I am a PhD candidate in Economics at Stanford University. Within effective altruism, I am interested in broad longtermism, long-term institutions and values, and animal welfare. In economics, my areas of interest include political economy, behavioral economics, and public economics.
zdgroff
Karma: 2,171
Thanks for writing this post. I have similar concerns and am glad to see this composed. I particularly like the note about the initial design of space colonies. A couple things:
My sense is that the dominance of digital minds (which you mention as a possible issue) is actually the main reason many longtermists think factory farming is likely to be small relative to the size of the future. You’re right to note that this means future human welfare is also relatively unimportant, and my sense is that most would admit that. Humanity is instrumentally important, however, since it will create those digital minds. I do think it’s an issue that a lot of discussion of the future treats it as the future “of humanity” when that’s not really what it’s about. I suspect that part of this is just a matter of avoiding overly weird messaging.
It would be good to explore how your argument changes when you weight animals in different ways, e.g. by neuron count, since that [does appear to change things](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NfkEqssr7qDazTquW/the-expected-value-of-extinction-risk-reduction-is-positive). I think we should probably take a variety of approaches and place some weight on each, although there’s a sort of Pascalian problem with considering the possibility that each animal mind has equal weight in that it feels somewhat plausible but also leads to wild and seemingly wrong conclusions (e.g. that it’s all about insect larvae). But in general, this seems like a central issue worth adjusting for.
Research institute focused on civilizational lock-in
Values and Reflective Processes, Economic Growth, Space Governance, Effective Altruism
One source of long-term risks and potential levers to positively shape the future is the possibility that certain values or social structures get locked in, such as via global totalitarianism, self-replicating colonies, or widespread dominance of a single set of values. Though organizations exist dedicated to work on risks of human extinction, we would like to see an academic or independent institute focused on other events that could have an impact on the order of millions of years or more. Are such events plausible, and which ones should be of most interest and concern? Such an institute might be similar in structure to FHI, GPI, or CSER, drawing on the social sciences, history, philosophy, and mathematics.
Consulting on best practices around info hazards
Epistemic Institutions, Effective Altruism, Research That Can Help Us Improve
Information about ways to influence the long-term future can in some cases give rise to information hazards, where true information can cause harm. Typical examples concern research into existential risks, such as around potential powerful weapons or algorithms prone to misuse. Other risks exist, however, and may also be especially important for longtermists. For example, better understanding of ways social structures and values can get locked in may help powerful actors achieve deeply misguided objectives.
We would like to support an organization that can develop a set of best practices and consult with important institutions, companies, and longtermist organizations on how best to manage information hazards. We would like to see work to help organizations think about the tradeoffs in sharing information. How common are info hazards? Are there ways to eliminate or minimize downsides? Is it typically the case that the downsides to information sharing are much smaller than upsides or vice versa?
Advocacy for digital minds
Artificial Intelligence, Values and Reflective Processes, Effective Altruism
Digital sentience is likely to be widespread in the most important future scenarios. It may be possible to shape the development and deployment of artificially sentient beings in various ways, e.g. through corporate outreach and lobbying. For example, constitutions can be drafted or revised to grant personhood on the basis of sentience; corporate charters can include responsibilities to sentient subroutines; and laws regarding safe artificial intelligence can be tailored to consider the interests of a sentient system. We would like to see an organization dedicated to identifying and pursuing opportunities to protect the interests of digital minds. There could be one or multiple organizations. We expect foundational research to be crucial here; a successful effort would hinge on thorough research into potential policies and the best ways of identifying digital suffering.
Lobbying architects of the future
Values and Reflective Processes, Effective Altruism
Advocacy often focuses on changing politics, but the most important decisions about the future of civilization may be made in domains that receive relatively less attention. Examples include the reward functions of generally intelligent algorithms that eventually get scaled up, the design of the first space colonies, and the structure of virtual reality. We would like to see one or more organizations focused on getting the right values considered by influential decision-makers at institutions like NASA and Google. We would be excited about targeted outreach to promote consideration of aligned artificial intelligence, existential risks, the interests of future generations, and nonhuman (both animal and digital) minds. The nature of this work could take various forms, but some potential strategies are prestigious conferences in important industries, retreats including a small number of highly-influential professionals, or shareholder activism.
