All of EcologyInterventions's Comments + Replies

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

Thank you for your thoughtful response!

1) I'm concerned with our lack of awareness, and obstacles to gaining awareness (our epistemic architecture). I am concerned with the deafening silence in science from many regions of the world.  I am okay with EA restricting its views to those most likely to be universal, but this takes being humble and self-aware.

4) EA only backs this intervention because it performs well in peer-reviewed ‘measured outcomes’. In other words, it’s the difference between giving a community $1000 in solidarity with them and their ... (read more)

I would like to hear why this was downvoted.

I enjoyed skimming your post, and appreciate many of your points.

One concept particularly struck me, "It’s worth noting that if longer human durations are unlikely, this also means larger human population sizes per century are also vanishingly unlikely. "

I often hear the classic argument that "there is a possibility human populations are really really big in the future, and the future is so long that their wellbeing matters really quite a lot." I've never played around with the idea that the is a lot of doubt over large populations for long times. Which mu... (read more)

As far as I can tell low level desire is present early in amoeba and moss, and smoothly escalates into higher level desires in fish and koalas etc. I don't think it makes sense to talk about the presence or absence of desire, but maybe other qualities like agency, selfhood, or need. It's difficult with any of them...

The reason for the enforcement of style within the forum is not to keep out the wisdom and experience of ordinary people, but in the long run, to increase it. It seems a bit backwards that keeping posts out would increases the amount of posts but consider this:

If the forum was a lot of spam about miracle cures and flat earth, few people would be think it's a good place to post their ideas about agricultural reform.

If the forum had lots of good ideas but they were all 1000 page books, few people could read them, and the comments could not discuss one point ... (read more)

I think we'll have to agree to disagree a little bit here, but we agree on the central bit: new evidence must be considered on its own merits, and scientific conclusions must be accepted, however strange and distasteful they are.

But let me share my favorite example of this problem in science:

"For no bias can be more constricting than invisibility--and stasis, inevitably read as absence of evolution, had always been treated as a non-subject. How odd, though, to define the most common of all palaeontological phenomena as beyond interest or notice! Yet paleon... (read more)

I am not familiar with this particular domain, although I know what utilons are, so uh... if this was meant for me, this was not immediately convincing? Or elucidating??

Play by play of my gut reactions: (this is for the sake of imagining what strangers might think, not meant to be taken as serious criticism)

"Negative utilitarians:" okay this is some kinda obscure philosophy thing, isn't it. I'd probably skip it if this were interrupting my fun tiktok videos, but I want to know what an EA tiktok looks like.
:\

"Graph that doesn't illustrate anything I underst... (read more)

Here is a post of EA reasons not to pursue political action and how to do political action well. Check out the electoral politics tag for some of the political efforts EA has done and how they turned out!

From what I understand: Government money is notoriously inaccessible.  Often, it can only be changed by a long process of approvals or people inside organizations who generally have no interest in changing things because stirring the pot would enrage everyone else in the department/their electoral base and possibly break quite a lot of informal arrang... (read more)

See also meetings, density, and alternative ways to be short.

(Sidenote, I swear I read a post almost exactly like this 5ish months ago: First writing with excess verbiage, and then demonstrating how to cut it down. But now I can't find it.)

The main concept of: "what if instead of only increasing resources,  everyone physically needed less resources due to biology" blew my mind the first time I encountered it. It warms my heart to see it appear again.

More seriously: Tallness seems to cause heart and spine issues, as well as seem to have no visible genetic asymptote until we run into awful deadly issues from height. I'm slightly worried that we'll keep growing until it becomes a nasty issue, but keep pressing further into tallness around because it's sexually selected for.

Actually, neverm... (read more)

A butterfly idea is in early stages. It needs creative input, branching out in possibility space, and expansion. 

Versus most forum posts are here for critique, hardening and winnowing down.

I just wanted to say I appreciate you writing this, and I agree the world ought to tolerate and celebrate weirdness more than we currently do. Break-out thinking is inconvenient and useless most of the time, but extremely beneficial some of the time. Obviously weird beliefs ought to be put to the test like any other, but we should celebrate it too, and especially safeguard its generation. I have heard we have become less welcoming to unorthodox worldviews, although it may have been inaccurate.  

A nitpick I have is your particular examples: Spiritual r... (read more)

As MakoYass pointed out this sounds a lot like you are suggesting halting all acquisition of knowledge. While it would handily stop human-created existential risk, I do not think this is possible to implement (as you note, but don't go into how to address). It's sadly another example of solutions like "develop a global culture of coexistence" which would work, but are not practical.

Your post made me think, and I thoroughly applaud the audacity to conceive "unthinkable" directions of inquiry. It made me reconsider my preconceptions! But I think there are so... (read more)

Show how we "will have the judgement and maturity to consistently make wise choices about how to manage ever more, ever larger powers, delivered at an ever faster pace, without limit."

It's impossible to do anything without mistake, much less forever, much less wisdom, much less humanity. =p We are aware of our own fallibility, so we (humanity and EA) build systems to catch early warning signs and counteract mistakes before they get out of hand. 

"Show how we will never make mistakes" is obviously impossible and does not allow for the many other counter... (read more)

I may not have downvoted under normal conditions for the reasons you mentioned. Generally I upvote new posters who seem unfamiliar with EA, or leave comments to encourage further engagement. I definitely don't like to see the votes fall below 0 without explanation (unless its damaging to forum etiquette in some way).  But three factors made me willing to discourage engagement in this present form:

• Two other posts by the same author were made in the span of a few days, both of which seem like they could be worked over more carefully before placing into

"The key point is that plenty of knowledge and data will be dismissed, never published, and/or never encountered by the people with funding to effect change (such as EA grant-makers) simply because of its producers' position within the geopolitics of knowledge. " This is terrible. And I believe EA does care about solving it, though maybe not as much as it should.

"As much as any other part of society, power/knowledge shapes academic research." Science is not the same as social media, but we are in full agreement that it is subject to influence and bias... (read more)