All of Tandena Wagner's Comments + Replies

While EA is not fully at the table yet, EcoResilience Initiative is an EA group trying to answer exactly those questions: 

"What are the problems we're trying to solve?" "What are the most neglected aspects of those problems?" and "What is the most cost-effective way to address those neglected areas?"

So far we're 1) maintaining a big list of biodiversity interventions (not just protecting land!), 2) investigating which of these  are the most effective types of interventions, 3) identifying ways people can donate to projects working on those highly... (read more)

Hi, I really appreciate your independent thinking. I strongly suspect that the main reason people are not choosing to have more kids is because of the raising kids portion, not the pregnancy portion. At least that's my reason for not having more kids.  If this (the difficulty of raising kids, rather than birthing them) is the main bottleneck for most families, then I suspect the best ways to boost fertility would be mostly policy things along the lines of:

• Less strict zoning laws --> more abundant, cheaper housing so young couples can more easily af

Hi, thank you for voicing this concern. I read your recent post, “Rewilding Is Extremely Bad.”

Personally, I doubt that most wild animals have negative lives. (informed by analogy to most of our own history of subsistence-level survival, and my doubt that they would consider their lives to have not been worth living). I also don’t believe that total hedonic utilitarianism is a complete frame for thinking about this. I think it is important to factor in people's and animals' preferences for continued existence. Mostly I think we just don't know much about th... (read more)

${}^{Giving}$ and I refuse to elaborate further

This was well written and informative. I'm interested in improving government performance to allow coordination and combat the problems that come with corruption, so thank you for linking away to those solutions as well. 

Besides being a local node, I think the incidental translation of EA concepts to Estonian is potentially quite valuable. 

Thank you for writing this post - I like to keep a mental list of ways conservation and wild animal welfare can work together. Somehow I forgot this fit the criteria. 

This is interesting to me as well. It seems like more of a philosophical question to me, but I have not given it though consideration to say. If you don't mind sharing, how would empirical anchors inform this?

I found the linked Case for Insect Consciousness really compelling. This is the sort of mindset I want conducting this kind of research. Reading the honest skepticism combined with careful self examination greatly boosted my respect for the project. I'm keen to learn more.

We're working on it! A quick synopsis of the more fleshed-out argument I'm hoping to post soon on the foundational philosophy: It seems oddly universal that people to care about nature. For another it seems like the sort of scarce resource (like historical artifacts) that future humans will value. I think we will place great value on it after we reach takeoff, post-scarcity, etc. Furthermore I think that a variety of experiences existing is better than a world full of similar experiences.

A portion of the philosophical basis you are looking for was recently... (read more)

Hi Ben, thank you very much for the comment!

Excellent link, I need to carefully consider it. 
-- My main thought is that alt-proteins need to be "normal" before we will know if people are willing to adopt them. My assumption is that once they are "just another foodstuff" it will depend on PTC. But right now they are new (aka scary and weird) - which would dominate the survey results. (This somewhat contradicts the increase in taste preference from informed tasting...) I like the example in the dining hall the best because it is in an environment where ... (read more)

Hi Dave,
I just posted a list of biodiversity interventions today (working on that rigorous dive!). I'll add the ones you've listed here and would like your suggestions for further additions to the list. I care about biodiversity for some of the reasons you stated, and wonder if you can elaborate on why you think these are promising interventions for biodiversity conservation?

For example: I'm not sure how to think about using resources from wilderness for livelihoods. I would assume that this would both increase people's desire for protection of wilderness,... (read more)

Oh wow. I'm a fan of Conservation X Labs from the biodiversity side! I only know them from their conservation work, and have a positive opinion of their priorities from what I've been able to glean. 

Fertility control is one of the 20 areas I looked into for EcoResilience Initiative while investigating techniques for enhancing biodiversity, as opposed to wild animal welfare impact. I don't expect it to be the top biodiversity intervention (mostly because I'm not sure how well it will scale). But I would still say it definitely has the potential to be h... (read more)

We encourage AIs, like all members of the EA community,

Someone please drop a link to the mind upload, I missed it.

I'm working on trying to describe the environmental future we want to have, so I'll have written up a better answer soon.™️

I really like the variety of cause areas you chose. Simple, appealing descriptions that draw in someone who hasn't encountered EA before. 17 hours is really short for such quality information!

I can't stop checking the EA forum now.... 

All but 3 bullet points were about AI. I know that AI is the number one catastrophic risk but I'm dyin' for variety (news on other fronts).

Here is the non-AI content:

• Allocation in the landscape seems more efficient than in the past – it’s harder to identify especially neglected interventions, causes, money, or skill-sets. That means it’s become more important to choose based on your motivations.
• Post-FTX, funding has become even more dramatically concentrated under Open Philanthropy, so finding new donors seems like a much bigger priority than in the past.

