The Belgian senate votes to add animal welfare to the constitution.

It's been a journey. I work for GAIA, a Belgian animal advocacy group that for years has tried to get animal welfare added to the constitution. Today we were present as a supermajority of the senate came out in favor of our proposed constitutional amendment. The relevant section reads:

In exercising their respective powers, the Federal State, the Communities and the Regions strive to protect and care for animals as sentient beings.

It's a very good day for Belgian animals but I do want to note that:

1. This does not mean an effective shutdown of the meat industry, merely that all future pro-animal welfare laws and lawsuits will have an easier time.  And,
2. It still needs to pass the Chamber of Representatives.

If there's interest I will make a full post about it if once it passes the Chamber.

EDIT: Translated the linked article on our site into English.

I quit. I'm going to stop calling myself an EA, and I'm going to stop organizing EA Ghent, which, since I'm the only organizer, means that in practice it will stop existing.

It's not just because of Manifest; that was merely the straw that broke the camel's back. In hindsight, I should have stopped after the Bostrom or FTX scandal. And it's not just because they're scandals; It's because they highlight a much broader issue within the EA community regarding whom it chooses to support with money and attention, and whom it excludes.

I'm not going to go to any EA conferences, at least not for a while, and I'm not going to give any money to the EA fund. I will continue working for my AI safety, animal rights, and effective giving orgs, but will no longer be doing so under an EA label. Consider this a data point on what choices repel which kinds of people, and whether that's worth it.

EDIT: This is not a solemn vow forswearing EA forever. If things change I would be more than happy to join again.

EDIT 2: For those wondering what this quick-take is reacting to, here's a good summary by David Thorstad.

Are you an EU citizen? If so, please sign this citizen’s initiative to phase out factory farms (this is an approved EU citizen’s initiative, so if it gets enough signatures the EU has to respond):
stopcrueltystopslaughter.com

It also calls for reducing the number of animal farms over time, and introducing more incentives for the production of plant proteins.

(If initiatives like these interest you, I occasionally share more of them on my blog)

EDIT: If it doesn't work, try again in a couple hours/days. The collection has just started and the site may be overloaded. The deadline is in a year, so no need to worry about running out of time.

Reddit user blueshoesrcool discovered that Effective Ventures (the umbrella organization for the Centre for Effective Altruism, 80000 hours, GWWC, etc) has missed its charity reporting deadline by 27 days.

Given that there's already a regulatory inquiry into Effective Ventures Foundation, maybe someone should look into this.

For those voting in the EU election and general elections in Belgium, here's an overview of the party positions when it comes to animal welfare:

(For more details, click this link)

✅ means more in favor    ❌ means more against

Federal election (Flanders):

Federal election (Walloon):

Flanders election:

Walloon election:

EU election (Flanders):

EU election (Walloon):

Brussels election:

Highest score Federal election (Flanders):  PVDA, GROEN, VB

Highest score Federal election (Walloon):   PTB, PS, MS

Highest score Flanders election:                   GROEN

Highest score Walloon election:                    PTB

Highest score EU election (Flanders):         GROEN, Vooruit, N-VA

Highest score EU election (Walloon):          PTB, Ecolo, LE

Highest score Brussels election:                  GROEN, Vooruit, N-VA

TLDR: Just like my post on the topic pointed out, the leftwing parties tend to be best for animal welfare, but the far-right can often be better than the center-right

I 100% agree with you on your general point, Akash, but I think something slightly different is going on here, and I think it's important to get it right.

To me, it sounds like you're saying, 'Bob is developing a more healthy relationship with EA'. However, I think what's actually happening is more like, 'Bob used to think EA was a cool thing, and it helped him do cool things, but then people associated with it kept doing things Bob found repugnant, and so now Bob does not want anything to do with it'.  

Bob, forgive me for speaking on your behalf, and please correct me if I have misinterpreted things.

The Netherlands passed a law that would ban factory farming.

