Alejandro Acelas
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Continuity Assumptions
Thanks for the post, Jan! I follow AI Alignment debates only superficially and I had heard of the continuity assumption as a big source of disagreement, but I didn't have a clear concept of where it stemmed from and what were it's practical implications. I think your post does a very good job at grounding the concept and filling those gaps.
I'm interviewing Oxford philosopher, global priorities researcher and early thinker in EA, Andreas Mogensen. What should I ask him?
These are just the first questions that came to mind, but may not necessarily overlap with Adreas' interests or knowledge:
- Given his deontological leanings, is there something he would like to see people in the EA community doing less/more of?
- What's the paper/line of investigation from GPI that has changed his view on practical priorities for EA the most?
- How involved in philosophical discussions should the median EA be? (e.g. should we all read Parfit or just muddle through with what we hear from informal discussions of ethics within the community?)
- What's the thrust of his argument in "Against Large Number Sceptism"? How would he characterize how people who feel uncomfortable with arguments resting on large numbers think about the subject?
- Where does the interest in Decision Theroy among EAs come from? Is it because it could have practical implications or something else entirely? What would change if we had an answer to the top open questions in Decision Theory?
How we held a successful 1st Introductory EA Fellowship in the University of the Philippines
Thank you Shen, this is wonderful! With my local group in Colombia we're getting ready to stage a fellowship for the second time and hearing about your experience gave me many ideas for things we may try to improve on.
If I wanted to be charitable to their answer of the cost of saving a life I'd point out that $5000 is roughly the cost of saving a life reliably and at scale. If you relax any of those conditions, saving a life might be cheaper (e.g. Givewell sometimes finances opportunities more cost-effective than AMF, or perhaps you're optimistic about some highly leveraged interventions like political advocacy). However, I wouldn't bet that this phenomenon would be behind a significant fraction of the divergence of their answers.