willbradshaw

• willbradshaw 16 Oct 2020 17:18 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Pablo_Stafforini’s comment on: Avoid­ing Mu­nich’s Mis­takes: Ad­vice for CEA and Lo­cal Groups

  Okay, sure, at the mar­gin I agree it’s tricky. Both for rep­u­ta­tional rea­sons, and the broad-tent/​com­mu­nity-co­he­sion con­cerns I men­tion above.

• willbradshaw 16 Oct 2020 15:25 UTC

  16 points

  in reply to: Pablo_Stafforini’s comment on: Avoid­ing Mu­nich’s Mis­takes: Ad­vice for CEA and Lo­cal Groups

  I would add that think­ing strate­gi­cally about this cul­tural phe­nomenon in­volves not only try­ing to un­der­stand its mechanism of ac­tion, but also com­ing up with frame­works for de­cid­ing what trade­offs to make in re­sponse to it. I am per­son­ally very dis­turbed by the po­ten­tial of can­cel cul­ture to un­der­mine or de­stroy EA, and my nat­u­ral re­ac­tion is to be­lieve that we should stand firm and make no con­ces­sions to it, as well as to up­vote posts and com­ments that ex­press this sen­ti­ment. This is not, how­ever, a po­si­tion I feel I can en­dorse on re­flec­tion[...]

  This seems right to me, and I up­voted to sup­port (some­thing like) this state­ment. I think there’s a great deal of dan­ger in both di­rec­tions here.

  (Not just for rep­u­ta­tional rea­sons. I also think that there are lots of SJ-al­igned – but very sincere – EAs who are feel­ing pretty alienated from anti-CC EAs right now, and it would be very bad to lose them.)

  It seems in­stead that pro­tect­ing our move­ment against this risk in­volves strik­ing a difficult and del­i­cate bal­ance be­tween ex­ces­sive and in­suffi­cient re­lax­ation of our epistemic stan­dards. By giv­ing in too much the EA move­ment risks re­lin­quish­ing its core prin­ci­ples, but by giv­ing in too lit­tle the move­ment risks ru­in­ing its rep­u­ta­tion.

  The epistemic stan­dards seem to­tally core to EA to me. If we re­lax much at all on those I think the ex­pected fu­ture value of EA falls quite dra­mat­i­cally. The ques­tion to me is whether we can re­lax/​al­ter our dis­course norms with­out com­pro­mis­ing those stan­dards.

  Un­for­tu­nately, it seems that an open dis­cus­sion of this is­sue may it­self pose a rep­u­ta­tional risk, and in fact I’m not sure it’s even a good idea to have pub­lic posts like the one this com­ment is re­spond­ing to, how­ever much I agree with it.

  I sym­pa­thise with this, but I think if we don’t have pub­lic posts like this one, the out­come is more-or-less de­cided in ad­vance. If ev­ery­one who thinks some­thing is bad re­mains silent for the sake of rep­u­ta­tional harm, the dis­course in the move­ment will be com­pletely dom­i­nated by those who dis­agree with them, while those who would agree with them be­come alienated and dis­cour­aged. This will in turn de­ter­mine who en­gages with the move­ment, and how it evolves in re­la­tion to that idea in the fu­ture.

  If that out­come (in this case, broad adop­tion of the kinds of norms that give rise to can­cel cul­ture within EA) is un­ac­cept­able, some de­gree of pub­lic op­po­si­tion is nec­es­sary.

• willbradshaw 15 Oct 2020 17:14 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Julia_Wise’s comment on: Avoid­ing Mu­nich’s Mis­takes: Ad­vice for CEA and Lo­cal Groups

  Ah, then my com­ment was based on a mi­s­un­der­stand­ing. Apolo­gies.

• willbradshaw 15 Oct 2020 7:49 UTC

  27 points

  in reply to: Julia_Wise’s comment on: Avoid­ing Mu­nich’s Mis­takes: Ad­vice for CEA and Lo­cal Groups

  It makes it more costly to be an or­ga­nizer. In one dis­cus­sion amongst group or­ga­niz­ers af­ter the Mu­nich situ­a­tion, one or­ga­nizer wrote about the Peter Singer talk their group hosted. [I’m wait­ing to see if I can give a ful­ler quote, but their sum­mary was about how the Q&A ses­sion got con­flicted enough that the group was known as “the group that in­vited Peter Singer” for two years and ba­si­cally over­pow­ered any other im­pres­sion stu­dents had of what the EA group was about.]

