All of Eleos Arete Citrini's Comments + Replies
So many of these topics seem really interesting to me personally that your saying "It was designed primarily for economics graduate students considering careers in global priorities research." made me wonder: Is there something similar for people with a less robust background in economics? Maybe for economics (or political science) undergraduate students? :)
Agreed! I've just read the articles you mentioned today and really liked them. Links:
vox article by Dylan Matthews: "How effective altruism went from a niche movement to a billion-dollar force – Effective altruism has gone mainstream. Where does that leave it?"
New Yorker article by Gideon Lewis-Kraus: "The Reluctant Prophet of Effective Altruism – William MacAskill’s movement set out to help the global poor. Now his followers fret about runaway A.I. Have they seen our threats clearly, or lost their way?"
One major difference is between people who care about multiple things and people who have decided that their life’s work should be world improvement.
Does the first rule out the second? And does the second rule out the first?
Oh wow, thank you for this elaborate response!
FWIW, I don't think nr 2 is a big negative, if it's a net negative at all.
Does that answer your question, does it raise more?
Yes, it answers my question. And no, it didn't raise more, at least for the moment.
This sounds super cool! Reading the full post, I got the (maybe unqualified) impression that a lot of thought went into making this robust and making it work well.
Not only has CEEALAR’s hotel successfully been running for almost four years by now. In addition, they were facing significant hurdles we don’t expect to impinge on our own project: [...]
Reading this makes me optimistic about both the future of CEEALAR's hotel and also the Berlin hub. But I also wonder whether there're factors / hurdles that CEEALAR hasn't faced that you expect the Berlin hub might face.. What do you think?
I'm super excited about this! This newsletter is very valuable for me: I often find myself saving a link or two for later (that I might perhaps get around to someday) when reading an EA forum post, but here, there were five resources you linked to that I've just scheduled time to read / check out.
Also, I found the interview really interesting – fanaticism in decision theory and ethics is one of my key uncertainties re "putting ethics into practice, knowing about longtermism" and global priorities research. To make things even more.. frightening(?), I'm not...
I am very new to AI governance and this post helped me a lot in getting a better sense of "what's out there", thank you! Now, what I'm about to say isn't meant so much as "I felt this was lacking in your post" but more as simply "reading this made me wonder about something": What about AI governance focused on s-risks instead of only/mostly x-risks? The London-based Center on Long-Term Risk (CLR) conducts pertinent work on the foundational end of the spectrum (see their priority areas). Which other organisations are (at least partly) working on AI governance focused on s-risks?
I really like this list and think it will be helpful for me!
Do you have thoughts on the relative importance of these various heuristics? Maybe something like a heuristic for which heuristics are most important for one's situation?
Also, you wrote:
Scale, number helped - do something that impacts many people positively
Scale, degree helped - do something that impacts people to a great positive degree
I'd like to point out that "people" doesn't quite capture who EA is trying to help (considering that we strive to do what's impartially good, we arguably ought to ...
I really liked your clear outline on your position, and this definitely contained some food for thought that I found to be nicely presented. That being said, I am still much more agnostic re which position to take (esp. after reading some of the comments here) than you seem to be. You wrote:
Third, degrowthers argue that technological innovations do not allow for a sufficient decoupling between GDP and environmental impacts. But they neglect that a decoupling between economic wealth (GDP) and well-being is less realistic.
Maybe this is misguided, but why not...
My brief research several months ago led me to believe that if I ever were to move to South America, it would probably be Uruguay. It's the most Swiss-like country there by far (I've lived in Switzerland all my life and think that I wouldn't be happy for long in a country that is too different from Switzerland). From wikipedia:
...Uruguay is a developed country with a high-income economy, and is ranked first in Latin America in democracy, peace, low perception of corruption,[11] and e-government.[12][13] It is first in South America when it comes to press free
My favourite press article on EA is probably Zachary Pincus Roth's Washington Post article from September 23, 2020, titled "The Rise of the Rational Do-Gooders". There's a few things I like about it that I haven't found in a large share of the many other such articles I've read and nothing that I particularly dislike about it.
To me, this comment exemplifies what I have in mind when I emphasise that negative feedback should be honest but also delivered in a compassionate manner. :) And I also liked that you shared some of the investigation of your reaction to it!
I've also wondered what reasons there might be for the apparent discrepancy between these predictions and reality. I feel like the point re technical problems you emphasised is probably among the most important ones. My first thought was a different one, though: wishful thinking. Perhaps wishful thinking re clean meat timelines is an important factor for explaining the apparently bad track record of pertinent predictions. My rationale for wishful thinking potentially being an important explanation is that, in my impression, clean meat, even mor...
I don't think Anders Sandberg uses the EA Forum, so I'll just repost what Anders wrote in reaction to this on Twitter:
"I suspect we have a "publication bias" of tech predictions where the pessimists don't make predictions (think the tech impossible or irrelevant, hence don't respond to queries, or find their long timescales so uncertain they are loath to state them).
In this case it is fairly clear that progress is being made but it is slower than hoped for: predictions as a whole made a rate mistake, but perhaps not an eventual outcome mistake (we will see...
Hey everyone, excited to be part of this! :) My name is Eleos Arete Citrini.
I was born, grew up in, currently live and also study in Zurich, Switzerland. I've just completed my second semester of studying political science (major) and philosophy (minor) at the University of Zurich. I currently plan to pursue a master's in political science with a specialisation in PPE (philosophy, politics, economics) and am generally interested in interdisciplinary research on “the big questions”, especially regarding suffering, the future, and uncertainty.
The plight of b...
Wow, this provided me with a lot of food for thought. For me personally, this was definitely one of the most simultaneously intriguing and relatable things I've ever read on the EA forum.