It was introduced by the Party for the Animals  and passed in 2021. However, it only passed because the government had just fallen and the senate was distracted by passing covid laws, which meant they were very busy and didn't have a debate about it. Since the law is rather vague there's a good chance it wouldn't have passed without the covid crisis.

It was supposed to start this year, but the minister of agriculture has decided he will straight up ignore the law . The current government is not in favor of this law and so they're looking at ways to circumvent it.

It's very unusual for the Dutch government to ignore laws, so they might get sued by animal rights activists. I expect they will introduce a new law rather quickly that repeals this ban, but the fact that it passed at all and that this will now become a big issue in the news is very promising for the 116 million Dutch farm animals.

Inside Wytham Abbey, the £15 Million Castle Effective Altruism Must Sell [Bloomberg]

From the article:

Effective Ventures has since come to a settlement with the FTX estate and paid back the $26.8 million given to it by FTX Foundation. [...] It’s amid such turmoil that Wytham Abbey is being listed on the open market for £15 million [...]

Adjusted for inflation, the purchase price of the house two years ago now equals £16.2 million. [...] The listing comes as homes on the UK’s once-hot country market are taking longer to sell, forcing some owners to offer discounts.

I still think the intangible reputational damage is worse, but a loss of a million pounds (that could've been spent on malaria bed nets) would be nothing to sneeze at either.

(archive link)

The results of the Dutch provincial elections are in. The Party for the Animals (the party that banned factory farming, but people ignored it) has increased its number of seats in the senate from 3 to 4 (out of 75).

Before you start cheering I should mention that the Farmer–Citizen Movement (who are very conservative when it comes to animal rights) have burst onto the scene with 16 seats (making them the largest party).

With farming and livestock becoming a hot button issue in the Netherlands there's a chance that animal rights will now become a polarizing issue, with a lot of people who previously didn't think about it becoming explicitly for or against expanding animal rights. While this would increase the amount of vegetarians and vegans, it remains to be seen if this will turn out positive for animal welfare overall.

Jobst and I want to improve AI-safety by supplementing RLHF with a consensus generating voting system. Last week we did a small experiment at a conference. Here is the poster we used to explain this idea to the attendants:

Here's the PDF

Say you had to choose between two options:

Option 1: A 99% chance that everyone on earth gets tortured for all of time (-100 utils per person) and a 1% chance that a septillion happy people get created (+90 utils pp) for all of time

Option 2: A 100% chance that everyone on earth becomes maximally happy for all of time (+100 utils pp)

Let's assume the population in both these scenario's remain stable over time (or grow similarly), Expected Value Theory (and classic utilitarianism by extension) says we should choose option 1, even though this has a 99% chance of an s-risk, over a guaranteed everlasting utopia for everyone. (You can also create a scenario with an x-risk instead of an s-risk). This seems counterintuitive.

I call this the wagering calamity objection.

_{EDIT: This is not the 'very repugnant conclusion' since it's not about inequality within a population, but rather about risk-aversion.}

Gunman: [points a sniper rifle at a faraway kid] Give me $10 or I'll kill this kid.

Utilitarian: I’m sorry, why should I believe that you will let the kid live if I give you $10? Also, I can’t give you the money because that would set a bad precedent. If people know I always give money to gunmen that would encourage people to start taking hostages and demanding money from me.

Gunman: I promise I will let her live and to keep it a secret. See, I have this bomb-collar that will explode if I try to remove it. Here's a detonator that starts working in 1 hour, now you can punish me if I break my promise.

Utilitarian: How do I know you won’t come back tomorrow to threaten another kid?

Gunman: I'm collecting money for a (non-effective) charity. I only do this because threatening utilitarians is an easy source of money. I promise I'll only threaten you once.

Utilitarian: So you're saying the mere existence of utilitarians can generate cruel behavior in people who otherwise wouldn't? Guess I should consider not being a utilitarian, or at least keeping it a secret.

