Surprised nobody else has posted this yet.
From the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/16/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-eugenics-scientific-racism
Talks about Lightcone & Manifest.
Curated and popular this week
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Note: I am not a malaria expert. This is my best-faith attempt at answering a question that was bothering me, but this field is a large and complex field, and I’ve almost certainly misunderstood something somewhere along the way.
Summary
While the world made incredible progress in reducing malaria cases from 2000 to 2015, the past 10 years have seen malaria cases stop declining and start rising. I investigated potential reasons behind this increase through reading the existing literature and looking at publicly available data, and I identified three key factors explaining the rise:
1. Population Growth: Africa's population has increased by approximately 75% since 2000. This alone explains most of the increase in absolute case numbers, while cases per capita have remained relatively flat since 2015.
2. Stagnant Funding: After rapid growth starting in 2000, funding for malaria prevention plateaued around 2010.
3. Insecticide Resistance: Mosquitoes have become increasingly resistant to the insecticides used in bednets over the past 20 years. This has made older models of bednets less effective, although they still have some effect. Newer models of bednets developed in response to insecticide resistance are more effective but still not widely deployed.
I very crudely estimate that without any of these factors, there would be 55% fewer malaria cases in the world than what we see today. I think all three of these factors are roughly equally important in explaining the difference.
Alternative explanations like removal of PFAS, climate change, or invasive mosquito species don't appear to be major contributors.
Overall this investigation made me more convinced that bednets are an effective global health intervention.
Introduction
In 2015, malaria rates were down, and EAs were celebrating. Giving What We Can posted this incredible gif showing the decrease in malaria cases across Africa since 2000:
Giving What We Can said that
> The reduction in malaria has be
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> How the dismal science can help us end the dismal treatment of farm animals
By Martin Gould
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Note: This post was crossposted from the Open Philanthropy Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.
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This year we’ll be sharing a few notes from my colleagues on their areas of expertise. The first is from Martin. I’ll be back next month. - Lewis
In 2024, Denmark announced plans to introduce the world’s first carbon tax on cow, sheep, and pig farming. Climate advocates celebrated, but animal advocates should be much more cautious. When Denmark’s Aarhus municipality tested a similar tax in 2022, beef purchases dropped by 40% while demand for chicken and pork increased.
Beef is the most emissions-intensive meat, so carbon taxes hit it hardest — and Denmark’s policies don’t even cover chicken or fish. When the price of beef rises, consumers mostly shift to other meats like chicken. And replacing beef with chicken means more animals suffer in worse conditions — about 190 chickens are needed to match the meat from one cow, and chickens are raised in much worse conditions.
It may be possible to design carbon taxes which avoid this outcome; a recent paper argues that a broad carbon tax would reduce all meat production (although it omits impacts on egg or dairy production). But with cows ten times more emissions-intensive than chicken per kilogram of meat, other governments may follow Denmark’s lead — focusing taxes on the highest emitters while ignoring the welfare implications.
Beef is easily the most emissions-intensive meat, but also requires the fewest animals for a given amount. The graph shows climate emissions per tonne of meat on the right-hand side, and the number of animals needed to produce a kilogram of meat on the left. The fish “lives lost” number varies significantly by
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TL;DR Having a good research track record is some evidence of good big-picture takes, but it's weak evidence. Strategic thinking is hard, and requires different skills. But people often conflate these skills, leading to excessive deference to researchers in the field, without evidence that that person is good at strategic thinking specifically. I certainly try to have good strategic takes, but it's hard, and you shouldn't assume I succeed!
Introduction
I often find myself giving talks or Q&As about mechanistic interpretability research. But inevitably, I'll get questions about the big picture: "What's the theory of change for interpretability?", "Is this really going to help with alignment?", "Does any of this matter if we can’t ensure all labs take alignment seriously?". And I think people take my answers to these way too seriously.
These are great questions, and I'm happy to try answering them. But I've noticed a bit of a pathology: people seem to assume that because I'm (hopefully!) good at the research, I'm automatically well-qualified to answer these broader strategic questions. I think this is a mistake, a form of undue deference that is both incorrect and unhelpful. I certainly try to have good strategic takes, and I think this makes me better at my job, but this is far from sufficient. Being good at research and being good at high level strategic thinking are just fairly different skillsets!
But isn’t someone being good at research strong evidence they’re also good at strategic thinking? I personally think it’s moderate evidence, but far from sufficient. One key factor is that a very hard part of strategic thinking is the lack of feedback. Your reasoning about confusing long-term factors need to extrapolate from past trends and make analogies from things you do understand better, and it can be quite hard to tell if what you're saying is complete bullshit or not. In an empirical science like mechanistic interpretability, however, you can get a lot more fe
As others have noted, it looks like the journalists got a lot of basic things wrong in this reporting. I'm doubly frustrated by this because basically all of the EA/rationalist discourse on Twitter is about these mistakes, with almost no discussion of the unchallenged allegations in the piece: that Manifold's conference had attendees/speakers with ties to eugenicist and racist people and groups.
