Comments
I like this. But even if I didn't appreciate the simplicity of it, I think I would applaud you for this line:
I'm gonna quit donating and try to get my kidney back
🤣
More from the author
Curated and popular this week
65
This is a crosspost from the new Animal Welfare Alignment Newsletter by Anima International. You can subscribe on Substack if you are interested in following these efforts. Audio reading also available on Substack.
The goals of this post are to:
1. Raise a question I see as crucially important to the goal of aligning AI to animal welfare...
Hello! I'm Justin Portela. I got hired by GWWC to make YouTube videos after AI in Context did such a kickass job.
My channel is using that same cinematic, high-production value beauty to talk about everything in the EA universe that isn't AI.
...
“How long have you been v*g*n?”
This is one of the most common icebreakers at animal protection events. It’s a baseline assumption, and it mostly holds true: if you’re out advocating for animals not to be tortured or abused, realistically these days you are v**n, or close. And it makes for good conversation. It seems fairly safe to assume when you meet strangers.
But this assumption is hurting the movement in a way which we don’t always notice: someone new comes into the sp...
Recent opportunities to take action
Having informally pitched EA in many different ways to many different people, I've noticed that the strongest counter-reaction I tend to get is re: maximization (except when I talk to engineers). So nowadays I replace "maximize" with "more", and proactively talk about scenarios where maximization is perilous, where you can be mislead by modeling when being maximizing-oriented, etc. (Actually I tend to personalize my pitches, but that's not scalable of course.)
You say "I expect discussions based on this elevator pitch to add more value faster to the average passersby" which I interpret as meaning you haven't yet tried this pitch elsewhere, so I'd be curious to hear an update on how that goes. If it works, I might incorporate some elements :)
It's experience driven. I haven't done the full "it's a catchy alliteration!" on anybody really, but this is based on speed at arriving at cruxes. One at a time, also, is the move.
I think the intuition that goodhart (and other things) washes out all the value from the 3 Ms tends toward nihilism/defeatism or not trying at all if it's not challenged or corrected for, even though it's broadly correct/useful.