EDIT: Will someone explain why this is worth (strong) downvotes? This seems like a pretty natural extension of game theory; If you reveal you’re always open to sacrificing personal utility for others you leave yourself more open to exploitation than with a tit-for-tat-like strategy (e.g. contractualism), meaning people are more likely to try and exploit you (e.g. by threatening nuclear war). If you think I made a mistake in my reasoning why leave me with less voting power and why not click on the disagreement vote or leave a comment explaining it?

EDIT 2: DC's hypothesis that it's because of vibes and not reasoning is interesting, although I find the hypothesis that some EA's strongly identify as utilitarian and don't like seeing it questioned also plausible (they don't seem to have a problem with a pro-utilitarianism argument having a child in mortal peril, e.g. the drowning child experiment). There's a reason thought experiments in ethics often have these attributes; I'm not trying to disturb, I'm trying to succinctly show the structure of threats without wasting the readers time with fluff. So for example, I choose a child so I don't need to specify a high amount of expected DALY's per dollar, I choose a sniper rifle because then there doesn't need to be a mechanism to make the child also keep the agreement a secret, I choose a bomb-collar because that's a quick way to establish a credible punishment mechanism, etc etc.

After years of using this forum I started to have problems with my writings not appearing on the frontpage and the mods not answering my messages the day I started criticizing EA.

This may very well be a coincidence in which case I genuinely apologize for the implied accusal. I still think it's important to mention it in case other people are having the same problem.

EDIT: After commenting this I suddenly lost a lot of karma due to downvotes:

EDIT 2: To respond to the reply, it's not all messages on the intercom, and it's been happening for a bit longer than the last couple days. But I can totally understand that you are overloaded right now so fair enough I'll drop that point. More importantly, it's not just happening with the comments on popular posts and not just with comments either.
I suddenly lost a lot of karma but I wanted to show some proof that I didn't make that up so I went to settings and changed it to "show downvotes" and set it to batch at the nearest hour. That way I could make a screenshot of it and provide some proof it happened.

EDIT 3: I think it's back to normal, and for the record I don't think the admins themselves went back and downvoted me.

Beauty vs Happiness Thought Experiment

Say a genie were to give you the choice between:

1) Creating a stunningly beautiful world that is uninhabited and won’t influence sentient beings in any way or 2) Not creating it.

In addition, both the genie’s and your memories of this event are immediately erased once you make the choice, so no one knows about this world and you cannot derive happiness from the memory.

Would you choose option one or two?
 

I would choose option one, because I prefer a more beautiful universe to an uglier one (even if no one experiences it). This forms an argument against classic utilitarianism.

Classic Utilitarianism says that I’m wrong. The choice doesn’t create any happiness, only beauty. This means that, according to classic utilitarianism, I should have no preferences between the two options.
 

There are several moral theories that do allow you to prefer option one. One of which is preference utilitarianism which states that it’s okay to have preferences that don’t bottom out in happiness. For this reason, I find preference utilitarianism more persuasive than classic utilitarianism.

A possible counterargument would be that the new world isn't really beautiful since no one experiences it. Here we have a disagreement over whether beauty needs to be experienced to even exist.

A third way of looking at this thought experiment would be through the lens of value uncertainty. Through this lens, it does make sense to pick option one. Even if you have a thousand times more credence in the theory that happiness is the arbiter of value, the fact that no happiness is created either way leaves the door open for your tiny credence that beauty might be the arbiter of value. Value uncertainty suggests that you take the first option, just in case.

EDIT: Biden Backs $8 Billion Alaska Oil Project. I don't know why someone gave this shortform an immediate -9 downvote, but for those EAs that still care about climate change, thank you.

A massive and controversial new oil production project in Alaska is under review by the US Department of the Interior.

ConocoPhillips' massive Willow Project would be a climate disaster, locking in at least 30 years of fossil fuel production on sensitive Arctic ecosystems near Indigenous communities. It would unleash high levels of pollution - roughly the equivalent of 66-76 coal plants worth of carbon to the air - and directly undermine President Biden's climate goals.

The Biden administration has the power to stop this massive fossil fuel development. Click here to send them a letter (2 minutes).