All of Devin Kalish's Comments + Replies

Thank you so much for writing this! I hope this isn't considered too off topic, but I run the Effective Altruism Addiction Recovery Group which I am maintaining but is still fairly slow at the moment. If you are reading this and are worried about your own addictive behaviors, feel free to join the server, or if you would rather not, feel free to reach out to me directly, and I would be happy to meet/help any way you think will be most useful. You should be able to join through this link:

https://discord.gg/W8sFnNEbdT

Pinea did complain about how many dimensions I wanted in my ethics...

Thanks, I see what you’re saying now. I can see value in positive reinforcement at least, but I guess I have a few reactions to some of the more specific points here:

1. Insofar as people can find reference classes they don’t fit that predict alcoholism, they can do the same for not drinking. Muslims, some other conservative theists, people with physical health conditions, people who are recovering alcoholics, people who rarely hang out with friends. I think you are at high risk if you are say a young atheist socialite in somewhere like NYC, and you can als

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand what you mean here:

"I meant for the stat of non-drinkers to be a positive signal for the general population to choose not to drink and still feel normie."

Could you rephrase? As for my stats, this is an example that's been helpful. I definitely agree that most people can eventually recover and stop drinking pretty much for good (or less reliably, in moderation). I'm currently sober for about two months, and hope to fully recover myself. What I meant is that even if you do eventually recover, there are huge costs that are... (read more)

Yeah, I’m getting the impression that one of the big things I ought to do with a final draft is expand my discussion of this change in my position, and possibly spin it off into its own appendix. For what it’s worth if this is true it means the risk from drinking is even higher than apparent, as even when you control for the portion of non-drinkers who are alcoholics or former alcoholics (depending on your preferred nomenclature), a quite significant portion of the people who don’t become alcoholics just don’t drink anyway (how much depends in large part on how many of these people used to drink a good deal and stopped, but never became alcoholics).

Thanks, this a decent gloss and I hope it will be helpful (I apologize again for the difficulty of the outline as currently written)

Worth adding though that alcoholism can get gradually worse over long periods, and many alcoholics spend decades in denial, so if you are trying to rule yourself into this class, you really should look at this much more objective criteria rather than sorta vibing "I've done this forever and I'm not an alcoholic".

This seems right to me.

I mean, people aren’t given “future alcoholic” cards. I think there are circumstances under which you can be sure drinking is especially risky, such as being a recovering alcoholic or having history with a different addiction or having a decent amount of recent family history with addiction, but I’m not aware of a ton of factors you can reference to be confident you won’t be one.

I don’t think your odds are more than half, but I do think they’re around one in ten if you’re an average American (if you’re drinking enough that cutting alcohol is a significant ... (read more)

If anyone knows how to insert this table in my post, I would be very appreciative. I don't know if it's obvious or something, but I haven't seen any instructions for it and I am not technically skilled.

-Response to "Welfare and Felt-Duration"

I seriously doubt I'll have anything ready for this by draft amnesty week (maaaaybe a rough outline if I can post that), but it could be one of the most useful things for me to get feedback on, as it is what I'm planning to write for my thesis (not with that title, though if I adapt and shorten it into a blog post after writing it, it might have a title like that in the way this earlier post does):

https://www.thinkingmuchbetter.com/main/meat-veggies-response/

Essentially, it's on the topic of the issues subjective exp... (read more)

-Existentialist Currents in Pawn Hearts

Unlike the others here, I probably won't post this one, either for draft amnesty, or on the forum, at all, as it isn't sufficiently relevant (though I did make a related post on the forum which uh, remains my lowest karma post):

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fvqRCuLm4GkdwDgFd/art-recommendation-childlike-faith-in-childhood-s-end

But it's a post I am strongly thinking of putting on my own blog. Like my most recent blog post:

https://www.thinkingmuchbetter.com/main/fun-home/

This is one that I would be adapting ... (read more)

-The Case for Pluralist Evaluation

This is another one I started and never finished. I actually specifically started it as an intended draft amnesty entrant last year, but I think it is in even rougher shape, and I also haven't looked at it in a long time. Basically this was inspired by the controversy a little while ago over ACE evaluating their movement grants on criteria other than impact on animal welfare. I don't defend this specific case but rather make a general argument against this type of argument. Basically the idea is that most EA donors (especi... (read more)

-Against National Special Obligation

I started a draft on this one a while ago, but haven't looked at it again for a while, and probably won't post it. The idea is pretty simple and I think relatively uncontroversial amongst EAs: we do not have special obligations to help people in the same country as us. This is not just also true, but especially true in political contexts. I see the contrary opinion voiced by even quite decent people, but I think it is an extremely awful position when you investigate it in a more thorough and on-the-ground way rather than noticing where it matches common sense.

