All of Alexander&#x27;s Comments + Replies

Why don't many effective altruists work on natural resource scarcity?

There may be non-scientific or engineering advances (maybe coming from economies of scale) that you can take of advantage of and I think an expert can predict that they will be taken advantage of and yes prices will drop.

In fact there seems a decent chance from what I just read online that engineering alone can push the price of solar below current energy prices.

So I have to scrap my claim about prices.

Maybe some folks even claim you can get to 90% renewables usage with engineering alone, although this guy is not an expert. But I don't have much faith in... (read more)

Why don't many effective altruists work on natural resource scarcity?

Any useful model does not try to analyze growth hundreds or thousands of years in the future. It is not really important for this topic, but anyway you can read the link in my last message if you're interested.

On the definition of scientific stagnation-a decent measure would be that productivity growth stops. (Although maybe better engineering can also improve productivity without better science, but I don't know if this makes a difference.)

Why is there a need for a disaster? Maybe cheap renewable energy turns out to be too hard a problem. Maybe more big ... (read more)

Robert_Wiblin

"But I might not actually differ with your 1% figure by too much-I'd guess a 5% chance that renewable energy prices now are roughly as low as they will ever be." I'd be willing to bet you $100 at 20-1 odds that levelized costs of solar electricity generation are cheaper in fifteen years. Would you be interested to specify the bet more closely? "if that 1% materializes, the waste could be huge." On the other hand if the 99% outcome materialises, the waste will also be huge (not using a resource when it was useful, and leaving it until later when it's obsolete).

Why don't many effective altruists work on natural resource scarcity?

[deleted]

Robert_Wiblin

Can you flesh out what you mean by technological stagnation? The best measure of technological advancement I am aware of is multi-factor productivity growth (in frontier countries). "So at some point, to say anything useful I think you have to assume that growth tapers off or stops." Sure, but that's because we should eventually run out of new useful technologies to invent, which is likely thousands of years into the future. "I also don't really see how the odds can be as low as 1%." As I said the only way I can see this happening is some kind of global catastrophe, which then would become the principal concern. What short of a disaster could cause people to stop trying to research new ways of doing things, and succeeding in some cases?

Why don't many effective altruists work on natural resource scarcity?

How low? And, the issue is not so much that stagnation will definitely happen but that other assumptions are random noise and we cannot do any better than to assume stagnation.

If we assume a high chance of stagnation, and also that all generations are morally equal, then I think we should cut back fossil fuel use, and employ it only when greatly needed, in order to maximize the total usefulness to future generations. That is, it's better that 50 generations use 1/50 the fuel for vital, truly essential purposes rather than one generation burning everything... (read more)

Denkenberger

That was an interesting Quora question of what would happen if we knew fossil fuels were going to run out in 10 years. A current research project of mine is the more extreme scenario of industry being disabled all of a sudden. This could be due to an extreme solar storm, multiple high-altitude electromagnetic pulses, or a super computer virus (Stuxnet on steroids) taking out electricity. I am looking into whether it would be technically feasible to save nearly everyone and civilization in this scenario (followup to the book that Rob cited on producing food in conditions of stress).

Robert_Wiblin

"but that other assumptions are random noise and we cannot do any better than to assume stagnation." Why on Earth would the number 0 be the most probable estimate of future productivity growth? There is no reason at all to think it is. A much better forecasting method than picking 0, or 1, or 10 just because they are round numbers, is to expect that the future will, on average, look like the long-run average of the past (giving greater weight in the average to more recent history). I think the odds of long-term technological stagnation or worse - in the absence of some catastrophe which renders it irrelevant, like nuclear war - is around 1%. The only way we can stagnate is if i) we've run out of possible useful improvements to make to all of our products at once, which would be an astonishing thing, or ii) we stop trying to improve our products, which is also exceedingly unlikely barring a massive social upheaval.

The EA Newsletter & Open Thread - January 2016

I happen to be quite skeptical of predicting science. Do you know what sort of conclusion you would reach about this post's topic if we assume that, for the foreseeable future, science will not advance much? Or, a case of scientific stagnation.

Robert_Wiblin

Clearly then we would be more likely to face a range of problems, though still have the standard options of increasing the relevant capital stock or redirecting more people to producing natural resource. As I noted it is practical to expand these 2-3 fold if truly necessary. Long-term stagnation is as much a prediction that needs to be grounded in evidence as any other - and one I think has a low probability indeed.

Why don't many effective altruists work on natural resource scarcity?

Nice Vox article on climate change-I felt that the argument was robust. Climate change may not end civilization but if humans lose 5% of their vitality over the next 10,000 years, that is terrible.

Why don't many effective altruists work on natural resource scarcity?