Thanks for posting this! This should really be a bigger discussion in conservation. 

Heather Browning's reflection on their being some other reason we value biodiversity resonates. 

McMahan's view is my own: that drawn out suffering from predation is wrong, but that ongoing predation is preferable to removing predation. Although I don't agree with their reasoning from uncertainty argument for keeping predation. Instead I have a jumbled mix of valuing autonomy, other lifestyles, thinking death by not-predation is worse, and valuing natural processes... (read more)

This is really getting at something I've been dancing around for awhile. I don't have quite the same read of green, but I'm not sure my own version is coherent or just "things I like." I have the start of an essay inspired by this, at least. 

Most of all: Thank you very very much.

I mostly agree with this - our powers and coordination are beyond impressive when we wield them. So a extinction risk would have to explain why we can't or don't use all of our resources to stop our own demise. Potential examples: feedback loops that are selfishly beneficial and prevent coordination, even if its leading to a slow death overall. Instances where the collapse is slow but locked-in ahead of time. So even if we decide to move heaven and earth to do something about it, its too late. 

I remembered incorrectly - it was not the plastics, but the rare earths that they were recycling. Tanzeena Hussain was the graduate student working on it and having success getting bacteria to survive in increasingly toxic environments. She was crushing up old electronics to feed the bacteria - pretty on the nose. 

It was in Elizabeth Skovran's lab at San Jose State University. This is the only write up I can find on it: https://blogs.sjsu.edu/newsroom/2023/taking-bio-recycling-to-the-next-level/

It looks like they are having enough success to file for ... (read more)

Recently I've been hearing tires are a major cause of air pollution and AND ocean plastic pollution.

 I think some changes in tire requirements could go a LONG way to improving these as I doubt much effort has gone into improving tire material's environmental impact yet.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/25/tyre-dust-the-stealth-pollutant-becoming-a-huge-threat-to-ocean-life
https://www.thedrive.com/news/tire-dust-makes-up-the-majority-of-ocean-microplastics-study-finds
Looks like gov might be on the case, but perhaps we could get it moving... (read more)

I've thought about this a little bit and then got stuck when it comes to figuring out where the big wins are and where the dead ends are.

In no particular order: Some metals are valuable. For this reason I don't think they are neglected but I also think the public doesn't know these metals should be recycled.

Recycling is almost certainly neglected because it is a public good that doesn't pay - these are pretty well always neglected.

Destroying things and making giant landfills feels bad and looks ugly but actually doesn't do as much damage as it feels like. ... (read more)

First of all - great concept and great execution. Lots of interesting information and a lucid, well-supported conclusion. 

My initial and I feel insufficiently addressed concern is that successful protests will of course be overlooked because in retrospect the technology they are protesting will seem "obviously doomed" or "not the right technology" etc. Additionally, successful protests are probably a lot shorter than the unsuccessful ones (which go on for years continuing to try to stop something that is never stopped). I'm not sure this is evidence t... (read more)

I was not expecting this to be the answer. That's really fascinating. Phytomining is officially on my radar now, and I'll be linking back to this article. I hope attention to it starts taking off.

I really appreciate your insights into and estimates on this potential cause area! I have heard of using plants to identify where there are precious minerals, and to concentrate radioactive material but not literal plant mining before now.

Apologies if you covered this in the article, but can phytomining scale? Does it have the potential to be an economical answer and major source of material. Or is it more for special circumstances where mining is unusually difficult for some reason eg the mineral is highly dispersed. If you answered this already please ju... (read more)

I read this book an enjoyed some of the information, but was not clear on its intent. Therefore your summary at the top was useful to me. I assumed it was about communicating and teaching, not inviting and inspiring. But that explains why it felt "incomplete" and I was being left hanging unexpectedly. Its an unusual book and I appreciate it for that. Still, I hope more books follow it with some more guidance on how to be better longterm thinkers and with more exercises, examples, and knowledge. Like the importance of maintenance, the rarity of successful p... (read more)

This is such a breath of fresh air. Make EA weirder!

I really want fish and bivalves to be a more prevalent and environmentally friendly option. I really appreciate you doing this write up and I expect to reference it in the future in conversation and when I have a question. Thank you so much for doing an exploration into this important and neglected topic!

I was trying to find a the big mac subsidy post and would not have been able to find it without this link post.

I'm going to flip the script a bit.

1. Are you doing important, impactful, good things?
2. Does EAG recognize them as novel, unexplored, needing a boost?

You are doing important impactful good things! That's what matters!! Of course recognition is important and you absolutely deserve recognition. In addition you are completely reasonable to feel bad about things you know technically shouldn't be so hurtful. But you're human and they ARE hurtful. It's okay to feel hurt. Please recognize your desires and needs. Live your best life for yourself and everyone.

