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...
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....
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...
Semaglutide would save more animal lives than doubling the percent of vegetarians (and I have sources)
https://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/obesity-drugs-food-industry This study doesn't make Semaglutide look especially promising for animal welfare (increase in poultry and fish), but I'm not sure how rigorous the research is, so I'd be excited to read other sources.
(that's a weight loss drug, for context)
Did sources account for the likely life-extending benefits of said drug?
That's a really cool point, do share those sources!
Are there any studies on which calories get cut when people go on semaglutide? I imagine it's the empty carbs that would go before the beef, but maybe that's already calculated into the estimation?
Can you share them?