Hi,
According to the formula you presented, your impact increases with the area of nature, and it does not depend on wild animal welfare. Consequently, if we end up concluding that wild animals have super net negative lives, maximising your impact would lead to lots of suffering.
We do not claim to be an x-risk cause area.
I think that’s reasonable that biodiversity loss is unlikely to be an existential risk. However, existential risks could significantly impact biodiversity. Abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios such as nuclear winter could cause extinction of species in the wild, which could potentially be mitigated by keeping the species alive in zoos if there were sufficient food. These catastrophes plus other catastrophes such as those that disrupt infrastructure like extreme pandemic causing people to be too fearful to show up to work in critical industries, could cause desperate people hunting species to extinction. But I think the biggest threat is AGI, which could wipe out all biodiversity. Then again, if AGI goes well, it may be able to resurrect extinct species. So it could be that the most cost-effective way of preserving biodiversity is working on AGI safety.
We are EcoResilience Initiative, a 2 year old research group building an effective altruism-based recommendation framework for biodiversity and ecosystems.
We are looking for feedback on our evaluation framework and process. And we invite interested members to join our discussion group.
Our group discusses many environment-related questions, but our research focus is on biodiversity and thriving ecosystems.
We see a gap where conservation could greatly benefit from effective altruist-style problem-solving.
Clearly defining values, being realistic about tradeoffs, and embracing technological solutions would help the environmentalist movement achieve its values. Anecdotally, many environmentalists are frustrated that obstructionism is currently the only game in town.
We also see a gap where EA does not address the concerns of environmentally-minded altruists.
Mainly, we hope to expand EA thinking into conservation biology and environmental science. And, hey, if people get introduced to WAW and x-risk and decide to join up there, that’s great too.
We wrote about those topics already in previous forum posts, which you can read here:
“Nature” holds a lot of value to many people, but it is valued for a diverse collection of conflicting reasons. Lacking solid positive goals is one of the reasons modern environmental efforts are so often obstructionist.
Effective altruism can improve conservation by proactively planning for the more distant future[1] rather than reacting to every new problem in isolation. Most environmentalist efforts are preoccupied by local, near term goals, that tackle individual species and return ecosystems to previous states. “Putting out fires” as a methodology.
We first identified core value-areas, and then selected a subset to prioritize: The Phylogenetic Tree of Life and Ecosystem Resilience over the next few centuries. (You can see an interactive presentation on the many reasons “Why Nature Matters” we created via this link.)
We want to prevent species from going extinct, but which species are most important?
Prioritizing by phylogenetics is a method to maximize the proportion of the tree of life that survives. It measures the genetic distance between species (genetic uniqueness). This reflects our inclination for variety and does a better job of conserving traits and ecosystem functions than treating all species as equal.
We intend to use complexity as the main indicator of desirable ecosystem states based on the ideas in this paper by James Bullock et al. Rather than returning ecosystems to previous forms, we can aim towards “thriving” characteristics of ecosystems, even if they are novel. This will move the field forward and combat shifting baseline syndrome.
The formula we’ve been working on measures effectiveness between different interventions according to conserving the Phylogenetic Tree of Life and Ecosystem Resilience over the next few centuries. Each makes up one pillar of the calculation. When combining them, we aim to achieve the most benefit.
Based on these pillars our formula gives us a score of the effectiveness of the intervention. Incorporating tractability and cost effectiveness at the end, we have our final score with which we can recommend organisations based on the good done per dollar spent.
Our process is: First we will identify which kinds of actions would be most effective, and then we will seek out actors working on these approaches.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading!
Thanks to everyone who contributed and gave us feedback on our framework so far.
If this resonates with you please contribute to the conversation on telegram or sign up for our ~1-3 month email updates. Even if not, please still critique our methodology!
If you have any questions, feedback or ideas about our work or approach let us know in the comments, or via email.
If you are interested in helping us fund our efforts to promote EA thinking in the biodiversity conservation space let us know! We are a small but dedicated team in its early stages and funding could improve our capacity immensely.
We are especially looking for people who can help us with…
If you are aware of any organisation doing anything similar let us know!
Right now our timeframe is between 150 to 500 years forward into the future. Given that biodiversity conservation literature is rare beyond this century, we think this is as far forward as we can reasonably project.
Usually, in EA circles, I find there is too much philosophizing and not enough action. But in this case, I feel like biodiversity/ecoresilience has failed to come up with enough philosophical justification for why biodiversity/ecoresilience matters.
I feel like this is step 1 though. I would feel similar if someone were to recommend DanceVariety Initative, a 2 year old research group building an effective altruism-based recommendation framework for variety in dance styles and the first step wasn't "convince a critical mass of EAs that this is a top priority in the first place".
The EA framework is essentially applying rigor, quantification, measurement, etc. to the world's most pressing problems but there is no reason you can't apply rigor, quantification and measurement to anything (maximizing shareholder value, collecting stamps, getting good at chess, making your NBA team better). What makes it EA is when it is applied to the most pressing problems and I don't think biodiversity/ecoresilience has made a compelling case or put enough effort into it.