotions although I wish I sometimes could. And there is the more complicated issue that people close to me also get hurt by EAs—I definitely think it would be a long shot to make them see EA differently. In fact, and unfortunately I think what I feel to be a slightly infantilizing vibe in your reply just make me feel more awkward about associating with EA.
If others think the commenter here makes valid points, I commit to answering if the posts gets 10 positive Karma (no matter if it is offset by negative votes). Just want to be careful where I spend my time for the most impact.

Ulrik Horn 18 Mar 2024 8:31 UTC
2 points
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on: There and back again: reflections from leaving EA (and returning)
Case in point on outreach beyond EA. I’m sure 80k hrs and/or CE has thought about this, but it might be a “missing” skillset in EA. I also remember seeing this note on sales people perhaps having a hard time to find work in EA. My comment here is not thought through at all, but I have a hunch that people good at getting the attention of people and knowing how to network/find their way in corporations and/or governments can be a good skill set in EA, especially paired with someone technical/subject matter expert.

Ulrik Horn 17 Mar 2024 6:48 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Rebecca’s comment on: Why I care so much about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in EA
Hi Rebecca and thanks for taking the time to patiently engage with this topic—I think that is important.

I agree 100% that people should push back if they feel like it. And I absolutely see the perspective of those that feel like they have to censor themselves in EA settings and that this also causes alienation. I kind of feel EA has 3 choices here:
1. Continue trying to find a middle ground, alienating people on “both sides”, leadership/prominent figures awkwardly silent on the topics
2. Embrace the “all discussion is good” and do little in the way of DEI, alienating people who feels discomfort from certain topics like eugenics
3. Go all in on “Deloitte NYC” and strongly discourage certain discussions, do lots of DEI interventions, have leadership speak loudly about DEI
I am, as is probably obvious from now, pushing hard for option number 3 and also think this is more likely to lead to us achieving our goals. I kind of feel like the frist, currently pursued option is the worst—there is a reason few organizations/companies do this. Take Nike, X, Deloitte etc. they all have taken a strong stance.

I apologize for going part way down the rabbit hole of identity politics. I only meant to say how I feel about the term, to emphasize the points made in the OP. I respectfully decline to go further down that rabbit hole. And I know this can come off as a bit arrogant but I am sure others have written on this topic.

Ulrik Horn 16 Mar 2024 18:32 UTC
4 points
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on: And the capybara suffer what they must? [the ethics of reintroducing predators]
This was such a good article. It changed my mind about conservationists—I had no idea they were so into the value of evolution in and by itself and at the expense of welfare of both animals and humans. Your post really opened up my mind to a new perspective on this. And I really like how you social science style talked to all these different people to really push them on their beliefs and motivations. And it feels EA related and shows the complexities involved in wild animal suffering. Great job and thanks!

Ulrik Horn 16 Mar 2024 13:04 UTC
3 points
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on: Why I worry about about EA leadership, explained through two completely made-up LinkedIn profiles
Edit: For people downvoting this, please don’t if you do it because that data is already available. I made this comment before Lorenzo’s excellent data was published (see his comment, above).

I think having data at least just roughly on how many percent there is of each would help me. If its 95% and 5% it feels like we lack diversity in experience. If it’s 30% and 70% I think I would be less worried.

Ulrik Horn 16 Mar 2024 5:37 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Ives Parr’s comment on: Why I care so much about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in EA
I appreciate your comment, you are right. I should have dropped the “white” word in the example of your post. I think you are correct, it does not matter, I would have been upset regardless. And I do apologize if you are not in fact white—like I said I make mistakes on a daily basis. I know this is perhaps a cop-out but… I seek draft amnesty? Still, I feel worse if such posts are made by white people. Like I said I am explaining how I feel, and this cannot be argued about. I made this post due to popular demand and I meant it mostly so that people interested in why some people disengage, or perhaps never engage, with EA knows at least one mechanism through which alienation from EA works.

That said, your post contributes quite a lot to me feeling embarrassed to be an EA, and of my feeling of not being at home here. I think more so because it is tolerated and implicitly endorsed by CEA by virtue of not being removed or something like that.

And some of the language in your comment is unnecessarily inflammatory, like the use of “identity politics” as if there is some sort of politics that does not pertain to people’s identity. White, het cis or abelist politics is still identity politics. And the upvotes on your comment does not help either.

Note that I am only engaging with your comment in terms of how I feel, that is all I am interested in talking about here. The sole goal of my post was to let people know the mechanism by which someone could get alienated from the EA movement. I (and I think others too) thought this was important to get out there as I felt, and I think people who wanted me to write this post felt that too, that we might not understand well what drives PoC, or even white people away from the movement. I am sure there are many other ways people can feel alienated too, so this is just an anecdote but I hope it is helpful for those that might want to increase diversity and grow the movement. In my case it is one of the strongest aversions I have to EA.
What links here?
- How to better advocate for genetic enhancement to the EA community? by Ives Parr (28 Mar 2024 23:31 UTC; -14 points)

Ulrik Horn 15 Mar 2024 12:39 UTC
7 points
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on: The Lack of EA in US Private Foundations
Super interesting. Based on my understanding of CE’s thinking, would not doing something 5x more cost effective than the second best, in a cause area that falls a bit below the cost-effectiveness that EA is interested in, still be EA-aligned? I mean the counterfactual impact can still be huge if you are affecting thousands or millions of lives and moving large amounts of money/resources and doing this much more cost effectively than the best, existing player. A proof point would be a CE-incubated charity that now is absorbing significant funding from either something like USAID, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or similar.

Ulrik Horn 15 Mar 2024 4:32 UTC
1 point
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on: #182 – Comparing the welfare of humans, chickens, pigs, octopuses, bees, and more (Bob Fischer on the 80,000 Hours Podcast)
Love this episode! I really appreciate all the dissemination of work on prioritizing animals—it really helps me understand the case for animals. I just wished someone would do something similar for x-risk. I feel like I understand really well why we should work on animal welfare, but I feel like I understand much less about why we should work on x-risk.

I am not saying I think x-risk is unimportant. I am just saying I feel like I defer a lot more on x-risk while for animal welfare I could to some degree explain why it is important to a non-EA friend of mine.