All of dominicroser's Comments + Replies

Great -- thanks very much!

My personal take is that Musk is fairly mysterious. Hence, I don't think there is sufficient evidence that he just says these things for personal gain? 
I don't mean this to defend him, to the contrary. It makes the world more uncertain that one the most powerful persons has such an insrutable personality. I think it would be worth foregoing Musk's upside potential for this world, if he were just more boring and predictable. 

How open are you to people with one leg in traditional academia and one leg in Seeds of Science?

PS: and just a general remark: this seems like such a valuable experiment. Big thanks for your courage! At the moment, it seems bewilderingly open-ended but I, as far as I can judge, it seems absolutely worth seeing what comes out of it.

Thanks for writing this up so nicely. The framing in terms of EA relevance is perfect.

Here's another question I have that would be relevant to EA. Do you think that currently the risks from Back Contamination and Forward Contamination receive too much attention (relative to other risks)? In other words: is there some inertia in the sense that once a novel catastrophic risk does get recognized as a serious issue, it then doesn't easily get out of people's minds & institutional processes again?

(The background for my question is this: I read quite a bit a... (read more)

Thanks!

Thanks, that is a word of wisdom. I'll have to practice this!

Here's one challenge to your (convincing!) post: One of the only ways I get anything done in life is by promising it to someone and then being held accountable. What I achieve depends on what I promise -- there are no independently "realistic deadlines" for me. However, I usually don't achieve it by the date I promise. If I promise it by February, I get it done by March. But it wouldn't help if I promised it by March. In that case, I would just achieve it by April. 

While I'm exaggerating a bit to make my point clear, the upshot is that even though I a... (read more)

Thanks very much!

Two questions: 

(1) I have had to introduce cognitive biases to people myself and was wondering what reasons to give for the the precise selection of biases I present. As far as these 10 biases are concerned: Is it just a judgement call to choose this specific list of biases --- as they kind of seem practically relevant and much discussed? Or is there a more systematic reason for choosing these 10 or any other list?

(2) Yudkowsky's list is from 2008. Much has happened since. It would be nice if there were kind of a running update on which cognitive biases have moved up / down over time in terms of being supported by the evidence.

oh dear. Thanks for spotting this - really appreciated. We'll add the correction.

Thanks!

Hm, hard question.

Personally, I would think:

-- If we don't radically expand our concern and love relative to the status quo, we are not following the teachings of Christ

-- It's hard to see the specific kind and strength of impartiality that utilitarianism recommends in the Bible (but this doesn't mean, as I said in the first point, that the status quo is OK)

The post is really nicely structured and written. 

However, to me the key debate is not whether it's possible to have growth while (1) protecting the planet  and (2) eradicating poverty. The question is how probable it is. I have generally found the arguments by the degrowth people quite convincing that it is in many ways improbable. 

However, strictly speaking, the question is not even how improbable it is but the comparative question whether it is more improbable than having degrowth while (1) protecting the planet and (2) eradicating povert... (read more)

I have been looking for a while now for good literature that provides arguments or evidence how reducing growth in rich countries would hurt/benefit the poor.

I agree that Hickel doesn't seem very trustworthy on this. I have looked a bit at the degrowth/post-growth literature and haven't found detailed, convincing engagement on this question. 

I've also looked elsewhere but I still don't know what literature to rely on -- despite its being such a core and straightforward question. Any advice on what to read on this would be appreciated.

I quite agree with this, particularly since there is a straightforward explanation why Christian scripture would not have focused on people far away in time and space: there were fewer technological possibilities for affecting people far away than there are today. [Edit: I now realize this point appears in footnote 2]

I do find it noteworthy that on the one occasion where Jesus was asked whom to count as a neighbour, he deliberately expands the circle and asks listeners to think about whom they can be a neighbour to.

Is there a typo in the first sentence - should it say impartiality rather than partiality?

I love this post. 

BTW, note that there have been two entries on closely related themes for the Cause Exploration Prize: here and here.

I think it is curious that effective altruism doesn't talk more about friendships or, more broadly, relationships. As far as I understand, relationships are a key determinant of happiness. Also, relationships are one of the first things that come to mind when objective list theorists try to explain to hedonists what might matter in addition to happiness. Relationships thus seem important.  

They also seems neglected... (read more)

There is an essay on Buddhism and Effective Altruism by Calvin Baker.

