Quick takes

I think Leif Wenar's "Open Letter to Young EAs" has significant flaws, but also has a lot going for it, and I would seriously recommend people who want to think about the ideal shape of EA should read it.

I went through the letter making annotations about the bits I thought were good or bad. If you want to see my annotated version, you can do that here. If you want to be able to comment, let me know and I'll quite likely be happy to grant you permission (but didn't want to set it to "anyone with the link can comment" for fear of it getting overwhelmed).

2
MichaelDickens
As with ~all criticisms of EA, this open letter doesn't have any concrete description of what would be better than EA. Like just once, I would like to see a criticism say, "You shouldn't donate to GiveWell top charities, instead you should donate to X, and here is my cost-effectiveness analysis." The only proposal I saw was (paraphrased) "EA should be about getting teenagers excited to be effectively altruistic." Ok, the movement-building arm of EA already does that. What is your proposal for what those teenagers should then actually do?

I mean it kind of has the proposal that they each need to work that out for themselves. (I think this is mistaken, and not the place I found the letter valuable.)

This is a section of a EAF post I've begun drafting about the question of the community and culture of EA in the Bay Area, and its impact on the rest of EA worldwide. That post isn't intended to only be about longtermism as it relates to EA as an overlapping philosophy/movement often originally attributed to the Bay Area. I've still felt like my viewpoint here in its rough form is still worth sharing as a quick take post.

@JWS 🔸 self-describes as "anti-Bay Area EA." I get where anyone is coming from with that, though the issue is that, pro- or anti-, this ... (read more)

I'm an anti-Bay Area EA because from the stuff I've read about sexual harassment in EA it's like 90% Bay Area EAs doing it, and seems to be enabled by specific subcultural factors there that I don't see anywhere else in the movement. 

-5
Evan_Gaensbauer

Can we call it the Meat EatING problem?

The currently labelled "meat eater problem" has been referred to a number of times during debate week. The forum wiki on the “meat eater” problem summarises it like this.

“Saving human lives, and making humans more prosperous, seem to be obviously good in terms of direct effects. However, humans consume animal products, and these animal products may cause considerable animal suffering. Therefore, improving human lives may lead to negative effects that outweigh the direct positive effects.”

I think this an important... (read more)

Showing 3 of 5 replies (Click to show all)
4
MichaelStJules
Of course, there are other ways meat (and other animal product) consumption could increase from well-intentioned EA interventions than just by saving lives or increasing incomes/wealth. For example, interventions that involve subsidizing animal welfare improvements can carry this backfire risk.  I'm less worried about confusion with other problems, because they don't come up as often, and researchers are more likely to account for them in animal welfare research anyway. All effects on nonhuman animals are usually omitted from analyses of interventions aimed specifically at helping humans, including GHD and CGRs. It's worth reminding people of these backfire risks.

It's true.

I could also argue that "the meat eater problem" is just as ambiguous because it could easily be misinterpreted as just the problem that everyone all around the world eats meat in general.

I don't think precision is necessarily the be all and end all of names hahaha

4
NickLaing
Yep I'm happy with any of these, I especially like the "meat eating backfire" because it kind of implies we're shooting in the right direction in the first place.

Future debate week topics?

  1. Global health & wellbeing (including animal welfare) vs global catastrophic risks, based on Open Phil's classifications.
  2. Neartermism vs longtermism.
  3. Extinction risks vs risks of astronomical suffering (s-risks).
  4. Saving 1 horse-sized duck vs saving 100 duck-sized horses.

I like the idea of going through cause prioritization together on the EA Forum.

5. the value of something like, how EA looks to outsiders? that seems to be the thing behind multiple points (2, 4, 7, and 8) in this which was upvoted, and i saw it other times this debate week (for example here) as a reason against the animal welfare option.

(i personally think that compromising epistemics for optics is one way movements ... if not die, at least become incrementally more of a simulacrum, no longer the thing they were meant to be. and i'm not sure if such claims are always honest, or if they can secretly function to enforce the relevance o... (read more)

7
Toby Tremlett🔹
Me too! The two broad categories of ideas I've had are basically  1. Key cause-prio debates- especially ones which have been had over many years and many posts, but haven't really been summarised/ focused into one place (like those you list) 2. Debates about tactics/ methodology. For example: "We should invest more heavily in animal sentience research than corporate campaigns". That's a rough example, but the idea would be to do a debate where people would have to get fairly fine-grained in cost-effectiveness thinking before they could vote. I doubt we would get as much engagement, but engagement may be particularly valuable if the question is well posed. 

