Hi Anthony. Thanks. I followed up on LessWrong.

A rational actor doesn't need NARROW, PLAN, or SEQUENCE. They need to consider the future: "Bet B is coming, so there's an arbitrage opportunity regardless of the probability."

I do not seem to understand. If one knew "Bet B is coming", one would know about the full set up in advance as in the post ("You're told the full setup in advance"). So rejecting both A and B would not make sense?

Hi Michael.

There are other cases where you should make commitments that you would later be inclined to break, like Parfit's hitchhiker, and St. Petersburg lotteries with unbounded utility functions.

Why does Parfit's hitchhiker pose a problem? I would think my chance of survival is equal to my chance of keeping the commitment. So I would simply aim to commit as much as possible if I wanted to maximise my chances of survival. I understand the dilemma is that it would make sense for me to break the committment after I was driven to town, but my decision and thoughts in the town would be constrained from my chat with the driver in the desert. If the driver predicted I was 90 % likely to keep the commitment, and their predictions were calibrated, I would be 90 % likely to keep the commitment, and my thoughts would have to be compatible with this? If the driver predicted I was certain to keep the commitment, I would not consider breaking it in town? Otherwise, the predictions of the driver would not be accurate, which violates the set up of the thought experiment? Here is the description of the thought experiment for readers' context.

You are stranded in the desert, running out of water, and soon to die. Someone in a motor vehicle drives up to you. The driver of the motor vehicle is a selfish ideally game-theoretical agent, and what's more, so are you. Furthermore, the driver is Paul Ekman who has spent his whole life studying facial microexpressions and is extremely good at reading people's honesty by looking at their faces.

The driver says, "Well, as an ideal selfish rational agent, I'll convey you into town if it's in my own interest to do so. I don't want to bother dragging you to Small Claims Court if you don't pay up. So I'll just ask you this question: Can you honestly say that you'll give me $1,000 from an ATM after we reach town?"

[...]

We may assume that Parfit's driver also asks you questions like "Have you really thought through what you'll do?" and "Are you trying to think one thing now, knowing that you'll probably think something else in the city?" and watches your facial expression on those answers as well.

The St. Petersburg paradox involves an infinite expected payoff, and I reject infinite worlds.

Furthermore, "imposes different requirements across two situations Sally can see are identical in everything she cares about". What if I do care about the differences?

Adam's argument holds as long as, given 2 sharp states of the world A and B, A is better, worse, or as good as B? In Sally's case, her money is the only thing that matters. For realistic cases, many other factors will contribute to the value of a sharp world state.

Also, here's another way someone with unsharp probabilities might handle this situation. In summary, I should accept bet A at the start to rule out the possibility of picking a dominated sequence

I understand one should accept bet A based on that strategy. However, unsharp probabilities are supposed to allow for accepting or rejecting A?

Hello Evan.

At least in practice, there's a clear difference between considering bet A in isolation and considering bet A when you know bet B is coming. If you told me about a sports game between the Snofuls and the Fleertis and offered me 2:1 odds on the Snofuls to win, I wouldn't take it. But if you told me you would also give me 2:1 odds on the Fleertis to win, I would take both bets, guaranteeing a profit.

Accepting the 1st bet if you were confident Snofuls would win, accepting the 2nd if you were confident Fleertis would win, and accepting both if you thought the probability of any of the teams winning was close to 50 % would be in agreement with sharp probabilities.

Elga grants you're not required to accept both (a very confident or very doubtful agent might prefer just one). But he insists on the key premise: a rational agent must accept at least one of the two bets, because rejecting both is dominated—it's worse than accepting both in every outcome, and you can see this in advance. This premise is easy for a sharp-credence theorist to honor. The rest of the paper argues that no version of the unsharp view can.

As a rational actor with no useful information, I have a very broad range of potential probabilities for this bet, and it is permissible to do neither bet in isolation. However, when we consider our options simultaneously, that changes the calculus.

Which of the 3 strategies described by Adam would you use to justify accepting or rejecting each bet in isolation, but rejecting both bets together?

To apply this to altruistic action, there might be actions that we are uncertain about in isolation, but we are willing to pursue as a part of a portfolio approach.

This is not an argument for unsharp probabilities? Supporting a portfolio of interventions makes sense even with sharp probabilities. Marginal cost-effectiveness tends to decrease with spending. For example, if the Animal Welfare Fund (AWF) had granted 2 times as much to all the grantees they supported in 2025, I expect the impact of the grants would have been larger, but less than 2 times as large.

Hi Matthew. Nice to know how you are thinking about this.

TLDR: my ranking for donations: Longtermist political donations>growing EA>other Longtermist donations>animal welfare>global health.

