Vasco Grilo

• Vasco Grilo 4 Sep 2020 17:42 UTC

  5 points

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  on: Space gov­er­nance is im­por­tant, tractable and neglected

  I was excited to read this post because Space in seldom mentioned in the EA movement, and I am about to complete my MSc thesis in Aerospace Engineering. However, I believe a Space Law background would be more suitable for the research suggested above.

  I would appreciate if someone could give insight into effective careers for which an Aerospace Engineering background could be useful (at least as a starting point).

• Vasco Grilo 5 Sep 2020 10:57 UTC

  3 points

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  on: Feed­back re­quested for an an­i­mal ad­vo­cacy and longter­mist ca­reer (di­rect and re­search)

  Hello Michael,

  1) Have you read the book “How to Create a Vegan World: A Pragmatic Approach” by Tobias Leenaert? I believe it is a very good reference for effective vegan advocacy.

  2) I have noticed UN is not on your list. Have you considered working, for example, for UN’s COPUOS?

  By the way, I sympathise with your position because I will finish my MSc thesis (Preliminary Trajectory Design for a CubeSat Mission to a Near-Earth Object) in a few months (hopefully!), and I am also looking for an effective career. I only found out about EA, via 80000 Hours, at the beginning of my MSc, and noticed that Aerospace Engineeing does not seem to be in high demand. According to the 80000 Hours most pressing problems page, the topic more closely related to Space seems to be “Governance of outer space” from the “Potential highest priorities” list. However, economics or law backgrounds are likely more suitable than engineering for that area…

  Do you think there might be other effective careers in Space, such that I could capitalise on my Aerospace Engineering background? For example, in terms of planetary protection, besides asteroid collision risks, space weather and space debris could be relevant. I wonder if I should aim for a Phd in these sort of areas… Any advide would be appreciated!

  I have also been fantasising about being a representive of the party ” People–Animals–Nature” (the Portuguese party closest to Animal Justice Party). I have only became a member a few months ago, and have not been that involved, but I would like to change this.

  Good luck for your Phd!

  Vasco

• Vasco Grilo 1 Aug 2021 8:21 UTC

  5 points

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  on: The Effec­tive Altru­ism Handbook

  Thanks for the post! Do you think that a kindle version of the EA Handbook would be useful in order to effectively reach a wider audience?

• Vasco Grilo 18 Mar 2022 10:49 UTC

  1 point

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  on: Mo­ral patienthood

  Thanks for the overview!

• Vasco Grilo 28 Mar 2022 8:12 UTC

  2 points

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  on: Against cash bench­mark­ing for global de­vel­op­ment RCTs

  Thanks for such an interesting post!
  
  It seems that developping cheap and accurate ways of measuring consumption and well-being across time is an important step to better estimate the total impact of interventions. Are there any promising solutions?

• Vasco Grilo 29 Mar 2022 14:32 UTC

  8 points

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  on: EA should taboo “EA should”

  Thanks for the post! It actually made me remember of “Should” considered harmful, which argues that the word “should” is often harmful because “it disconnects the reason from the task”.

Cost-effec­tive­ness of send­ing per­sonal messages

Sum­mary: Ev­i­dence, clue­less­ness and the long term | Hilary Greaves

• Vasco Grilo 15 Apr 2022 19:31 UTC

  1 point

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  on: Ev­i­dence, clue­less­ness, and the long term—Hilary Greaves

  A summary of this talk is available here.

[Question] Are there any uber-analy­ses of GiveWell/​ACE top char­i­ties?

• Vasco Grilo 16 Apr 2022 16:05 UTC

  2 points

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  on: A Com­plete Quan­ti­ta­tive Model for Cause Selection

  FYI, the app does not seem to be working.

• Vasco Grilo 17 Apr 2022 19:15 UTC

  3 points

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  on: A Com­plete Quan­ti­ta­tive Model for Cause Selection

  Thanks a lot for this post!

• Vasco Grilo 18 Apr 2022 6:46 UTC

  3 points

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  on: A Com­plete Quan­ti­ta­tive Model for Cause Selection

  My updates:

  • The post helped me understand how the long-term effects of near-term interventions dominate their total impact, even in expectation (as suggested in this talk).

  • As a result, I am now more inclined towards longtermism, which tends to focus explicitly on the long-term effects.

    • In my mind, optimising for the long-term tends to be better to achieve good results in the long-term, and therefore I am sceptical that near-termist interventions could outperform long-termist interventions.

  • I updated towards donating to long-term causes (although most of my donations were already going to the EA Long-term Fund and EA Infrastructure Fund).

  • I updated towards working on long-term causes and global priorities research.

My notes on: Why we can’t take ex­pected value es­ti­mates liter­ally (even when they’re un­bi­ased)

• Vasco Grilo 18 Apr 2022 14:43 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: CarlShulman’s comment on: What is the ex­pected effect of poverty alle­vi­a­tion efforts on ex­is­ten­tial risk?