I'm grateful for the articles @MichaelStJules writes on the forum. He seems to be motivated by a deep desire to understand what will benefit moral patients.

For example, I particularly value his sequence on the impact of fishing on fish welfare (The moral ambiguity of fishing on wild aquatic animal populations and other articles)

Showing 3 of 8 replies (Click to show all)

I think your argument could go through if the person being praised was Holden, or Will MacAskill, or some other big name in EA. However, Michael seems pretty under the radar given the size of his contributions, so I don’t think your concerns check out in this case (and in fact this case might even align with your point about recognizing unsung contributors).

7
MichaelStJules
Thanks for writing this and for everyone else's support! ❤️
6
Angelina Li
I personally am a fan of the "both/and" approach to praise :) * I like it when people celebrate their favorite contributors, I think this is a great thing about the Forum! This also genuinely feels pretty rare for an online community IMO! * I think leaving a quick positive comment on posts you like, e.g. "I enjoyed reading this post, thanks!", is an underrated move (even if you have nothing substantive to say) :) — as a post author, I've really appreciated these. * I would also love for people to highlight folks they think are going under-recognized & are making significant contributions.

New Webinar from Faunalytics: Bridging Conservative Values and Animal Advocacy

Faunalytics' latest study — Bridging U.S. Conservative Values And Animal Protection — can help give advocates a framework for both working with conservative lawmakers to pass pro-animal laws, and in crafting pro-animal messages that will resonate with the conservative public.

​In this panel, we will explore how to apply these findings to your work! First, learn about the study and the research from Faunalytics. Then, listen to our two guests — Max Broad from DC Voters for Animals ... (read more)

I never found psychological hedonism (or motivational hedonism) very plausible, but I think it's worth pointing out that the standard version — according to which everyone is ultimately motivated only by their own pleasure and pain — is a form of psychological egoism and seems incompatible with sincerely being a hedonistic utilitarian or caring about others and their interests for their own sake.

From https://www.britannica.com/topic/psychological-hedonism :

Psychological hedonism, in philosophical psychology, the view that all human action is ultimately mot

... (read more)

This year's Nobel prizes for Physics and for Chemistry went to computer scientists (among others).

Previous prizes have stretched the discipline boundaries, e.g., the Economics Prize for Ostrom (poli sci) and Kahnemann (psych).

Probably because the prize categories are not set optimally to maximize their goal

Those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind

... especially as the world has progressed.

The current categories are: Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Economics (*slightly different pr... (read more)

We've just shipped an update to the debate week banner, so you can expand the columns to see more of the distribution, as it's getting a bit squashed. You just have to click on one of the "+N" circles.

(Feel free to downvote this quick take if it hangs around on the Frontpage for too long)

Thanks! Here's what the full distribution looks like right now:

Reminds me of xkcd.com/1162

I'm really surprised by the distribution. I think many voters might be too optimistic about the actual impact of marginal funding to animal welfare projects.

How does Animal Welfare/Global Health affect AI Safety? Very brief considerations.

I think someone might build super strong AI in the next few years, and this could affect most of the value of the future. If true, I think it implies that the majority of any value from an intervention or cause area comes from how it affects whether AI goes well. Even if that's very slight and indirect. Relatedly, I think whether AI goes well depends on whether states will be able to coordinate.

How do Animal Welfare interventions affect whether AI goes well? 
– I think th... (read more)

With the debate week discussion thread getting so long, it is now a community service (even more than usual) to sort the comments by "new" and upvote/ downvote or comment. Let's not let quality content get buried!

3
OscarD🔸
could we get some way to see people's vote when viewing the discussion thread? Usually you can guess based on the comment roughly where they fall, but it would be nice to have a number/visual to quickly see.

This was suggested in CEA slack as well- It'll be on the list of possible improvements (I think it's a good idea). 

I would advise being careful with RP's Cross-cause effectiveness tool as it currently stands, especially with regards to the chicken campaign. There appears to be a very clear conversion error which I've detailed in the edit to my comment here. I was also unable to replicate their default values from their source data, but I may be missing something. 