My ranking for careers: Growing EA=Longtermist careers>animal welfare>global health.

By growing EA, you mean growing longtermist EA? What makes a donation or career longtermist? If you think the longterm benefits of decreasing the risk of human extinction over the next few 10 years are much larger than its nearterm benefits, you should also think the longterm benefits of animal welfare and global health interventions are much larger than their nearterm benefits? If so, how do you compare the longterm benefits in a principled way? You estimated "each dollar [donated to longtermist interventions] increases the number of well-off future people in expectation by 10^26", and GiveWell's top charities save around 2*10^-4 lives per $ (= 1/(5*10^3)). However, I assume your best guess for the reduction in existential risks would not have to be less than 2*10^-30 (2*10^-4/10^26) times as high, i.e. less than 2*10^-32 pp (instead of your assumption of 0.01 pp), for you to prioritise global health over longtermist interventions.

1.1 The case for Longtermist interventions being best

You assumed decreasing "existential risks" by 0.01 pp (you said ".01%", which is different) would increase the value of the future (10^40 human lives) by 0.01 %, resulting in 10^36 human lives of expected benefits. How do you justify that assumption? I do not think it is valid.

Experts consistently think there’s a several percent chance that misaligned AI kills everyone.

Are you aware of any quantitative model suggesting this? I am only aware of almost purely subjective guesses, and products of these.

These tend to be super effective: dollars given directly to Giving What We Can [GWWC's] return about 6 dollars to effective charities and dollars given to Effektiv Spenden return about 13 dollars to effective charities.

GWWC estimated their giving multiplier in 2025 was 7. You linked to an analysis I did of their giving multiplier in 2023-2024. GWWC estimated this was 6, and I got values of 8 to 9.

3.1 The basic case for animal welfare

I believe you are underestimating the uncertainty involved in welfare comparisons across species. I would say animal welfare interventions may increase the welfare of their target beneficiaries much more or less cost-effectively than global health interventions. Here are my estimates assuming sentience-adjusted welfare ranges proportional to "individual number of neurons"^"exponent", and "exponent" from 0 to 2, which covers the best guesses than I consider reasonable. For an exponent of 2 (which means the sentience-adjusted welfare ranges decrease 2 % for a 1 % reduction in the individual number of neurons), I estimate GiveWell's top charities increase the welfare of humans 135 times as cost-effectively as cage-free egg corporate campaigns increase the welfare of chickens.

Nice post!

Hi Carlos. Great post.

If a value‑aligned candidate is as capable as a non‑aligned candidate, I don’t see why we wouldn’t want them in the running

Because they may have a greater (counterfactual) impact in a role where being value-aligned is more needed? In any case, I think it would still make sense for the organisation to make them an offer, and then be transparent about how they compare with the 2nd best candidate. This information could then be used by the value-aligned candidate to make a better choice about whether to accept the offer or not.

I’d argue that many donors are surprisingly diversified given direct application of philosophical theory, yes.

I agree.

I’d say the ultimate decision makers are donors, not eg evaluators.

I agree in the sense the money influenced by grantmakers and evaluators ultimately comes from donors. However, are you suggesting grantmakers and evaluators diversify their grants and recommendations in significant part to appeal to donors? I agree to some extent, and it makes sense for grantmakers and evaluators to do it up to a point such that they can influence more funds. Them having a very narrow portfolio would tend to attract less funds.

Other than argue about it, probably not much, assuming functionalism and materialism/physicalism of some kind that's compatible with artificial sentience.

You may be interested in the article A science of chimeras? The implications of illusionism for non-human consciousness research. The abstract is below.

Illusionism states that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, even though it seems to exist. While illusionism is controversial, it is a serious contender among theories of consciousness. We argue that it has substantial and non-trivial implications for non-human consciousness research (NHCR), particularly for the study of the distribution of phenomenal consciousness across beings. If illusionism is true, NHCR can be pursued if conceptualized as investigating the distribution of quasi-phenomenal consciousness, i.e. the states which are misrepresented as phenomenally conscious in humans. However, we argue that knowing the distribution of quasi-phenomenal consciousness is not highly informative. For this reason, illusionism suggests that some approaches to NHCR should be preferred over others. Approaches which focus on features that provide valuable information about non-human cognition independently of their supposed relation to consciousness retain much of their value if illusionism is true. We propose a “zombie test” and five specific heuristics to help identifying such features. Consequently, empirical researchers who take illusionism seriously gain a reason to prioritize some methodological approaches over others.

Hi Simon. In that case, how do you explain that impact-focussed grantmakers support many interventions, even within a single area (see, for example, the Animal Welfare Fund)? If the cost-effectiveness of each did not meaningfully decrease with spending, one would expect them to focus on much fewer grants?