Simulation expectation
Teruji Thomas (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
GPI Working Paper No. 16-2021
I present a new argument that we are much more likely to be living in a computer simulation than in the ground-level of reality. (Similar arguments can be marshalled for the view that we are more likely to be Boltzmann brains than ordinary people, but I focus on the case of simulations.) I explain how this argument overcomes some objections to Bostrom’s classic argument for the same conclusion. I also consider to what extent the argument depends upon an internalist conception of evidence, and I refute the common line of thought that finding many simulations being run—or running them ourselves—must increase the odds that we are in a simulation.
Other working papers
Training effective altruism – Sultan Mehmood, (New Economic School), Shaheen Naseer (Lahore School of Economics) and Daniel L. Chen (Toulouse School of Economics)
Our randomized controlled trial of Pakistan’s deputy ministers compares two schools of thought about how to cultivate prosociality. We find that training the utilitarian value of empathy results in a 0.4-0.6 standard deviation increase in altruism, cooperation, coordination, and teamwork. Field outcomes—orphanage visits, volunteering in impoverished schools, and blood donations—also roughly double. We find that treated ministers increased their mentalizing of others…
Meaning, medicine and merit – Andreas Mogensen (Global Priorities Institute, Oxford University)
Given the inevitability of scarcity, should public institutions ration healthcare resources so as to prioritize those who contribute more to society? Intuitively, we may feel that this would be somehow inegalitarian. I argue that the egalitarian objection to prioritizing treatment on the basis of patients’ usefulness to others is best thought…
Should longtermists recommend hastening extinction rather than delaying it? – Richard Pettigrew (University of Bristol)
Longtermism is the view that the most urgent global priorities, and those to which we should devote the largest portion of our current resources, are those that focus on ensuring a long future for humanity, and perhaps sentient or intelligent life more generally, and improving the quality of those lives in that long future. The central argument for this conclusion is that, given a fixed amount of are source that we are able to devote to global priorities, the longtermist’s favoured interventions have…