On the topic of hopepunk (and to an extent Secular Solstice since that came up in another comment), I want to mention the Mary Ellen Carter by Stan Rogers, which is quite important to me for similar reasons.

Oh my god I am so excited for this, I've been trying to put together a thesis paper on this exact subject! I have had such a hard time finding prior relevant work.

Fair, fair, and fair. I do think there are mitigating responses to all of these points as well, but I’ll concede the point that these are cases on the fringes of convenience for him. I was personally more thinking about IQ if I had to think of an example - he seems to place more importance on it than most people, but as I think he pointed out in a blog post I can’t find now, this leads just an awful lot of people to really statist and quasi or outright fascist views, so even if it doesn’t actually imply fascism, it’s an area where adopting a view closer to the average would be more convenient, provide an additional reason he could give against such people.

Thanks, these are interesting examples (and if I’m commenting too much someone please tell me, I can do that sometimes I think), but I range from somewhat to very skeptical on them as counterexamples:

1. This is the most plausible one I think, it really does seem like it lends support for greater intervention on certain views. However, it’s hard to find a view of population ethics/population sciences that does not have some population it prefers, or that gives a good account of why incentives will produce it naturally. My impression is that most people eith

I think any question that attempts to get at the heart of the strongest objection to a public figure's worldview is going to sound like an accusation, because in a way it is, mostly I hope it's taken as an ultimately good natured, curious, and productive accusation. On the point of libertarianism being a "good lens", I mean libertarianism as a policy suggestion. I am voicing suspicion that there isn't a plausible lens behind this policy view that generalizes so well in both philosophy and the real world that it doesn't leave Caplan's slate of opinions looking suspicious, but for what it's worth my second question was basically asking him to propose one.

Part of my second question is that I think in order to beat these two challenges, the best he can do is say that there is one fairly simple principle that is behind anarcho-capitalism, and that it generalizes so robustly, both when thrown into the real world, and when thrown into philosophical controversies, that it causes all of them to conveniently point in a similar direction. It would have to be one he believed in from a young age and saw vindicated more and more over time in practice, and it needs to be remarkably unpopular to, despite having unusuall... (read more)

Two reasons I disagree:

1. It is suspicious to just happen to have a whole bunch of views that support one's pre-existing politics, but it is only a little less suspicious to have a whole bunch of not that related views that all conveniently support one coherent political view
2. I'm taken to understand that Caplan has been a libertarian since he was a kid, and an ancap almost as long. Insofar as he considers most of or many of the listed positions to come from careful academic reflection, most of the arguments he makes about them are probably ones he didn't have when he first became sympathetic to his current politics

Forgot mental illness, which again is suspiciously convenient, and maybe on the lower end of the plausibility spectrum among his views.

Because my draft response was getting too long, I’m going to put it as a list of relevant arguments/points, rather than the conventional format, hopefully not much is lost in the process:

-Ethics does take things out there in the world as its subjects, but I don’t take the comparison to empirical science in this case to work, because the methods of inquiry are more about discourse than empirical study. Empirical study comes at the point of implementation, not philosophy. The strong version of this point is rather controversial but I do endorse it, I will re... (read more)

I endorse moral uncertainty, but I think one should be careful in treating moral theories like vague, useful models of some feature of the world. I am not a utilitarian because I think there is some "ethics" out there in the world, and being utilitarian approximates it in many situations, I think the theory is the ethics, and if it isn't, the theory is wrong. What I take myself to be debating when I debate ethics isn't which model "works" the best, but rather which one is actually what I mean by "ethics".

The scenario given doesn’t seem to pump the intuition for value pluralism so much as prioritarianism. I suppose you could conceptualize prioritarianism as a sort of value pluralism, I.e. the value of helping those worse off and the value of happiness, but you can also create a single scale on which all that matters is happiness but the amount that it matters doesn’t exactly correspond to the amount of the happiness. I at least usually think of it as importantly distinct from most plural value theories. I’m open to the possibility that this is just semantic... (read more)

Re Chalmers agreeing with you, he would, he said as much in the LessWrong comments and I recently asked him in person and he confirmed it. In Yudkowsky’s defense it is a very typical move among illusionists to argue that Zombiests can’t really escape epiphenomenalism, not just some ignorant outsider’s move (I think I recall Keith Frankish and Francois Kammerer both making arguments like this). That said I remain frustrated that the post hasn’t been updated to clarify that Chalmers disagrees with this characterization of his position.

I don’t have a link because Twitter is very difficult to search now if you don’t have an account (if someone wants to provide one be my guest, there’s one discussion thread involving Zach Weinersmith that says so for instance), but Yudkowsky currently uses and seems to like the nickname at this point.

Got it, it still doesn’t seem like that will be much of a problem on a dedicated Discord server like this, I don’t think a critical mass of founders will just randomly wander onto an addiction specific Discord server, but I can pass along the advice to be safe.