Stuart Armstrong relies on the price of solar continuing to drop, right? Maybe it will, but I think we would be wise to plan for if it does not. Plus, what about storing the energy? Overall, I would just note that fossil fuels have been proved to be very useful but (without new tech) they will eventually become scarce. So I do think stockpiling them would be good if it could be done securely. But the storage time needed might be extremely long, maybe hundreds of years. On whether any sort of coordination or planning would be effective over that that long a period, I am not too optimistic.

Robert_Wiblin

It does rely on solar and storage becoming cheaper. They would have to progress much slower than the trend for us to be seriously energy constrained later this century though: http://www.vox.com/2016/2/5/10919082/solar-storage-economics

Alexander8y1

Does anyone know if futures markets for crude oil exist on more than a 10-year time frame?

PeterMcCluskey

On the Nymex, they currently go out to Dec 2024. That contract appears to trade less than once a week. There might be occasional contracts for more distant years traded between institutional investors that don't get publicly reported, but the low volume on publicly traded contracts suggests people just aren't interested in trading such contracts.

Robert_Wiblin

The longest timescale I've ever found on Bloomberg is 5 years, but it wouldn't surprise me if people were trading contracts further out, with the prices not being posted on free websites.

If tech progress might be bad, what should we tell people about it?

Alexander8y2

Even if growth were bad or neutral, there would have to be specific activities that were bad, and other activities that remained good. So how does this differ from just telling folks to look for ways that their society might hurt itself, or ways that they might be contributing to this antisocial behavior? There is a lot of disagreement about which behaviors, exactly, are antisocial.

I do worry that given enough time, industrialized countries will, um, self-destruct by using nuclear weapons. But in that case the remedy would probably not be giving up indust... (read more)

Some considerations for different ways to reduce x-risk

Alexander8y1

Okay. Do you see any proxies (besides other people's views) that, if they changed in our lifetime, might shift your estimates one way or the other?

MichaelDickens

Off the top of my head: * We develop strong AI. * There are strong signals that we would/wouldn't be able to encode good values in an AI. * Powerful people's values shift more toward/away from caring about non-human animals (including wild animals) or sentient simulations of non-human minds. * I hear a good argument that I hadn't already heard or thought of. (I consider this pretty likely, given how little total thought has gone into these questions.)

Some considerations for different ways to reduce x-risk

Some considerations for different ways to reduce x-risk

Ok. This is not too related to this thread, but I wonder how big a risk a US-Russia (or equivalently-sized) nuclear war is in the next century. This article suggests between a 1% per year and 1% per decade risk, based on Martin Hellman's work. Hellman prefers 1% per year. But a risk that high seems hard to square with how folks are acting now-you would think that if the risk was that high, the wealthiest and smartest folks in the world would avoid living in cities that are vulnerable to being blown up. I don't think they are avoiding cities. So I am inclin... (read more)

Some considerations for different ways to reduce x-risk

In your essay you place a lot of weight on other people's opinions. I wonder, if for some reason you decided to disregard everyone else's opinion, do you know if you would reach a different conclusion?

MichaelDickens

My probabilities would be somewhat different, yes. I originally wrote "I’d give about a 60% probability that the far future is net positive, and I’m about 70% confident that the expected value of the far future is net positive." If I didn't care about other people's opinions, I'd probably revise this to something like 50%/60%. It seems to me that the most plausible future scenario is we continue doing what we've been doing, the dominant effect of which is that we sustain wild animal populations that are probably net negative. I've heard people give arguments for why we shouldn't expect this, but I'm generally wary of arguments that say "the world will look like this 1000 years from now, even though it has never looked like this before and hardly anybody expects this to happen," which is the type of argument used to justify that wild animal suffering won't be a problem in the far future. I believe most people are overconfident in their predictions about what the far future will look like (an, in particular, on how much the far future will be dominated by wild animal suffering and/or suffering simulations). But the fact that pretty much everyone I've talked to expects the far future to be net positive does push me in that direction, especially people like Carl Shulman and Brian Tomasik* who seem to think exceptionally clearly and level-headedly. *This isn't exactly what Brian believes; see here.

Some considerations for different ways to reduce x-risk

In the first post, there is a link to a study. The estimate for all humanity dying in war within one century is 4% but the chance of them perishing in a nuclear war is 1%. This implies a 3% chance of extinction in a non-nuclear war. Am I reading this right? How would that make sense?

Owen Cotton-Barratt

You are reading it right, and you're right to be suspicious of these numbers (although it doesn't seem totally impossible to me, if the wars involved some other extremely deadly weapons). I think what's going on is that the numbers are just survey responses from a group of people (admittedly experts). In such circumstances people tend to give numbers which represent their impressions on issues, without necessarily checking for consistency / reflective equilibrium. I'm particularly suspicious of the fact that the ratio between estimated chances of fatalities for the two kinds of conflict doesn't scale with the number of fatalities.