For example, whether or not Richard Hanania uses prediction markets, I want him nowhere near EA or EA-funded groups/events. For why, see this.
I think it's somewhat fair to criticize Manifold for their selection of speakers (though I would be hesitant to infer endorsement).
But I think it's pretty unfair to criticize Manifold for attendees who bought tickets for an event that anyone in the world can buy tickets to. I agree that in as much as any substantial fraction (like idk >10%) of an event ends up full of people who take harmful actions, then that makes sense to be concerned about, but there were 600 people at Manifest, and so I don't think finding a few attendees who have harmful effects on society and the world is much evidence about Manifest.
People are notoriously bad at assessing these things, so do take this with a major grain of salt: I would believe >10% of the people present were HBD curious or would endorse and partake in discussions around HBD. If we want better data a survey could be sent to the participants.
Oh, I would totally partake in discussions around HBD. In as much as people consider that a harmful action, I strongly disapprove. I think a lot of the claims around it are bunk, and disagree with many people in the space, but I would totally talk to people about it, as I am willing to talk to people about almost everything.
This is helpful context. I think it is still a bit unsettling that there was a noticeable strain of this type of stuff from the attendees (like if I went to a ticketed party and noticed that 5% of it was into race science somehow, I'd feel uncomfortable and want to leave.)
It's probably good to note that Manifold is not an EA organisation, and Manifest (iiuc) was not funded by EA funders or branded as an EA event (though I think Manifest was trying to channel some of the EA vibe, and many attendees were involved in EA in some way).
This is helpful, though Lighthaven is definitely backed by EA money.
Lighthaven will generally rent the space to whoever pays us enough money to make it worth it (and we made on-net money on Manifest, even taking into account staff time), barring some very exceptional circumstances.
I do think overall Manifest was great and I would subsidize it, but I want to set clear expectations that I absolutely do not endorse everyone who rents space from us (like, I think there is a substantial chance we will host team retreats for capability teams at AI scaling labs, and there is basically no group of people whose actions I condemn more than them, but I still think it's the right choice to rent space to them).
There are many factual inaccuracies in this post. Oliver Habryka (who runs this Lightcone) wrote a tweet thread explaining some of the most egregious errors.
For example, contrary to the article's claim no FTX funds were used in the purchase of Lighthaven. According to Kelsey Piper (a journalist at Vox) this "is a really, really bad mistake of the kind that should have been caught in even cursory fact checking".
To be fair to the Guardian, the article is citing those allegations to the complaint filed against Lightcone and related entities in bankruptcy court.
Here are relevant quotes from the complaint (click here and search for 24-50066)
[Note: Upon information and belief is lawyer-speak for we are guessing that . . . . But that's usually considered OK in the context of a complaint, because the plaintiff hasn't had a chance to dig through the defendant's records, depose their officers, and otherwise prove up their case.]
Turning to the article:
(emphases mine).
These statements seem at least generally consistent with the complaint at first glance. Could someone point out where they are not?
I think it's generally fair for media outlets to report what is being alleged in complaints filed in litigation of public importance. This isn't a self-represented person alleging that the U.S. government is holding Elvis captive. This is a serious adversary complaint by a serious law firm, that is subject to the norms and sanctions of Bankruptcy Rule 8011.
The complaint may be wrong, of course -- many complaints ultimately are show to be, or are at least shown to be unproven. But money is fungible, it is undisputed that one transfer from an FTX source was somehow related to the Rose Garden Inn, and it it appears that at least some significant FTX funding was legally unrestricted. I do not think the Guardian was obliged not to report the allegations because Lightcone denied them, nor was it obliged to conduct a forensic audit of Lightcone's books before reporting on what was alleged in a public court complaint.
I believe the estate has a strategic litigation reason for claiming that FTX money was involved with the RG Inn, and so I would temper any credence in the allegations in light of that angle. But what's sauce for the goose is for the gander as well -- Lightcone may have a countervailing strategic litigation reason for denying a connection.
Sure, they hedged in some places. But the literal title just states it outright:
Now I know people often say that writers do not choose their titles. But the Guardian as a newspaper did, so I think they can fairly be criticized for it, and somehow I doubt the author registered any objection to the title.
Nor did the article in any way alert the reader, likely less knowledgeable about bankruptcy procedures than you, about the potential fallibility of bankruptcy complaints, or the strategic issues involved. Even after the corrections made to the article, they wait until the 10th paragraph to mention the fact Habryka denies it, and not until the 50th paragraph do we learn that he presented evidence the allegations are false.
