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Epistemic status: Speculation from two decently informed advocates armed with anecdata.
Note on process: After having some version of this conversation several times and saying, “we should probably write about this publicly,” we took the less heroic route: we recorded one of our conversations, fed the transcript into an LLM, and then substantially revised the structure, substance, and framing ourselves. We will not be sharing the transcript, as it is in...
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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....
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Headline finding: I audited 17 AI Safety Talent programmes. Zero of 17 have published any comparison group, rejected-applicant follow-up, matched control or randomisation. Not one. Every programme that mentions a counterfactual does it by asking participants to self-report.
Background
At least $70 million...
Recent opportunities to take action
Vegan advocacy groups should consider regularly donating blood as representatives of their groups. At my local blood donor centre (in Australia) there is a poster in the waiting area where companies/orgs are listed in order of contributions. Having your group up there will likely help to dispel:
On the second point, another reason is that myths regarding poor health are not entirely unfounded, and vegans are more likely to have low haemoglobin which is tested prior to donation. Once for me, it was slightly low and I was asked to get another official test before donating again (it was fine in the subsequent test, probably in part to me deliberately upping iron intake including a daily vitamin). They test for other things as well - infectious diseases as standard before transfusion, but I believe it could be tested for anything if the blood ends up being used for that purpose (in which case, you would be informed if there is anything to be concerned about, however I suspect this scenario playing out is quite rare)