2. Murder rates is an even bigger drop because that UN data is from 2023 (and older for most countries), whereas there have been big homicide rate declines around the world over the last 2-3 years.
"Being very generous, I think their attempt is to invoke this result of Chaitin to basically say "if the universe was a simulation, then there would be a formal system that described how the universe worked. By Chaitin, there's some 'complexity bound' for which statements beyond this bound are undecidable. But, these statements have physical meaning so we could theoretically construct the statement's analog in our universe, and then the simulation would have to be able to decide these undecidable statements."
What they don't explain is:
why we should think that we're guaranteed to be able to construct such physical analogs of these statements,
why they think that whatever universe that is simulating ours must have the same axioms as ours (e.g. Godel only applies to proving statements within the formal system under considerations),
why they can rule out that the hypothetical simulating computer wouldn't be able to just throw some random value out when it encounters an undecidable statement (i.e. how do we know that physics is actually consistent without examining all events everywhere in the universe?),
...or a bunch of other necessary assumptions that they're making and not really talking much about.
They also get into some more bad mathematics (maybe bad philosophy?) by appealing to Penrose-Lucas to claim that "human cognition surpasses formal computation," but I don't think this is anywhere near a universally accepted stance."
Thanks for adding this Nithya, I agree with both points. This post was more about raising a question I hadn't seen discussed much in EA spaces and so there is likely research that supports or weakens the argument I didn't come across.
My general impression is that non profits tend to teach skills that are less valuable longer term when globally 90% of jobs are in the private sector, even if the skills are valuable to some extent.
It's also about who is learning the skills, if the people who would have been the top 5% of entrepreneurs/leaders/scientists are not working in those spaces that seems like a loss for those countries.
I haven't looked into it, I think GiveWell recommended charities make up a very small percentage of most countries NGO workforce, so it seems unlikely to be much of a difference.
2. Murder rates is an even bigger drop because that UN data is from 2023 (and older for most countries), whereas there have been big homicide rate declines around the world over the last 2-3 years.
I'm not sure why you've had some downvotes, I'm also sceptical, but then that's part of being hits-based.
What description would you prefer?
I think it makes more sense to consider this part of their marketing budget than their 'trying to do good' budget.
I would think it's more peer appreciation than public appreciation that matters.
Do you think CoGi need broad appeal if they're mainly looking for multi millionaire donors?
r/badmathematics have already looked at it.
"Being very generous, I think their attempt is to invoke this result of Chaitin to basically say "if the universe was a simulation, then there would be a formal system that described how the universe worked. By Chaitin, there's some 'complexity bound' for which statements beyond this bound are undecidable. But, these statements have physical meaning so we could theoretically construct the statement's analog in our universe, and then the simulation would have to be able to decide these undecidable statements."
What they don't explain is:
They also get into some more bad mathematics (maybe bad philosophy?) by appealing to Penrose-Lucas to claim that "human cognition surpasses formal computation," but I don't think this is anywhere near a universally accepted stance."
Thanks for adding this Nithya, I agree with both points. This post was more about raising a question I hadn't seen discussed much in EA spaces and so there is likely research that supports or weakens the argument I didn't come across.
My general impression is that non profits tend to teach skills that are less valuable longer term when globally 90% of jobs are in the private sector, even if the skills are valuable to some extent.
It's also about who is learning the skills, if the people who would have been the top 5% of entrepreneurs/leaders/scientists are not working in those spaces that seems like a loss for those countries.
I haven't looked into it, I think GiveWell recommended charities make up a very small percentage of most countries NGO workforce, so it seems unlikely to be much of a difference.
Doesn't that still depend on how much risk you think there is, and how tractable you think interventions are?
I think it's still accurate to say that those concerned with near term AI risk think it is likely more cost effective than AMF.