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 like the idea of carbon offsets for flights etc, but I think most carbon offset schemes are probably garbage. A year ago I made a personal pledge that whenever I was prompted to pay extra to carbon offset something, I would decline, but then immediately donate the same amount or more to effective environmental funds (in my case, Effective Altruism Australia Environment.) It's easy to remember and easy to do. Perhaps this simple pledge will be similarly sticky for other people :)
My personal (skeptical) benchmark for price per unit of non-garbage carbon offsets comes from Scott Alexander's mention of Climeworks:
Climeworks actually charges more now, at least for their individual subscription pricing: $1,500/ton, no volume discount across subscription tiers.
I like the idea of immediately donating the same amount or more to effective environmental funds, thanks for sharing.