Alexander8y2

Do you see any specific examples where reducing other types of existential risks could increase quality risks?

Owen Cotton-Barratt

Moving towards political singleton, and increasing surveillance technology, both look like they should help to reduce risks of human extinction. But they may well increase the risk of locking in a value system which is suboptimal, whereas a more varied society could do better in expectation (particularly after different parts of the society trade with each other).

MichaelDickens

If you expect the far future to be net negative in expectation, then reducing existential risk necessarily increases quality risk. In this essay I list some reasons why the far future might be net negative: * We sustain or worsen wild animal suffering on earth. * We colonize other planets and fill them with wild animals whose lives are not worth living. * We create lots of computer simulations of extremely unhappy beings. * We create an AI with evil values that creates lots of suffering on purpose. (But this seems highly unlikely.) In the essay I discuss how likely I think these scenarios are.

Some considerations for different ways to reduce x-risk

Alexander8y1

The effect of most disasters decays over time, but this does not mean that a disaster so big it ends humanity is not possible. So I don't see why that most societal changes decay over time bears on whether large trajectory changes could happen. Maybe someday, there will be a uniquely huge change.

Also, I don't understand why Bostrom mentions a "thought" that all sufficiently good civilizations will converge toward an optimal track. This seems like speculation.

Here is a concern I have. It may be that reducing many types of existential risk, like of... (read more)

I would agree there is more interest in war than international charity. On the other hand it could be that charity is limited in the interest it is capable of drawing, so there is effectively a hidden obstacle, or apathy. This would not pertain to your personal donations (since EAs are presumably not apathetic), but if you were thinking about outreach to build a movement with others, it would matter.

Also, even if changing these policies as a whole is not cost effective, I don't see why changes orthogonal to partisan disputes would also be. For example, EAs... (read more)

Is it publicly given advice?

kbog

Sort of, internet forums

If you have no issue-specific info about crowdedness or tractability, then total effects seem a decent starting point. Right now what I see about policy (trade and wars) vs. charity is that there are a group of ~300 million US citizens who are somehow producing both. Therefore your expected contribution for both is something like (size of total effect)/(300 million).

Edit: I am also forgetting about immigration. Apparently there are 3.8 million black immigrants in the United States, who probably increased their standard of living enormously.

kbog

Well you can just point out that the amount of effort being put in by the average citizen is much greater for trade and war. You can tell by the amount of focus given to these issues in political debates and the amount of interest groups focused on these policies. The amount of person-hours and money spent by Americans producing wars and trade isn't a clearly better ratio than the amount of person-hours and money spent by Americans producing charity.

Yes, your opposition is intelligent, but so are you. I think with politics it's true that your median impact is lower because political policies often depend on getting a majority vote, so typically as an individual you will make zero difference. But your average impact, I think, ought to be fine.

Alexander9y1

I am wondering if someone can explain, or point me to a link on, why they think global poverty charity matters compared with policy. For example, one statistic from GWWC was that the Iraq war cost more than all government foreign aid from the developed world for 50 years, and I would guess that the war's economic effects on Iraq were comparable to its costs. Also, African exports and imports are worth about $35 billion each but total US international charity (to all countries, not just Africa) was $19 billion in 2012, according to this source. This suggest... (read more)

kbog

Merely comparing at the amount of money spent by the government or the economy on X or Y doesn't tell you what is the best place for you to maximize your impact. Not that policy is always a waste of time, of course. It could very well be a great thing to pursue, but the benefits of policy advocacy are not that clear once you frame the problem correctly.

lincolnq

I think the default explanation is that it's surprisingly ineffective in practice to try for stuff that requires overcoming intelligent opposition. Obviously there are cases where this doesn't apply, but it does seem reasonably sensible as a default, both from a decision-theoretic perspective and a practical perspective. You quote a 50x impact multiplier; I suppose it depends on how smart you think the opposition is, but it doesn't seem unreasonable that a smart opposition would be able to reduce your impact by 50x.

September Open Thread

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/09/effective-altruism-in-1400.html

Anyone have a comment on this post?

June Open Thread

Alexander9y1

Peter Singer interview

Dylan Matthews:You talk about existential risks in your latest book — big threats that have a chance of wiping out all of humanity. Which of those, if you had to pick one or two, concerns you the most? Is there one where the story of how a disaster would unfold is particularly compelling?

Peter Singer: It's not just that the disaster story is more compelling, but that there is a reasonably compelling story as to how we can reduce that risk. When it comes to collision with an asteroid, there is a reasonable story about how we could

... (read more)

America’s Provincialism Ratio

I would think that a simple way to do this would be to compare international charitable donations with domestic donations.