  Based on, for example, this post , would it be reasonable to say that most of the expected total impact of donating to /​ working on global health and development is linked to the respective long-term effects? If so, as suggested here (see “Response five: “Go longtermist”″), it seems more reasonable to focus on long-termism.
  
  I believe:

  • The prior for the short-term (1st order) expected impact of (e.g.) GiveWell top charities has low variance.

  • The estimate for the total expected impact of GiveWell top charities has high variance.

  • The higher the variance of the estimate, the smaller the update to the prior.

  However, I do not think one should conclude from the above that the posterior for the total expected impact of GiveWell top charities is similar to the prior for the short-term expected impact of GiveWell top charities. If I am not mistaken, this update would only be valid if the low-variance prior concerned the total expected impact of GiveWell top charities, but it respects the short-term expected impact.

The num­ber of seabirds and sea mam­mals kil­led by marine plas­tic pol­lu­tion is quite small rel­a­tive to the catch of fish

• Vasco Grilo 19 Apr 2022 21:48 UTC

  5 points

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  in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Direct effects of marine plas­tic pol­lu­tion on wild an­i­mals seem small

  According to this section from Our World in Data:

  • “Microplastic ingestion rarely causes mortality in any organisms. As such, ‘lethal concentration’ (LC) values which are often measured and reported for contaminants do not exist”. Update on 29 December 2023: Nathalie Gil pointed out some studies have concluded microplastics increase mortality.

  • “There is increasing evidence that microplastic ingestion can affect the consumption of prey, leading to energy depletion, inhibited growth and fertility impacts”.

  • “Evidence of impacts of reduced food consumption include” (the links below were also taken from the OWID article):

    • “Slower metabolic rate and survival in Asian green mussels” (see this).

    • “Reduced reproducibility and survival in copepods” (see this).

    • “Reduced growth and development of Daphnia” (see this).

    • “Reduced growth and development of langoustine” (see this).

    • “Reduced energy stores in shore crabs and lugworms” (see this and this).

  However, it is worth noting that reduced food consumption tends to decrease the size of the fish population, which might be beneficial if fish have net negative lives.

• Vasco Grilo 20 Apr 2022 21:48 UTC

  14 points

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  in reply to: AndreFerretti’s comment on: Direct effects of marine plas­tic pol­lu­tion on wild an­i­mals seem small

  Great to know that you found it useful!
  
  In my mind, the meaning of words such as “small” and “large” is always context-dependent. In this case, I think it is fair to say that the impact, measured as the number of deaths, from marine plastic pollution on seabirds and marine animals is small in comparison with the impact of catching fish.
  
  In order to make comparisons between species, I think it is worth having in mind the number of neurons (a proxy for sentience) respecting each death toll.

  Estimates for the number of neurons:

  • Humans: 86 G (see this).

  • Marine mammals: 7.10 G.

    • Geometric mean of the neurons for “Harp seal” and “Killer whale”, which are the species in this list with the least and most neurons that are marine mammals.

  • Seabirds: 606 M.

    • Geometric mean of the neurons for “Mallard” and “Mute swan”, which are the animals in this list with the least and most neurons that look somewhat similar to seabirds.

  • Fish: 10 M (see “Adult zebrafish” in this list).

  Number of neurons respecting each death toll:

  • Malaria: 627 k * 86 G = 53.9 P.

  • Marine mammals: 100 k * 7.10 G = 0.710 P.

  • Seabirds: 1 M * 606 M = 0.606 P.

  • Fish: 1.62 T * 10 M = 16.2 kP.

  Consequently, the number of neurons regarding:

  • Marine mammals and seabirds is similar.

  • Malaria is ~ 2 orders of magnitude larger than that of marine mammals /​ seabirds.

  • Fish is ~ 2.5 orders of magnitude larger than that of malaria.

  From the above, it naively seems that:

  • The death toll of marine mammals /​ seabirds caused by marine plastic pollution is small relative to the death toll caused by malaria.

  • The death toll caused by malaria is small relative to the death toll concerning wild fish catch.

  However, this is not by all means a definite analysis:

  • It is unclear whether sentience should be measured as a linear function of the number of neurons (see section “Brain size” of this page).

  • Even for the same level of sentience, the intensity of the death could vary.

  • There are other effects which are not captured by the number of deaths.

• Vasco Grilo 21 Apr 2022 8:46 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: AndreFerretti’s comment on: Direct effects of marine plas­tic pol­lu­tion on wild an­i­mals seem small

  Yes, I agree, there is lots of uncertainty! Moreover:

  • In addition to the importance of the death toll, one has to take into account its neglectedness and tractability.

  • Longterm effects should also be assessed, as they can concern most the expected impact of averting deaths (e.g. via expansion of the moral circle).

Civ­i­liza­tional vulnerabilities