All of Gus Docker's Comments + Replies

Fantastic post! This is more informative AND more interesting than most philosophy papers on the topic. You accurately summarise meta-ethical hedonism and provide fair criticisms. 

This is up there with your post on infinite ethics. 

If I can find the time, I'll write down why I disagree and post it here or send you an email. 
 

We discuss US-China relations and avoiding nuclear war. Both are EA cause areas. 

I don't think we can say yet that Samo's forecasts have been "pretty wrong". 

As far as I'm aware, he's only made this forecast: 

"The Ukrainian forces are fighting valiantly and we are in the fog of war.

Given my best understanding of the military situation, Russia looks to occupy Kyiv as well as at least 70% of internationally recognized Ukrainian territory by Day 50 of the invasion." 

https://twitter.com/SamoBurja/status/1499883211748433932 

And this forecast has not been resolved yet. I hope he's wrong, of course. 

I read Scott Alexa... (read more)

Thanks, me too. 

If you have any questions for Samo, you could write them here. 

Thanks for making this list. 

I'll be recording a podcast with Samo on the 9th of March.  We'll discuss these themes as well as the consequences and possible solutions to  underpopulation.

1
Thomas
2y
Thank you for having Samo on the podcast, Gus. I find him tremendously insightful, and I eagerly look forward to hearing what he has to say.
2
MichaelStJules
3y
I think this should be the default option for your donations (setting aside how much and when you want to donate), and you should either defer to them or make a serious effort to beat them (possibly with their help). You can talk to the fund managers for advice. These fund managers have a good idea if how money is being spent within their causes and how their grants/donations might affect where other funding goes (e.g. where Open Phil grants). It could be worth asking them for estimates of the cost-effectiveness of their marginal grants, although I don't know if they will actually keep track of this, and it could have extremely high uncertainty, depending on the cause.

Glad you found it useful Peter  

I've been very influenced by Hewitt's meta-ethics myself, and I highly recommend reading her PhD. You can also get it in book form here: https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Value-Grounded-Phenomenal-Consciousness/dp/1534768017/ 

3
Pablo
3y
There's a stub Wiki article on introspective hedonism, with a couple of additional references for further reading.

Glad you liked the episode :) I had limited time with Kent, so I didn't get to ask him everything I wanted to ask. I hope to have more pleasure/pain scientists on in the future, maybe from the same lab. 

Hi Filip 

Thank you, glad you're enjoying the podcast :)

The new method is persufflation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryopreservation#Persufflation 

Thanks! 

I don't know whether QRI could test that hypothesis in such a setup. Based on what I know, they're going to test the Symmetry Theory of Valence more directly.