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The Future of Life Institute (FLI) invites individuals and teams to compete for a prize purse worth $100,000+ by designing visions of a plausible, aspirational future including artificial general intelligence.
This post gives an overview of the contest and our reasons for running it. For full details on how to enter, visit worldbuild.ai.
What is Worldbuilding?
Worldbuilding is the art and science of constructing a coherent and relatively detailed fictitious world. It is frequently practised by creative writers and scriptwriters, providing the context and backdrop for stories that take place in future, fantasy or alternative realities.
Overview of the Worldbuilding Contest
This contest challenges entrants to use worldbuilding to explore possible futures for our own world.
Worldbuilding in this context is not prediction so builds need not reflect the most probable scenarios but...
Hey Team,
Since publishing an article on the Liberation Pledge with the Journal for Critical Animal Studies last February, i've repeatedly been encouraged to share the article to the EA Forum. So here it goes:
The Liberation Pledge entails a commitment to never eat alongside people consuming animal-based foods. In the article, i argue that the Liberation Pledge is an exceptionally effective tactic for individuals to challenge the diverse harms of Big Meat. Relatedly, i also argue that individual veganism absent the Liberation Pledge does little to affect change, and in some cases is counterproductive.
Like my article, i'll spare you the justification for why curbing the harms of Big Meat is urgent and important (as i suspect most on the EA Forum are already familiar). From that assumed starting...
Our world has many problems that need resolving, many of which are global in nature and require change at a systemic level. The problem of mass slaughter and commodification of animals is indeed a global problem that will, in part, require systemic solutions. But one of the merits of veganism is the opportunity for an individual to make an impact (and quite literally save lives) through their decision to not eat animals three times a day.
I see the same merits with the Liberation Pledge in that it provides an (additional) opportunity to the compassion... (read more)
Content warning: gambling is addictive and generally loses money. Please don't make any bets with negative expected value.
tl;dr: New York State recently legalized online sports gambling, so casinos are offering large incentives for signing up on their websites. I got about $4,400 out of this (you can probably do better; see below) and will be donating it to GiveWell. You must be located in New York or another eligible state while signing up and making the bets.
How to exploit this
There are various casinos, sportsbooks, and other gambling establishments located in New York State. Online sports gambling was legalized there in January 2022, so they are giving out introductory offers where they will match your deposits or give you free bets when you sign up. Basically, you can...
Yep, that makes sense, thank you. I agree with your calculation and the positive EV result in this example, and I agree you could construct other bets with different EV / risk profiles.
As @KaseyShibayama originally noted above, this isn't risk-free, so these "risk-free bet" offers differ from the deposit bonuses OP describes, where one gets "free bet" money immediately and can keep the original deposit money to withdraw without risking any of it.
I still think OP's example here isn't quite right, because you can't easily convert the $1000 of site credit to ... (read more)
Epistemic status: I probably have no idea what I'm talking about.
Prediction markets have several constraints due to laws against online gambling (at least in the US). PredictIt, for example, must operate as a nonprofit, limit each contract to 5,000 total traders, and limit investment to $850 per contract. [1]
Given the usefulness prediction markets, it would be great if we could remove these contraints on financial incentives for the users and operators of these platforms. [2] Currently, we rely on fake internet points for incentive on websites like Metaculus; although, people do seem to like those.
So, I tried to think of an alternative model. In a betting market, the winners are paid with the losers' money. Instead, imagine the prediction platform is a bank. Forecasters deposit money in the bank, and...
Great idea! Makes me think, it would be interesting to see a political prediction market where the winnings go to your preferred candidate in the race. Not sure about if that would have a positive impact, but would be cool to study.
Edit: Just read your post and see that you discuss this haha
I'm interested in any historical examples people have of altruistic actions taken primarily to benefit future generations, which don't have strong positive effects for current generations. (So e.g. most climate change mitigation efforts wouldn't count, if we expect climate change to have a big negative impact on people currently alive - but maybe some do?)
One example would be Benjamin Franklin bequeathing $2,000 to Boston and Philadelphia each, which could only be spent after 200 years
This crucial study not only uncovers what people in specific countries believe about chickens and fishes, but it also identifies which beliefs are associated with specific “animal-positive behaviors” — for example, willingness to reduce one’s chicken and fish consumption or sign a petition for welfare reform.
Read the full study here: www.faunalytics.org/chicken-and-fish-2
Background
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, nearly 69 billion chickens were slaughtered in 2018 alone. That same year, fishes slaughtered worldwide weighed nearly 100 million tons. Many of the countries we have surveyed in this line of research—which were Brazil, Canada, China, India, and the United States—contribute in huge quantities to the enormous suffering of chickens and fishes. For example, China, the United States, and Brazil slaughtered more chickens than any other...
If your dream job is to work in longtermism, be your own boss, and talk to EAs all day, then you might be the perfect fit for starting an EA recruitment agency through Nonlinear’s incubation program.
To find out more about the idea itself and why it’s high impact, read below.
For more details about how to tell if you’re a good fit, what support we provide, and how to apply, see the second half of the article.
If you think this is an important charity to have in the EA space, please like and share this Request for Founders so that the right people see it.
Deadline: February 1st, 11:59pm EST
Why it’s high impact to start an EA headhunting agency
The idea...
Great initiative. Whoever ends up in this role, we at impactcolabs.com would love to connect as we could both help identify potential candidates as well as help identify needs within EA orgs. We find that many EA orgs have volunteer needs that might be best served by a PA-type FTE. We will hopefully share more about these findings and the status of our 2.0 platform soon.
If you want to start a charity, you need to be learning constantly. You’ll inevitably learn by doing, but it will save you a lot of heartache to also learn from others.
If you’re interested in potentially starting a charity or are already running one and want to continue improving your org, here’s what we at Nonlinear think will be useful to read.
We don’t recommend reading these in order or start to finish. Skim them ruthlessly, jump around to the ones that seem relevant to you, and try to really engage with the ones that are genuinely useful to you.
- Blog posts
- Why founding charities is one of the highest impact things one can do
- Should I start a charity now or later? Great blog post about the benefits of
During Lightning Talks, group members give short informal talks on topics of their choosing. It's very relaxed and lots of fun. Give a talk or just show up and listen, it's up to you!
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Sign up here to give an informal talk: https://forms.gle/JGu3opw6Fgon81e3A
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The topic can be something you're interested in, knowledgeable about, or want to start a conversation about. Your talk can be no more than 10 minutes long.
I'm totally on board with the constraint that the future be good, that it be broadly appealing rather than just good-according-to-our-esoteric-morality.
What I'm worried about is that this contest will end up being a tool for self-deception (like Czynski said) because the goodness of the future correlates with important variables we can't really influence, like takeoff speeds and difficulty of the alignment problem and probability of warning shots and many other things. So in order to describe a good future, people will fiddle with the knobs of those import... (read more)