All of Guy Raveh's Comments + Replies
Sorry for being this blunt, but EA is about using evidence and reason to identify the most effective ways to help others. I can't possibly see how operating on a vague guess is on par with that.
This criticism is independent of the fact that I still claim a "negative life" is not a concept we should incorporate into moral theories, and that we definitely shouldn't aim to just cull all animals whose lives we somehow think are negative.
Strongly up voted.
Compare with this quote from MacAskill's "What We Owe the Future chapter 7", showing exactly the problem you describe:
If scientists with Einstein-level research abilities were cloned and trained from an early age, or if human beings were genetically engineered to have greater research abilities, this could compensate for having fewer people overall and thereby sustain technological progress.
I largely agree with you but I want to point to a small issue with terminology: what does "supporting Palestine" mean here?
I think it's both vague (do you mean a current entity? A future state? Something else? And what does supporting it mean?) and unnecessary (in my view strongly objecting to what Israel's doing in Gaza and in the West Bank is consistent with most political views other than those who for some reason put extremely low value on the lives of Palestinians compared to Israelis).
Mmm, good point. In the paragraph I was implicitly trying to talk about supporting material changes to the Gaza conflict specifically and the military occupation and forced settlements of Gaza and the West Bank broadly (i.e. not sending offensive military aid to Israel; as opposed to recognition of a Palestinian state represented by the PLO at the U.N.). In general my point was to highlight the tension between:
- In the U.S., U.K., Australia, (and likely other countries I’m less familiar with), the two largest parties both support continuation of direct mil
FWIW the latest estimate I heard from Gaza was 100,000 dead (many of which haven't been reported by Hamas) (sorry for the paywall) which is on the same order of magnitude - and as opposed to the Ukraine war, most of them aren't combatants. It's up to you what to make of that.
Thanks. I avoid honey because it's easier for me as a vegan to just avoid all foods involving farmed animals. But some of your points seem valid and I'll need to think it over.
Some things I disagreed with:
- The net-positive vs. net-negative framing, although you addressed this.
- The claim about not contributing financially by buying honey having no effect - doesn't seem right since the profit margin is still lower that way.
- Ignoring environmental effects and biodiversity, though I get that the post is in response to a different claim.
- That increases in variance are associated with imminent tipping points. The IPCC characterizes the latter as “low confidence” because the same metrics also rise in unforced scenarios.
What about autocorrelation? I [edit: mistakenly] think Ditlevsen & Ditlevsen themselves identify this as a stronger warning sign than variance.
It's not that I'm ignoring group loyalty, just that the word "traitor" seems so strong to me that I don't think there's any smaller group here that's owed that much trust. I could imagine a close friend calling me that, but not a colleague. I could imagine a researcher saying I "betrayed" them if I steal and publish their results as my own after they consulted me, but that's a much weaker word.
[Context: I come from a country where you're labeled a traitor for having my anti-war political views, and I don't feel such usage of this word has done much good for society here...]
Sellout (in the context of Epoch) would apply to someone e.g. concealing data or refraining from publishing a report in exchange for a proposed job in an existing AI company.
As for traitor, I think the only group here that can be betrayed is humanity as a whole, so as long as one believes they're doing something good for humanity I don't think it'd ever apply.
Yes, but if at some point you find out, for example, that your model of morality leads to a conclusion that one should kill all humans, you'd probably conclude that your model is wrong rather than actually go through with it.
It's an extreme example, but at its basis every model is somehow an approximation stemming from our internal moral intuition. Be it that life is better than death, or happiness better than pain, or satisfying desires better than frustration, or that following god's commands is better than ignoring them, etc.
No, that's not what I think. I think it's rather dangerous and probably morally bad to seek out "negative lives" in order to stop them. And I think we should not be interfering with nature in ways we do not really understand. The whole idea of wild animal welfare seems to me not only unsupported morally but also absurd and probably a bad thing in practice.
In principle - though I can't say I've been consistent about it. I've supported ending our family dog's misery when she was diagnosed with pretty bad cancer, and I still stand behind that decision. On the other hand I don't think I would ever apply this to an animal one has had no interaction with.
On a meta level, and I'm adding this because it's relevant to your other comment: I think it's fine to live with such contradictions. Given our brain architecture, I don't expect human morality to be translatable to a short and clear set of rules.
I don't think this is a point against valuing animal lives (to some extent) as much as it's a point against utilitarianism. Which I agree with. I didn't downvote because I don't think a detailed calculation in itself is harmful, but when you reach these kinds of conclusions is probably the point to acknowledge pure utilitarianism might be a doomed idea.
15 months later, I see Ezrah updated his post to say his views have changed, and so have mine. I think you were basically right. Not about "pro-Israel propaganda talking points", because I believe Ezrah was genuine; but you were right about the urgent need, in that time already, for a ceasefire.
In the turmoil following the Oct 7 massacre I was far too optimistic about the possibility of the Israeli war effort being guided by restrained and relatively benign figures. It took me another couple months after the post to start protesting for a ceasefire myself, and another few months to basically give up. Then, Israel breaking the ceasefire a few weeks ago was the final straw.