  Just for con­text, if any­one is un­aware, Peter Singer is ex­tremely con­tro­ver­sial in Ger­many, much (/​even) more so than in the English-speak­ing world. There was a talk by him in Cologne a few years ago, and ev­ery­one was a bit sur­prised it didn’t get shouted down by stu­dent ac­tivists.

  So I can definitely see this hap­pen­ing, and sym­pa­thise with the de­sire for it not to hap­pen again, even though I still think the Han­son de­ci­sion was ill-made.

• willbradshaw 12 Oct 2020 17:16 UTC

  10 points

  in reply to: willbradshaw’s comment on: Can my self-worth com­pare to my in­stru­men­tal value?

  On this point...there are a few ar­gu­ments made in other com­ments here that I don’t find very per­sua­sive, but am avoid­ing ar­gu­ing against for fear of seem­ing dis­agree­able or caus­ing dis­tress to peo­ple with frag­ile self-worth. What are peo­ple’s thoughts about norms around ar­gu­ing in these kinds of situ­a­tions – or even rais­ing the ques­tion in the first place?

  EDIT: From my side, if there’s an ar­gu­ment that I’m mak­ing that some­one think is shaky, I’d rather they told me so – pri­vately or pub­li­cly, as they pre­fer.

• willbradshaw 11 Oct 2020 17:36 UTC

  7 points

  in reply to: FCCC’s comment on: Can my self-worth com­pare to my in­stru­men­tal value?

  This feels...not wrong, ex­actly, but also not what I was driv­ing at with this com­ment. At least, I think I prob­a­bly dis­agree with your con­cep­tion of moral­ity.

• willbradshaw 11 Oct 2020 15:36 UTC

  19 points

  in reply to: willbradshaw’s comment on: Can my self-worth com­pare to my in­stru­men­tal value?

  Some­thing I didn’t say in my big com­ment above: I’m re­ally happy the peo­ple in this thread are ap­proach­ing this with the goal of “still stay­ing in­tel­lec­tu­ally hon­est with” our­selves. I think there’s a lot of se­duc­tive but mis­lead­ing think­ing in this space, and that there’s a strong urge to latch onto the first fram­ing we find that makes us feel bet­ter in the face of these is­sues. I’m happy to see peo­ple ap­proach this prob­lem in the same truth-first mind­set they ap­ply to do­ing good in the world.

• willbradshaw 11 Oct 2020 15:36 UTC

  9 points

  in reply to: SamMumm’s comment on: Can my self-worth com­pare to my in­stru­men­tal value?

  I think all the differ­ent fram­ings you sug­gest are at least partly true.

  I think this is one of the fun­da­men­tal challenges of EA, and is go­ing to take a lot of differ­ent peo­ple think­ing hard about it to re­ally come to grips with as a com­mu­nity. I think it will always be a challenge – EA is fun­da­men­tally about (al­tru­is­tic) am­bi­tion, and am­bi­tion is always go­ing to be in some de­gree of ten­sion with the need for com­fort, even if it si­mul­ta­neously pro­vides a great deal of mean­ing.

  As you say, I’m not sure EA will ever be as com­fort­ing as re­li­gion – it’s op­ti­mis­ing for very differ­ent things. But over time I hope we will gen­er­ate com­mu­nity struc­tures and wis­dom liter­a­ture to help man­age this ten­sion, care for each other, and cre­ate the emo­tional (as well as in­tel­lec­tual) con­di­tions we need to sur­vive and flour­ish.

• willbradshaw 11 Oct 2020 10:15 UTC

  52 points

  on: Can my self-worth com­pare to my in­stru­men­tal value?

  This definitely res­onates with me, and is some­thing I’ve been think­ing about a lot lately, as I wres­tle with my feel­ings around recre­ational ac­tivi­ties and free time. I’m not sure if what fol­lows is ex­actly an an­swer to your ques­tion, but here’s where I’m at in think­ing about this prob­lem.