Good idea, I’ll edit the post.

Hm, good to know, do you think this will even be a problem on a Discord server though? Unless employers specifically join the server in order to rule candidates out the information won’t be super accessible - certainly not from just performing a search on the candidate’s name. I also think we should have rules, including Jason’s suggestion, that officially ban this behavior.

Interesting, thanks for the information! My own experience with someone very close to me with an eating disorder has looked very familiar to me since becoming an addict myself, so it always seemed like it made sense to categorize them together. I guess my final and most important reason for wanting to include it though is just that we have someone who joined the server with an eating disorder, and wanting to know if they could count. Given this I plan to stick by my judgement, even if it means that technically the group is more “addiction and some related mental health disorders” rather than just “addiction”.

Thanks, I'll have to think over these. I just set up a chat to get things started, but truthfully I am very nervous about running/moderating a group chat like this. I'm not very tech savvy and don't even have social media. I've run a club and a fellowship before, but this was all in-person and I think involves very different skills. I'm kind of hoping the current set up will prove temporary and someone with more experience eventually gets involved if this project grows into something substantial. I'll try to take cues from this document as things develop in the meantime.

Now that a few people have expressed interest, I have decided to create a chat so that we can coordinate a bit and work out possible details. For now it's just a discord server here: https://discord.gg/DwMw9C6p If Discord doesn't work well for anyone and they have a better idea I would welcome it, I also have little experience with moderating or running a server, so if anyone else wants to takeover please let me know. I've just set this up as something to get started with for now. Thanks for your interest!

There was also a commenter on my first, anonymous post who expressed interest in something like this I could try reaching out to.

That would be great! What sort of backup would you need?

I agree, I think there's some holdover influence from psychoanalysis where the basic intuition seems to be that there's always some deeper explanation for mental illnesses relating to underlying complexes or misdevelopment or something, and that therapy is finding and fixing those, but I don't think this was ever a sensible idea to default to. Sometimes the reason someone is an alcoholic is as dumb as "I was a little bored at the wrong time to be a little bored, and alcohol is a socially normalized way to address this".

❤️

Thanks, I really appreciate it

Thanks for changing it.

This is a quick PSA, Emile Torres does think “Preventing AI from killing everyone is a real and important issue”. The last time this was pointed out to you (that I’m aware of) you clarified that Torres’ disagreement was basically with longtermism. Please, pleeease clarify this in the post, it isn’t remotely how this challenge comes off and is borderline spreading misinformation, which is especially bad for important coalition building.

I was interested in most of the relevant cause areas in some form from childhood (the global poor, animal welfare, extinction risks), and independently formulated utilitarianism (not uncommon I’m told, both Bertrand Russell and Brian Tomasik apparently did the same), so I was a pretty easy sell.

I was assigned “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” and “All Animals are Equal” for a freshman philosophy course, and decided Peter Singer really got it and did philosophy in the way that seemed most important to me. Later I revisited Singer when working on a long fina... (read more)

I'm really heartened by this, especially some of the names on here I independently admired who haven't been super vocal about the issue yet, like David Chalmers, Bill McKibben, and Audrey Tang. I also like certain aspects of this letter better than the FLI one. Since it focuses specifically on relevant public figures, rapid verification is easier and people are less overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Since it focuses on an extremely simple but extremely important statement it's easier to get a broad coalition on board and for discourse about it to stay on topic. I liked the FLI one overall as well, I signed it myself and think it genuinely helped the discourse, but if nothing else this seems like a valuable supplement.

For what it’s worth I haven’t gotten around to reading a ton of your posts yet, but me and pretty much everyone I showed your blog to could tell pretty quickly that it was a cut above whatever I might picture just from the title. That said, I think all the changes are good ideas on the whole. Keep up the good work!

Fully endorsed. And I would add that if you don’t mind more speculative, harder to evaluate interventions there are organizations working on risks of future astronomical suffering like the Center for Long-Term Risk, and organizations working on wild animal suffering like Wild Animal Initiative. For more measurable impacts I don’t have much to add to weeatquince’s excellent suggestions.

So this depends if you take EA to be more fundamentally interested in theories of beneficence (roughly what ought you do to positively help others) or in theories of axiology (roughly what makes a world better or worse). I’m suspicious of most theories that pull these apart, but importantly Scanlon’s work is really interested in trying to separate the two, and basically ditch the direct relevance of axiology altogether. Certainly he goes beyond telling people what they ought not to do. If EA is fundamentally about beneficence, Scanlon is very relevant, if it’s more about axiology, he’s more or less silent.

So long as we’re sharing recommendations, Parfit also has a good paper that’s relevant to this, which a good deal of the more recent partial aggregation debate is leap-frogging off of.