TLDR: Take the population ethics quiz here: https://mdickens.me/pop-ethics/
Population ethics is an oft-overlooked subfield within ethics. Many people hold views that they don't realize contradict each other, or that have strange implications that they wouldn't endorse if they thought about it more.
Not just that—population ethics is a BIG DEAL. A lot of ethical decisions hinge on how you think about changes in future populations....
A preliminary estimate, and a request for better ones.
Summary
I believe the standard literature estimates for the number of DALYs attributable to a case of stunting are too low, largely because they don’t account for the long term effects. This means that childhood nutritional interventions that reduce the prevalence of stunting may be substantially more cost-effective than previously believed.
Epistemic status
Exploratory and back-o...
I’ve been feeling pretty shaken since the METR report about the Hugging Face incident came out last week. Over the weekend, I wrote up some thoughts on how lonely the AI situation sometimes feels to me. It’s more personal than what I’d usually share publicly, but I thought I’d post it here in case it resonates with anyone else.
I’m very grateful to the man...
I recently learned that there's a intense and growing "dogfree" movement, and I'm curious if there's an effective altruist take on this topic. This subreddit post seems to capture dogfree activists' objections to dog ownership: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dogfree/comments/7bk3wo/just_curious_what_is_the_reason_why_you/
Here are some quick observations about the dogfree movement vis a vis effective altruism:
I'm curious to hear others' thoughts on this subject!
I had never considered the first point regarding a local maximum - interesting thing to explore but I’m unsure, except perhaps in a more ideal world, that we are at all capable of consistently getting more than local maxes at times (and yeah dogs seem to be one of the best (easiest) one-time actions someone can take for their happiness (https://jamesclear.com/how-to-automate-a-habit), author surveys his own audience and they produce this tidbit and it matches my intuition).
And this sort of strikes me of my impression of dog-free (or pet-free?) as a movement overall - I recall a friend discussing it with me as a potential ongoing moral catastrophe that people in the future would be horrified with - which I agree with (particularly with the pug example (I can imagine this being extrapolated to all dogs somewhat perhaps), as you said!) but I feel quite horrified by a lot of more horrifying things now than this specific cause area (others with way more scale). It feels like a step for later moral progress, somewhat along the lines of the discounting argument: “people are starving now, why pursue better lives for animals before them.” (I don’t really subscribe to this argument).
I think the idea of dogs replacing children is really interesting and I will definitely think about that a bit more in the future!
Thanks for sharing.