  I think one thing it’s very im­por­tant to keep in mind is that, in util­i­tar­i­anism (or any kind of welfarist con­se­quen­tial­ism) your sub­jec­tive wellbe­ing is of fun­da­men­tal in­trin­sic value. Your hap­piness is deeply good, and your suffer­ing is deeply bad, re­gard­less of what­ever other con­se­quences your ac­tions have in the world. That means that how­ever much good you do in the world, it is bet­ter if you are happy as you do it.

  Now, the prob­lem, as your post makes clear, is that ev­ery­one else’s sub­jec­tive wellbe­ing is also profoundly valuable, in a way that is com­men­su­rate with your wellbe­ing and can be traded off against it. And, since your ac­tions can af­fect the wellbe­ing of many other peo­ple, that in­di­rect value can out­weigh the di­rect value of your own wellbe­ing. This is the fun­da­men­tal de­mand­ing­ness of con­se­quen­tial­ist moral­ity that so many peo­ple strug­gle with. Still, I find it helpful to re­mem­ber that the same rea­son­ing that makes other peo­ple so valuable also makes me valuable, in a deep and fun­da­men­tal and moral way.

  Turn­ing, to in­stru­men­tal value, I have two things to say. The first is about in­stru­men­tal value in gen­eral, and the sec­ond is about the spe­cific in­stru­men­tal value of self-kind­ness.

  The first thing I want to say is that al­most ev­ery­thing I value I value in­stru­men­tally, and that fact does not make the value of those things less real, or less im­por­tant. I care a great deal about free­dom and civil liber­ties and democ­racy, and would pay high costs to pro­tect those things, even though I only value them in­stru­men­tally, as ways to cre­ate more hap­piness and less suffer­ing. I hate racism and speciesism and sick­ness and age­ing, not be­cause they are in­trin­si­cally bad in them­selves, but be­cause they are the source of so much suffer­ing and fore­gone hap­piness. For some rea­son, we tend to view other things’ in­stru­men­tal value as deeply im­por­tant, and our own in­stru­men­tal value as a kind of half-real con­so­la­tion prize. I think this is a tragic er­ror.

  Se­condly, with re­gard to our own in­stru­men­tal value, most peo­ple tend to sig­nifi­cantly un­der­es­ti­mate just how in­stru­men­tally valuable their men­tal health is. In my ex­pe­rience, when peo­ple think and talk about the in­stru­men­tal value of their own wellbe­ing, they seem to have in mind about some kind of re­lax­ation re­serve that it’s im­por­tant to keep full in or­der to avoid burnout. I think some­thing like this is prob­a­bly true, but I also think that there’s much deeper and broader in­stru­men­tal value in be­ing kind to your­self.

  My ideas here aren’t fully de­vel­oped, but I think there’s some­thing toxic about too much self-ab­ne­ga­tion, that whit­tles away at one’s self-es­teem and courage and en­thu­si­asm and in­stinc­tive kind­ness to­ward oth­ers. At least for me, self-de­nial and guilt push me to­wards a timid and satis­fic­ing mind­set, where I do what is re­quired to not feel bad about my­self and don’t en­vi­sion or reach out for higher achieve­ments. It also makes me less in­stinc­tively kind to oth­ers, which has a lot of com­pound­ing bad effects on my im­pact, and also makes it harder for me to see and em­brace new and differ­ent op­por­tu­ni­ties for do­ing good.

  I’m still think­ing through this shift in how I think about the in­stru­men­tal value of my own wellbe­ing, but I think it has some pretty im­por­tant con­se­quences. Com­pared to the re­serve-of-wellbe­ing model, it seems to mil­i­tate in favour of be­ing more gen­er­ous to my­self with my free time, less fo­cused on self-op­ti­mi­sa­tion in­so­far as that feels bur­den­some, and more fo­cused on self-mo­ti­va­tion through re­wards rather than threats of self-pun­ish­ment. How ex­actly this kind of think­ing cashes out into lifestyle choices prob­a­bly varies a lot from per­son to per­son; my main goal here is to illus­trate how one’s con­cep­tion of one’s in­stru­men­tal value should be broader and deeper than just “if I don’t re­lax some­times I’ll burn out”.