Yeah, I think this would be good context—the CO gov’s husband is a die-hard animal rights activist and seems to have influence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlon_Reis
He declared a “MeatOut” day recently to support plant-based eating and has signed various animal welfare initiatives into law, such as a cage-free law.
So it seems that someone very EA-minded could get this position if they apply.
I’m really excited to see this and look into it. I’m working on some long-term persistence issues, and this is largely in line with my intuitive feel for the literature. I haven’t looked at the Church-WEIRDness one, though, and now I’m eager to read that one.
Let me note that on top of all your concrete accomplishments, you’re just a very sweet and caring person, which has got to help a lot in building this vibrant community. I’m happy to know you!
There is nothing special about longtermism compared to any other big desideratum in this regard.
I’m not sure this is the case. E.g. Steven Pinker in Better Angels makes the case that utopian movements systematically tend to commit atrocities because this all-important end goal justifies anyting in the medium term. I haven’t rigorously examined this argument and think it would be valuable for someone to do so, but much of longtermism in the EA community, especially of the strong variety, is based on something like utopia.
One reason why you might intuitively think there would be a relationship is that shorter-term impacts are typically somewhat more bounded; e.g. if thousands of American schoolchildren are getting suboptimal lunches, this obviously doesn’t justify torturing hundreds of thousands of people. With the strong longtermist claims it’s much less clear that there’s any sort of upper bound, so to draw a firm line against atrocities you end up looking to somewhat more convoluted reasoning (e.g. some notion of deontological restraint that isn’t completely absolute but yet can withstand astronomical consequences, or a sketchy and loose notion that atrocities have an instrumental downside).
I think the persistence studies stuff is the best bet. One thing to note there is that the literature is sort of a set of existence proofs. It shows that there are various things that have long-term impacts, but it might not give you a strong sense of the average long-term impact of poverty alleviation.
This is really impressive work. I’ve been looking for something like this to cite for economics work on animal welfare, and this seems well-suited for that.
I just wanted to give major kudos for evaluating a prediction you made and very publicly sharing the results even though they were not fully in line with your prediction.
Thanks. I’m aware of this sort of argument, though I think most of what’s out there relies on anecdotes, and it’s unclear exactly what the effect is (since there is likely some level of confounding here).
I guess there are still two things holding me up here. (1) It’s not clear that the media is changing preferences or just offering [mis/dis]information. (2) I’m not sure it’s a small leap. News channels’ effects on preferences likely involve prolonged exposure, not a one-time sitting. For an algorithm to expose someone in a prolonged way, it has to either repeatedly recommend videos or recommend one video that leads to their watching many, many videos. The latter strikes me as unlikely; again, behavior is malleable but not that malleable. In the former case, I would think the direct effect on the reward function of all of those individual videos recommended and clicked on has to be way larger than the effect on the person’s behavior after seeing the videos. If my reasoning were wrong, I would find that quite scary, because it would be evidence of substantially greater vulnerability to current algorithms than I previously thought.
Right. I mean, I privilege this simpler explanation you mention. He seems to have reason to think it’s not the right explanation, but I can’t figure out why.
BTW, I am interested in studying this question if anyone is interested in partnering up. I’m not entirely sure how to study it, as (given the post) I suspect the result may be a null, which is only interesting if we have access to one of the algorithms he is talking about and data on the scale such an algorithm would typically have.
My general approach would be an online experiment where I expose one group of people to a recommender system and don’t expose another. Then place both groups in the same environment and observe whether the first group is now more predictable. (This does not account for the issue of information, though.)
[Question] Is there evidence that recommender systems are changing users’ preferences?
It seems that dystopian novels are overrepresented relative to their share of the classics. I’m curious for others’ thoughts why that is. I could imagine a case that they’re more action-relevant than, e.g., Pride and Prejudice, but I also wonder if they might shape our expectations of the future in bad ways. (I say this as someone currently rereading 1984, which I adore...)
Links should be fixed! Thanks for pointing this out.
Thanks for pointing this out. It should work now.
Yes, all those first points make sense. I did want to just point to where I see the most likely cruxes.
Re: neuron count, the idea would be to use various transformations of neuron counts, or of a particular type of neuron. I think it’s a judgment call whether to leave it to the readers to judge; I would prefer giving what one thinks is the most plausible benchmark way of counting and then giving the tools to adjust from there, but your approach is sensible too.