EAG i... (read more)

Octopi are some of the most intelligent creatures, with a fascinatingly alien path to getting there and unrecognizable brain structure. I encourage anyone who doesn't know about octopi intelligence to look into it - they aren't social, don't teach each other skills, don't live long, and don't have centralized processing but they rank among the highest intelligence we are aware of.

Something I felt was missing from the post was a mention of how intelligent the octopi and cephalopods are which are likely to be farmed. I thought only a few species of octopi we... (read more)

Very useful and illustrative. I especially like how you manage to tie both the personal perspective and the group dynamics together. I was acquainted with this idea but your write up was definitely illuminating of aspects I missed. I expect this to be useful to me and others!

I can't figure out why this didn't get more traction. This post seems extremely relevant and brought up well considered points that I'm surprised I've never encountered before. This subject seems fundamental to life changing career decisions, and highly relevant to both EA earning to give and EA career impacts. I also can't spot any surface level presentation reasons it might have gotten overlooked or prematurely dismissed.

Edit: Ah, I think what happened is it was evaluated by the suggested actions when scrolling to see the outcomes/results. I am also much... (read more)

I love the disagree votes happening here.

I look forward to reading your post!
 

I'm not very involved with EA/politics but I'd be interested in hearing discussion about how to improve decision making and institution design. For example - a fundamental problem with government bodies is they seem to function well early on, when they are made up of people who believe in the goal and there is a strong unified culture. But suffer from malaise as years pass and both people and systems get entrenched to the point that the goal is secondary. Incentive alignment decays and becomes virtually nonexistent in many governmental bodies.

Of course I a... (read more)

This is great, thank you. Honestly it feels a little telling that this has barely been explored? Despite being THE x-risk? I get that the intervention point happens before it gets to this point, but knowing the problem is pretty core to prevention.

A force smarter/more powerful than us is scary, no matter what form it takes. But we (EA) feels a little swept up in one particular vision of AI timelines that doesn't feel terribly grounded. I understand its important to assume the worst, but its also important to imagine what would be realistic and then intermi... (read more)

I suggest adding your anki deck to the EA anki deck list!
(I took the liberty of adding your link but didn't feel qualified to fully add an entry - please add it!)

What We Owe the Future: A Flashcard Summary
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1539708817

(Not my deck, but definitely an EA anki deck!)
More information here.
 

Everyone wants to live in a better world, but it's very difficult to know how. Some people will tell you the problem is greed, we don't help our neighbors, or are obsessed with materialism. But other people will tell you spirituality is part of the problem, local problems are a distraction from the big picture, and desiring things is what drives us to improve the world.

Getting everyone to believe one thing is impossible with all these different ideas of what is the right way to a better world. Everyone uniting on one belief is not even a good idea: if we a... (read more)

Thank you for sharing, this is useful to my current research goals!

Since I actually did this work myself (in the US) I am going to go into too much information about my experience. Read the bolded bits if you want the summary of important points without the juicy mosquito-abatement details.

I was checking weekly anywhere we historically found mosquito larvae, including adding new locations any time another location was found - much the same as this program does: using a tablet, satellite map, and gps locations. 

I witnessed the larvae populations reducing in response in many places and in other places maintaining a hig... (read more)

Hi! I worked with BTI distribution and mineral oil as a solution to reducing mosquito populations in some environmentally-sensitive parts of the USA. These areas were hit badly with West Nile and started this mosquito reduction program in response. This was my first question too! As a field tech I was given biased information, but my online research agreed with the lines my environmentally-friendly company fed me:
BTI is a bacteria that only mosquitoes and 1 species of midges (in my part of the world) eat and are harmed by. The BTI ruptures their stomach an... (read more)

For the record: Jonas did do that here.

"I think the lack of discussion and materials and research is probably due to resource optimisation towards what people think is highest on the priority list(?)." I don't think it's as deliberate as you seem to think!

If you are talking about the forum, I think familiarity and precedent are a strong influence. (And a smidge popularity.) If you are talking about 8000h: I don't know. Maybe fewer people on the team find it compelling so they never quite get around to it? Or they think it would have less of a positive impact since there are other resources arou... (read more)

You might be interested in the theory that the evolution of morality in humans came from the invention of weapons and cooperative hunting promoting coordination and the ability of subordinates to oust unpopular leaders.  (If you haven't heard of it already)

The successful sociopolitical structure that ultimately replaced the ancestral social dominance hierarchy was an egalitarian political system in which lethal weapons made possible group control of leaders, and group success depended on the ability of leaders to persuade and of followers to contribut