I only learned from this post that Moskowitz left the forum, and it makes me somewhat sad. On the one hand, I'm barely on the forum myself and I might have made the same decision in his position. On the other hand, I thought it very important that he was participating in the discourse about the projects he was funding, and now the two avenues of talking with him (through DEAM and the forum) are gone. I'm not sure these were the right platforms to begin with, but it'd be nice if there were some other public platform like that.
Upvoted because I'm glad you answered the question (and didn't use EA grant money for this).
Disagreevoted because as an IMO medalist, I neither think science olympiad medalists are really such a useful audience, nor do I see any value in disseminating said fanfiction to potential alignment researchers.
Anecdotally, approximately everyone who's now working on AI safety with Russian origins got into it because of HPMOR. Just a couple of days ago, an IOI gold medalist reached out to me, they've been going through ARENA.
HPMOR tends to make people with that kind of background act more on trying to save the world. It also gives some intuitive sense for some related stuff (up to "oh, like the mirror from HPMOR?"), but this is a lot less central than giving people the ~EA values and making them actually do stuff.
(Plus, at this point, the book is well-known enoug...
Personally I don't believe in a "trusted person", as a concept. I think EA has had its fun trying to be a high trust environment where some large things are kept private, and it backfired horribly.
I'll take <agree> <disagree> votes to indicate how compelling this would be to readers.
That was the aim of my comment as well, so I do hope more people actually vote on it.
I don't have any insight into why this grantee wanted to remain anonymous.
I do know of some situations in the animal advocacy space, and advocacy space in general, where it is strategic to not have on the public record (or as little as possible) where one is receiving funding from. Reasons for this might include:
- Increased government scrutiny and harassment as a 'foreign agent' by receiving money from abroad.
- Exposing how groups and initiatives might be connected can damage how their targets interact with them. Ie bad and good cop initiatives having the sam
One idea I've had to try and resolve this issue for donors is to have all private grants audited by a trusted animal welfare person who doesn't work on the fund (e.g. Lewis Bollard) and commit to publishing their comments in payout reports. I think they'd be able to say things like "I agree that the private grants should be kept private and on average they were about as cost-effective as the public grants".
I'll take <agree> <disagree> votes to indicate how compelling this would be to readers.
I came to this discussion by following a link from the Animal Welfare Fund's report where it gave out a large grant which isn't publicly disclosed.
Looks like the number is just for 2024, it doesn't really say what the previous numbers were (e.g. before the FTX scandal when most attendees could be reimbursed for flights and accommodation).
Full disclosure: I was rejected from an EAG, in 2022 I think (after attending one the year before).
With all the scandals we've seen in the last few years, I think it should be very evident how important transparency is. See also my explanation from last year.
...some who didn't want to be named would have not come if they needed to be on a public list, so barring such people seems silly...
How is it silly? It seems perfectly acceptable, and even preferable, for people to be involved in shaping EA only if they agree for their leadership to be scrutinized.
The EA movement absolutely cannot carry on with the "let's allow people to do whatever without any...
How is it silly? It seems perfectly acceptable, and even preferable, for people to be involved in shaping EA only if they agree for their leadership to be scrutinized.
My argument is that barring them doesn't stop them from shaping EA, just mildly inconveniences them, because much of the influence happens outside such conferences
With all the scandals we've seen in the last few years, I think it should be very evident how important transparency is
Which scandals do you believe would have been avoided with greater transparency, especially transparency o...
Just a reminder that I think it's the wrong choice to allow attendees to leave their name off the published list.
Thanks for resurfacing this take, Guy.
There's a trade-off here, but I think some attendees who can provide valuable input wouldn't attend if their name was shared publicly and that would make the event less valuable for the community.
That said, perhaps one thing we can do is emphasise the benefits of sharing their name (increases trust in the event/leadership, greater visibility for the community about direction/influence) when they RSVP for the event, I'll note that for next time as an idea.
This seems fine to me - I expect that attending this is not a large fraction of most attendee's impact on EA, and that some who didn't want to be named would have not come if they needed to be on a public list, so barring such people seems silly (I expect there's some people who would tolerate being named as the cost of coming too, of course). I would be happy to find some way to incentivise people being named.
And really, I don't think it's that important that a list of attendees be published. What do you see as the value here?
I'm not making any claims either way about that. I'm just pointing out (contra Matthew) that it is clearly not "irrelevant spam". Your objections are substantive, not procedural. Folks who want to censor views they find offensive should be honest about what they're doing, not pretend that they're just filtering out viagra ads.
I downvoted and disagreevoted, though I waited until you replied to reassess.
I did so because I see absolutely no gain from doing this, I think the opportunity cost means it's net negative, and I oppose the hype around prediction markets - it seems to me like the movement is obsessed with them but practically they haven't led to any good impact.
Edit: regarding 'noticing we are surprised' - one would think this result is surprising, otherwise there'd be voices against the high amount of funding for EA conferences?
Small note: I don't know if it's my own English at fault, but I interpreted "7x below the WHO threshold" as meaning "7 times worse than the threshold" and only understood the actual meaning as I looked at the actual numbers later. Might be worth wording it differently.