  In sum­mary:

  • The same thing that makes it im­por­tant to work for the wellbe­ing of oth­ers also makes you deeply and in­trin­si­cally valuable – to me, to oth­ers here, and hope­fully also to your­self.

  • The in­stru­men­tal value of your wellbe­ing is also deeply im­por­tant, not merely some kind of sec­ond prize. Think about how you think about other things that you value a lot in­stru­men­tally, and com­pare how you think about your own in­stru­men­tal value: are they the same?

  • The va­ri­ety and scale of the effects of your wellbe­ing on your im­pact are prob­a­bly greater than you think: your wellbe­ing isn’t just in­stru­men­tally valuable, it’s very very in­stru­men­tally valuable, in all kinds of hard-to-quan­tify ways.

  • Even if, at some point in the fu­ture, your wellbe­ing no longer has much in­stru­men­tal value, you will still be just as in­trin­si­cally valuable as you are now: which is to say, very. The thing that makes you value the other sen­tient be­ings whose wellbe­ing you strive for will still ap­ply to you: as long as you ex­ist, you are im­por­tant.

• willbradshaw 11 Aug 2020 19:26 UTC

  7 points

  in reply to: Peter Sølling’s comment on: How do EAs choose be­tween the four fo­cus ar­eas?

  Nice, thanks Peter.

  I have now changed the ti­tle of the post to be that which you sug­gested. I wanted it to be a ques­tion, but I couldn’t find a way to add a pic­ture to a test in a ques­tion. Im new to this fo­rum. Sorry.

  Seems like a good rea­son. :-)

• willbradshaw 10 Aug 2020 13:40 UTC

  9 points

  on: The emerg­ing school of pa­tient longtermism

  To­tally frivolous ques­tion: why chairs?

• willbradshaw 10 Aug 2020 13:15 UTC

  13 points

  on: How do EAs choose be­tween the four fo­cus ar­eas?

  I have a few re­sponses to this:

  1. This should prob­a­bly be a ques­tion, not a post.

  2. The ques­tion in the ti­tle is com­pletely differ­ent from the ques­tion in the post. A bet­ter ti­tle would be some­thing like “How are the EA Funds de­fault al­lo­ca­tions cho­sen?”

  Ac­tu­ally an­swer­ing the ques­tion, I don’t think there’s any rea­son to as­sume that whichever EA Funds staff mem­ber se­lected the de­fault al­lo­ca­tion thinks that this is the the­o­ret­i­cally op­ti­mal way to al­lo­cate re­sources – in fact I think that’s very un­likely. So the real ques­tion is what higher-level method, if any, was be­ing used to se­lect that al­lo­ca­tion.

  I don’t think any­one ex­cept a mem­ber of the ap­pro­pri­ate team at CEA can an­swer that. Have you asked them?

• willbradshaw 27 Jul 2020 14:27 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Linch’s comment on: Will Three Gorges Dam Col­lapse And Kill Millions?

  FYI, the fi­nal para­graph is du­pli­cated.

• willbradshaw 21 Jul 2020 14:12 UTC

  8 points

  in reply to: Aidan O'Gara’s comment on: EA Fo­rum fea­ture sug­ges­tion thread

  In­ter­est­ing. I’m used to two hy­phens for an en dash and three for an em dash.

• willbradshaw 19 Jul 2020 18:16 UTC

  9 points

  in reply to: Aidan O'Gara’s comment on: AMA or dis­cuss my 80K pod­cast epi­sode: Ben Garfinkel, FHI researcher

  I per­son­ally would lean to­wards the “most AMAs” ap­proach of hav­ing most di­alogue be with the AMA-re­spon­dent. It’s not quite “ques­tions af­ter a talk”, since ques­tion-askers have much more ca­pac­ity to re­spond and have a con­ver­sa­tion, but I feel like it’s more in that di­rec­tion than, say, a ran­dom EA so­cial. Maybe some­thing like the vibe of a post-talk min­gling ses­sion?

