Fergus Fettes
Posts 1
Comments3
Re 5)
Would also like to plug inciteful which seems pretty similar to connectedsearch, which I have had a lot of good results with, and semanticscholar.
Also probably worth watching this space, it shows potential too :).
And while I'm at it, I feel obliged to plug the jolly pirates who make research possible for the rest of us:
- Sci Hub <- top tip, if you cant get a paper, just add 'sci-hub.ru/' to the start of it, without even cutting off the http etc, like so:
Hello all,
long time lurker here. I was doing a bunch of reading today about polygenic screening, and one of the papers was so good that I had to share it, in case anyone interested in animal welfare was unfamiliar with it. The post is awaiting moderation but will presumably be here in due time.
So while I am making my first post I might as well introduce myself.
I have been sort of vaguely EA aligned since I discovered the movement 5ish years ago, listened to every episode of the 80k podcast and read a tonne of related books and blog posts.
I have a background in biophysics, though I am currently working as a software engineer in a scrappy startup to improve my programming skills. I have vague plans to return to research and do a phd at some point but lets see.
EA things I am interested in:
- bio bio bio (everything from biorisk and pandemics to the existential risk posed by radical transhumanism)
- ai (that one came out of nowhere! I mean I used to like reading Yudkowskys stuff thinking it was scifi but here we are. AGI timelines shrinking like spinach in frying pan, hoo-boy)
- global development (have lived, worked and travelled extensively in third world countries. lots of human capital out there being wasted)
- animal welfare! or I was until I gave up on the topic in despair (see my essay above) though I am still a vegan-aligned vegetarian
- philosophy?
- economics?
- i mean its all good stuff basically
Recently I have also been reading some interesting criticisms of EA that have expanded my horizons a little, the ones I enjoyed the most were
- The Nietzschean Challenge to Effective Altruism (Effective Aesthetics (EÆ) sounds awesome)
- Against Effective Altruism (the guy is just a damn fine writer and thinker, though he doesn't seem to propose any alternative which I find annoying)
- Effective Accelerationism (this appeals to my physics background and the parsimony of panpsychism and other such things)
But at the end of the day I think EAs own personal brand of minimally deontic utilitarianism is simple and useful enough for most circumstances. Maybe a little bit of Nietzschean spice when I am feeling in the mood.. and frankly I think fundamentally e/acc is mostly quite compatible, aside from the details of the coming AI apocalypse and [how|whether] to deal with it.
I also felt a little bit like coming out of the woodwork recently after all the twitter drama and cancellation shitstorms. Just to say that I think you folks are doing a fine thing actually, and hopefully the assassins will move on to the next campaign before too long.
Best regards! I will perhaps be slightly more engaged henceforth.
Surely it makes more sense to compare the upside-- someone forming a long lasting and loving relationship.
Maybe that's extreme, but taking a balance of outcomes I doubt it would be 1/100.
Also strange that you chose to say 1/100 and also 100x as many people-- surely if you have high confidence in those numbers then that would balance out by definition? Or is the somewhere where you think this sort of scale insensitivity is valid?