I sincerely hope this cause will be taken as seriously as possible and thoroughly examined. 

On an anecdotal basis, I have been repeatedly surprised just how many people around me have had significant experiences along these lines. I would never have guessed this before my friends all were in child-bearing age.

I also think the relevance of this cause area might typically remain hidden from public sight because:

1. less than half the population ever gives birth
2. most people who do give birth, do so only once or very few times during their life
3. if something goe

It is so helpful to have this  overview assesment in concentrated form. 

In public debates about the pros & cons of economic growth in rich countries there is often the idea "Growth in rich countries is unimportant/bad -- but, yes,  for poor countries it is important to still grow". 

The kind of work you portray about spillovers puts the viability of the idea "growth in poor countries without growth in rich countries" into question and helpfully puts numbers on how strongly growth in rich countries is linked to growth in poor countries.  

Looking for help: what's the opposite of counterfactual reasoning -- in other words: when EAs encourage counterfactual reasoning, what do they discourage?

I ask because I'm writing about good epistemic practices and mindsets. I am trying to structure my writing as a list of opposites (scout mindset vs soldier mindset, numerical vs verbal reasoning, etc). 

Would it be correct to say that in the case of counterfactual reasoning there is no real opposite? Rather, the appropriate contrast is: "counterfactual reasoning done well vs. counterfactual reasoning done badly"?

Thank you so much - this is the most helpful text I've read about this question!

I'd love it if someone were to write 

-- an equally detailed post about developing countries (rather than just something the length of section 4.4)

-- summarized how well it's possible to boost growth in developing countries without doing so in developed countries.

The thought is that the best case for economic growth leading to happiness would be along the following lines (excluding the link between growth and catastrophic/existential risk):
- growth doesn't hurt happiness in... (read more)

Brian Green, the author of the epilogue, has contributed to EA for Christians in a number of helpful ways in the past (eg https://youtu.be/L3q6C-JzIyA)

Etwas mit "Ganzzeitdenken", "Gesamtzukunftsdenken", "Vollfristdenken"?

Das sind keine konkreten Vorschläge, sondern mehr Brainstorming. Etwas was ja Longtermism von Mainstream-Aufrufen zu mehr langfristigem Denken unterscheidet ist der Fokus auf der gesamten Zukunft (statt "nur" auf den nächsten 100 Jahren).

 

[Pre-remark: I have only lightly skimmed the post]

Just wanted to add a pointer to Tim Mulgan's book Ethics for a Broken World  -- given the similarity in framing: "Imagine living in the future in a world already damaged by humankind...Then imagine looking back into the past, back to our own time and assessing the ethics of the early twenty-first century. ....This book is presented as a series of history of philosophy lectures given in the future, studying the classic texts from a past age of affluence, our own time. "

I've given a number of small talks about effective donations to various non-EA audiences. In the end -- after having made my case for focusing on effectiveness in giving -- I encouraged them and said: "If my argument convinced you, how about making a start and using half of your next batch of donations for the most effective charities."

Do you see any problem in taking your research as evidence that this might be sensible advice? I know Giving Multiplier does something different. However, I wonder whether it's similar enough to be transferable?

I love this post. It singles out a very specific problem and tackles it very thoughtfully.

On website blockers: I have also quitted them regularly but since I have started using ColdTurkey I have quitted much less. I think it's better than other blockers. 

For myself, family life has done the trick of making me go to bed at a reasonable hour. But as soon as my wife and kids are gone for a day or two, I (regrettably!) just stay up forever. One of the reasons why I do so (and which doesn't come up on your list) is that my mood often happens to be very good when I stay up late and I also enter flow states more easily when working late at night.

Thanks for this!

Great!
And just to add a small comment: The country of origin does not only affect transport distance but also the legal standards for animal welfare (and to a lesser extent how much GHGs are involved in production). My impression is that many people overrate this. They think "Oh yes, there is horrible animal farming elsewhere  - but I only eat meat from my own country and surely everything is much better here." It would be nice to have something to counter this objection.

This is really nicely done and it is exactly what many are looking for. Thank you so much! 

If it is to be shared more widely it might help to add a remark about how sensitive the results are to which country the animal products are from and whether they're organic or not. The reason for this being that many in the public sphere (and not infrequently wrongly) assume that this makes a crucial difference.