Agreed that there are significant problems with the article as a whole. My reaction was specific to the statements about the finances of the RG Inn purchase and renovation.
One major crux for me is whether the Guardian actually sent a request for comment to Habryka. If they didn't, that would update my view of the fairness of the representations downward significantly. If they did -- and the internet ate the e-mail somehow -- then the allegations in the complaint were uncontested on the evidence before them despite having given Lightcone an opportunity to respond. Not commenting is the ordinary response where litigation is pending, so there would have been nothing to clue the Guardian in that the lack of response was due to technological failure.
Although the ordinary reader doesn't have an attorney's skeptical eye in reading complaints, it is clear enough that the complaint was written in an attempt to get a court to command Lightcone et al. to fork over ~$5MM to the plaintiffs. To me, that does put the reader on notice that the complaint may take a one-sided perspective and include copious amounts of spin. Does anyone expect that they will see truth-seeking behavior out of (at least!) ordinary private litigants?
Wow that's really bad, I hope a bunch of people have at least e-mailed the guardian already? I've e-mailed papers a couple of times and they did make corrections to their credit...
I think Oliver has talked with the writer on twitter already!
It seems like a garbage and incredibly badly fact checked article. I broadly don't think it's a good use of time to read bad faith hit pieces, and prefer them not to be on the forum (though no fault on you for posting it! There's also an argument that it's good to be aware)
It's a bad article, but it seems more important to me that the central accusation that they invited a lot of fascists and fash-adjacent people is correct.
I don't think "Manifest invited a bunch of fascists" is an accurate statement. The "fash-adjacent" part is hard to operationalize, since like, IDK, Scott Alexander has spent a bunch of time arguing with fascists, which in some sense makes him "fash-adjacent", but excluding him on that basis seems quite bad.
I do think some more of those people bought tickets, but anyone could buy a ticket to Manifest. I do think it's important to think about aggregation effects like this, and the loss of control that's associated with doing a fully openly-ticketed event like this is one reason why I've historically been hesitant to run openly-ticketed events, though I think it went pretty surprisingly well for LessOnline.
I feel like a key point in the article has been drowned out by the discussion of inaccuracies (which is legitimate, but I want to track this other point): that the FTX estate has an active suit against Lightcone/CFAR, and that Lightcone/CFAR didn't respond to multiple communication attempts by FTX last year. Even if the money Lightcone received from FTX wasn't used to pay for the Rose Garden Inn, it seems like they still received money from FTX that they haven't returned. The court documents list several payments made from the FTX Foundation or FTX Trading Ltd. to CFAR in 2022, including on March 3, July 8, July 13, August 18, September 20, and October 3 (in total, allegedly millions of dollars).
My prior was that Oliver Habryka has been particularly vocal about EA's role in FTX-related harms. In trying to avoid perpetuating or participating in these harms, I would have expected that Lightcone would have reached a settlement with the FTX estate or paid them back for any FTX money that they received that could have been from fraud. I'm curious why this hasn't happened.
I'm seeing commenters criticise this piece for factual errors (e.g. misidentifying Manifund as a prediction market) and I think The Guardian should issue corrections for those errors.
But I'm much more concerned about the racist ties:
I'm unfamiliar with these people but I don't like what I'm learning. Khan wrote a letter to "a white nationalist website" about "the threat of the United States becoming 'more genetically and culturally Mexican'." Chau believes "the narrative" around George Floyd's death "was every bit as fake as an AI-generated video". And Richard Hanania, also invited to Manifest, believes "we need more policing, incarceration and surveillance of black people."
The response by a Manifest representative is also concerning:
I think "high decouplers" believe there is negligible risk in platforming intolerant people because rationalists can isolate their relevant thoughts (e.g. prediction markets) from their dangerous thoughts (e.g. there should be more incarceration of Black people).
But the poor quality of reasoning demonstrated in somebody's more controversial thinking should reflect poorly on their general intellectual rigour. Do you really have a lot to learn from somebody who, like Chau, thinks the US is a "Black supremacist country" or is that person maybe just a controversialist?
And it seems disingenuous to suggest that rationalists aren't interested in those controversial views. We know that rationalists are unusually and disturbingly pro-eugenics. And it's hard to see it as a coincidence that this event attracted ~five racist public intellectuals.
Manifest's representative also said:
As with critiquing factual errors without engaging the central claims about racist ties, declining this opportunity to condemn scientific racism goes some way to validating the report's argument: that rationalists have a blind spot on racism.
As an effective altruist, not a rationalist, I align instead with the Centre for Effective Altruism's statement in response to Nick Bostrom's email:
(I'm writing in a personal capacity)
You should put "linkpost" in the title. Otherwise it looks like the headline is you speaking, not The Guardian.
Seems like some other person wrote about this: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MHenxzydsNgRzSMHY/my-experience-at-the-controversial-manifest-2024