  I think this is prob­a­bly more im­por­tant early in a com­ment tree than later. Directly try­ing to an­swer some­one else’s ques­tion seems odd/​out-of-place to me, whereas chiming in 4 lev­els down seems less so. I think this mir­rors how the “post-talk min­gling” would work: if I was talk­ing to a speaker at such an event, and I asked them a ques­tion, some­one else an­swer­ing be­fore them would be odd/​an­noy­ing – “sorry, I wasn’t talk­ing to you”. Whereas some­one else chiming in af­ter a lit­tle back-and-forth would be much more nat­u­ral.

  Of course, you can have mul­ti­ple par­allel com­ment threads here, which al­ters things quite a bit. But that’s the kind of vibe that feels nat­u­ral to me, and Pablo’s com­ment above sug­gests I’m not alone in this.

• willbradshaw 16 Jul 2020 21:34 UTC

  9 points

  in reply to: abrahamrowe’s comment on: Con­cern, and hope

  Thanks, Abra­ham. It’s re­ally valuable to get these per­spec­tives, and it’s helpful to get peo­ple dis­cussing these is­sues un­der their real names where they feel they can. I agree that there is a lot of over­lap be­tween the im­pulses that lead peo­ple into EA and those that lead many peo­ple into SJ.

  I’m too tired right now to re­spond to this in the depth and spirit it de­serves – I’ll try and do so to­mor­row – so just wanted to flag that this is a pos­i­tive and valuable con­tri­bu­tion to the dis­cus­sion. I hope any re­sponses to it in the mean­time are made in the same spirit.

• willbradshaw 16 Jul 2020 14:48 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Pablo_Stafforini’s comment on: In­for­ma­tion haz­ards: a very sim­ple typology

  A mix­ture of con­ver­sa­tions and shared Google Docs. Noth­ing pub­li­cly citable as far as I know.

• willbradshaw 15 Jul 2020 8:39 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: vaidehi_agarwalla’s comment on: Sys­temic change, global poverty erad­i­ca­tion, and a ca­reer plan re­think: am I right?

  Thanks Vaidehi, great com­ment. If those num­bers are right then the drops in both ab­solute and rel­a­tive poverty in both South Asia and In­done­sia seem pretty amaz­ing.

• willbradshaw 14 Jul 2020 13:12 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: Aidan O'Gara’s comment on: Max_Daniel’s Shortform

  Do you think it mat­ters who’s right?

  I think it mat­ters quite a lot when it comes to as­sess­ing where to go from here: in par­tic­u­lar, how cau­tious and con­ser­va­tive to be, and how favourable to­wards untested rad­i­cal change.

  If things have got­ten way bet­ter and are likely to con­tinue to get way bet­ter in the fore­see­able fu­ture, then we should prob­a­bly broadly stick with what we’re do­ing – some tin­ker­ing around the edges to fix ob­vi­ous abuses, but no root-and-branch re­struc­tur­ing un­less some­thing goes ob­vi­ously and profoundly wrong.

  Whereas if things are failing to get bet­ter, or are ac­tively get­ting worse, then it might be worth tak­ing big risks in or­der to get out of the hole.

  I’ve of­ten had con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple to my left where they seem way too will­ing to smash stuff in the pro­cess of get­ting to deep sys­temic change, which is po­ten­tially sen­si­ble if you think we’re in a very bad place and get­ting worse but mad­ness if you think we’re in an ex­tremely un­usu­ally good place and get­ting bet­ter.

• willbradshaw 14 Jul 2020 13:06 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Denise_Melchin’s comment on: Max_Daniel’s Shortform

  I have rel­a­tively lit­tle ex­po­sure to Hickel, save for read­ing his guardian piece and a small part of the di­alogue that fol­lowed from that, but I don’t get the im­pres­sion he’s com­ing from a po­si­tion of putting more weight on Sanc­tity/​pu­rity or Author­ity/​re­spect; in gen­eral I’d guess that few peo­ple in left-wing so­cial-sci­ence academia are big on those sorts of moral foun­da­tions, ex­cept in­di­rectly via moral/​cul­tural rel­a­tivism.

  Tak­ing Haidt’s moral foun­da­tions the­ory as read for the mo­ment, I’d guess that the Fair­ness foun­da­tion is do­ing a lot of the work in this dis­agree­ment. In gen­eral, leftists and liber­als seem to differ a lot in what they con­sider cul­pable harm, and Fair­ness/​ex­ploita­tion seems like a big part of that.