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10
titotal
I list exactly 2 criticisms. One of them was proven correct, the other I believe to be correct also but am waiting on a response.  I agree with the asymettry in the cost of waiting, but the other way. If these errors are corrected a week from now, after the debate week has wrapped up, then everybody will have stopped paying attention to the debate, and it will become much harder to correct any BS arising from the faulty tool.  Do you truly not care that people are accidentally spreading misinformation here? 

Do you truly not care that people are accidentally spreading misinformation here?

Why do you attribute to me a view I never stated and do not hold? If I say that one cost is greater than another, it doesn’t mean that I do not care about the lesser cost.

4
Jason
I'd probably agree with this if the tool were not relevant for Debate Week and/or RP hadn't highlighted this tool in a recent post for Debate Week. So there's a greater risk of any errors cascading into the broader discussion in a way that wouldn't be practically fixable by a later notice that the tool was broken.
Lizka
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0

A note on how I think about criticism

(This was initially meant as part of this post,[1] but while editing I thought it didn't make a lot of sense there, so I pulled it out.)

I came to CEA with a very pro-criticism attitude. My experience there reinforced those views in some ways,[2] but it also left me more attuned to the costs of criticism (or of some pro-criticism attitudes). (For instance, I used to see engaging with all criticism as virtuous, and have changed my mind on that.) My overall takes now aren’t very crisp or easily summarizable,... (read more)

I’d be excited to see more celebration or appreciation for people’s work.

I would be excited about this and have wondered for a while if we should have EA awards. This Washington post article brought the idea to my mind again:

Civil servants who screwed up were dragged before Congress and into the news. Civil servants who did something great, no one said a word about. There was thus little incentive to do something great, and a lot of incentive to hide. The awards were meant to correct that problem. “There’s no culture of recognition in government,” sai

... (read more)

Anyone know any Earn-To-Givers who might be interested in participating in an AMA during Giving Season? If a few are interested, it might be fun to experiment with an AMA panel, where Forum users ask questions, and any of the AMA co-authors can respond/ co-authors can disagree.

Why? Giving Season is, in my opinion, a really great time to highlight the earn-to-give work which is ongoing all year, but is generally under-celebrated by the EA community. + Earn-to-givers might have good insights on how to pick donation targets during the donation election, and Giving Season more generally. 
 

3
Milena Canzler🔸
What is an AMA in this context?

An Ask Me Anything event- sorry for jargon!

I really like the vote and discussion thread. In part because I think that aggregating votes will improve our coordination and impact. 

Without trying to unpack my whole model of movement building; I think that the community needs to understand itself (as a collective and as individuals) to have the most impact, and this approach may really help.

EA basically operates on a "wisdom of wise crowds" principle, where individuals base decisions on researchers' and thinkers' qualitative data (e.g., forum posts and other outputs)

However, at our current scale, ... (read more)

I am curious to better understand why people disagree here.

I'm starting to think it was a mistake for me to engage in this debate week thing. I just spent a good chunk of my baby's first birthday arguing with strangers on the Internet about what amounts to animals vs. humans. This does not seem like a good use of my time, but I'm too pedantic to resist replying to comments I feel the need to reply to. -_-

In general, I feel like this debate week thing seems somewhat divisive as well. At least, it doesn't feel nice to have so many disagrees on my posts, even if they still somehow got a positive amount of karma.

I really don't have time to make high-effort posts, and it seems like low-effort posts do a disservice to people who are making high-effort posts, so I might just stop.

Re "pivotal questions"...

Some thoughts on what The Unjournal (unjournal.org) can offer, cf existing EA-aligned research orgs (naturally, there are pros and cons)

... both in terms of defining and assessing the 'pivotal questions/claims', and in evaluating specific research findings that most inform these.

  1. Non-EA-aligned expertise and engagement: We can offer mainstream (not-EA aligned) feedback and evaluation, consulting experts who might not normally come into this orbit. We can help engage non-EA academics in the priorities and considerations relevant t

... (read more)

I think that data ethics and drug ethics together or as separate social functions can save humanity at large.

The 80,000 Hours team just published that "We now rank factory farming among the top problems in the world." I wonder if this is a coincidence or if this planned to coincide with the EA Forum's debate week? Combined with the current debate week's votes on where an extra $100 should be spent, these seem like nice data points to show to anyone that claims EA doesn't care about animals.

 

As far as I'm aware it's a coincidence, but I'm v happy about this :)

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