I am Seth Baum, AMA!

Alexander9y2

The only plausible argument I can imagine for de-prioritizing GCR reduction is if there are other activities out there that can offer permanent expected gains that are comparably large as the permanent expected losses from GCRs.

Then I guess you don't think it's plausible that we can't expect to make many permanent gains.

Why?

SethBaum

I'll have to look at that link later, but briefly, I do think it can be possible to make some permanent gains, but there seem to be significantly more opportunities to avoid permanent losses. That said, I do not wish to dismiss the possibility of permanent gains, and am very much willing to consider them as of potential comparable significance.

February Open Thread

Helping first-world folks

I am concerned with future people; I would like us to have an interesting or "awesome" future.

February Open Thread

Alexander9y2

I hope we don't get carried away with the art thing-I was just trying to steelman that guy's response.

My main point was just to solicit ideas about how to help first-world folks. That's not because I think you can save more first-world folks than developing-world folks: it's because I accept greater concern with socially nearby people in my definition of altruism. On this site you guys don't-and I accept that too. But I now wonder if your definition of effectiveness is so different from mine that we can't even talk.

Owen Cotton-Barratt

I would definitely be interested in seeing more of a conversation about how to effectively help people in the first world. I think your position is not abnormal, and while I don't hold it, I do think that it's valuable for people with many different positions to pay attention to effectiveness in their altruism. At the Global Priorities Project we are working on some notes on how different ethical or factual assumptions would lead you to preferring different causes. I guess that the link without framing may have made people think you were saying we should as a whole focus more on the first world, which could have earned the downvote. Are you concerned with first world people alive today, or also with future first-world people? The answer may well depend on this (it affects how good economic growth is, as well as climate change mitigation and catastrophe reduction, particularly catastrophes that might destroy civilisation).

February Open Thread

Alexander9y1

Edit: I already doubted anyone here wanted to discuss non-cosmopolitan thoughts, so I just gave a link. The downvote suggests that only cosmopolitan ideas are tolerated here.

EricHerboso

As a matter of policy, I believe downvotes should indicate that the discussion point is not worth considering -- not that we disagree with the idea. For example: we should downvote spam, nonsense posts, or inappropriately immature posts. I'm not sure who downvoted you, but I can say that I doubt helping first world people is likely to be more cost-effective than helping people in developing countries. There's just too many people already helping first world people. All the low hanging fruit has already been plucked. Your link mentions possibilities like nuclear weapon containment or the far-future benefits accruing from funding artists today. The former seems like it would help everyone, not just first-world people. The latter seems... rather difficult to get evidence for. Sure, we can create just-so stories that provide plausible ways that art/idea funding could effectively help the future. But we have no clear way of testing whether those just-so stories are accurate -- nor even any way to really judge what kind of confidence level we should have for the effectiveness of art funding. I like art. It's one of my "things". My house has several canvases, dozens of paint brushes, and upwards of 600 books on art. I have a significant other that is an art educator, and promoting art literacy is a big deal in our house. Despite this, I sincerely doubt that funding art is anywhere near as effective at creating utility than conventional EA interventions. Sure, great art can impact generations, and has potential far-future effects, but you can't just fund the greats -- how would you know which to fund in the first place? I just don't see how it can compare to conventional EA ideas. With that said, I do agree that we should consider first world interventions as a possibility for EA. I just can't think of any first world interventions that could plausibly do a better job than developing world interventions.

The Value of a Life

it costs a few million dollars to save a life in developed nations

Where does this figure come from?

So8res

I'm currently under the impression that American health insurance prices American lives at ~$10mil, but I don't have any sources on hand. Americans do, however, pour money into safety measures (such as emission controls) which save far less than 1 life per million dollars (in expectation); see p78 here. I'm actually not sure how much it would cost to save the next marginal developed-nation life.

Open Thread 6

http://reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.com/2014/06/increasing-and-improving-saving-as.html

That is interesting. My knowledge here is pretty limited. If interest rates were lower, saving would be lower and so technological progress would be slower--unless, I guess, governments intervened to make folks save.

What might other concrete effects of artificially low interest rates be?

Open Thread 6

Thanks for the response. This is cool info, but I'm not convinced. I wonder if there is value that exists but can't be captured by individuals alive today, causing them to not care.

That post on sustainability I disagree with. I don't think we understand enough about technological advance to plan for specific future technologies, except in the short term.

Larks

Yes I think this is very plausible - indeed, I donate to MIRI! But as I noted above, this is an argument against positive interest rates in general, not anything specific to fossil fuels. If interest rates were negative, backwards induction in asset prices would lead to current prices accurately reflecting future values.

Open Thread 6