This is tangential but I wonder whether there are side-benefits for unrelated areas if humanity collectively engages in thinking about how it would design a space governance framework. Some past thinkers used the literary device of utopias in order to think about real-world problems. In the same way, putting us in the mindset of creating rules for space governance from scratch could be a helpful exercise and helpful priming in order to solve other (short-term, earth-bound) problems. 

Here's one piece of research -- it'd be wonderful if there were much more in this vein: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mKGbeX5tQu4zshY4j/alice-redfern-moral-weights-in-the-developing-world

Nice and helpful -- thanks!

I've always been fascinated by the biblical vision of a perfect world which features the lion and the lamb (etc) living together peacefully: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lamb_and_lion

It might be interesting to sift through the history of humanity in order to collect further pre-1970 visions which lament WAS or which feature a utopia without WAS. I know extremely little about Buddhism, Hinduism, etc but given the links between humans and animals via rebirths: isn't the Nirvana as a state without suffering also the... (read more)

Thanks for this! Very interesting.

And really sorry for replying only now -- I somehow missed this and only saw it now.

--- On population increase: yes, many Christians work towards population increase but it's equally true that many Christians don't. An interesting side remark is that the influential passage Genesis 1,28 on which pro-natalism is often based calls for *filling* the earth. Arguably, humanity can claim to have unlocked this achievement. We can tick it off our To-Do-List. (Also, in terms of background information, my view that determi... (read more)

Thanks for this, Michael! I will look at it.

Great to put the climate externality of a child explicitly in relation to other positive and negative values that come with having a child. Thanks for doing this and doing it so well.

A question: where else in the population ethics debate can I find the kind of reasoning that you employ? More specifically, where else can I find (1) lists of the bazillion positive and negative externalities of an additional child and (2) some argument -- however weak -- that takes us beyond agnosticism on the question whether an additional child is overall a *net* positive o... (read more)

Thanks a lot for this pointer!

An odd observation: He cites someone who's done such stuff before -- John Nolt, a philosopher. He himself is professor of the psychology of music. I think the calculations of both of them are extremely useful (even if extremely speculative). But there's a big question here: what prevented *scientists* from offering such numbers? Are they too afraid of publishing guesstimates? Does it not occur to them that these numbers are utterly relevant for the debate?

If the case for growth in rich and poor is very different (possibly negative in the one but not the other case), then it starts to matter a lot whether we can promote growth in poor countries without promoting growth in rich countries as a side-effect. I don't know how the proposed interventions fare in this respect?

You asked for other examples. The following two examples are certainly not the most relevant but they are interesting:

-- Benjamin Franklin, in his will, left £1,000 pounds each to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, with the proviso that the money should be invested for 100 years, with 25 percent of the principal to be invested for a further 100 years. As a result, Boston wound up in 1990 with a fund of over $5 million, Philadelphia with $2.3 million.) [copy-pasted from a book review by Joseph Heathe in Ethics]

-- From Cliff Landesman's 1995... (read more)

Also, some ways of mitigating climate change have (positive or negative) side benefits* for humanity's ability to solve other upcoming challenges, such as AI safety or pandemics. And from an EA perspective, these latter challenges might possibly be higher priority than climate change. Thus, there's a further avenue for EAs who do not care much about climate change to "harness" the current societal focus on climate change for EA-aligned goals.

*For example, I'm thinking of side benefits of strategies such as:

-- strengthening global cooperation

-- spreading a radically technology-friendly mindset among greens

-- fighting anti-science trends in society

-- etc

A very general remark on this: "There are plenty of potential weaknesses to advocacy-based interventions compared to more direct interventions. One large concern we have is understanding the impact of organisations in this space."

Federally organized constituencies (Switzerland, US, etc) are a great thing for political scientists: you can compare the effect of policies or advocacy campaigns in different sub-national jurisdictions which are very similar. (Not sure whether this is of any help in your case, though).

PS: Just to add: fantastic initiative. Curious to hear how it's developing!

I've written a blogpost on whether Christians should share the emphasis that many EAs put on the long term, including extinction risks. Since this fits nicely with your aim in this blogpost -- i.e. whether *many* worldviews should prioritise existential risks -- I thought I'd mention it here: https://eachdiscussion.wordpress.com/2019/04/06/how-much-should-christian-eas-care-about-the-far-future-part-i/