"uh-oh, I’m realizing everyone else here is v**n, I probably need to be very cautious about what I reveal about myself, do I need to hide?"
I would say, as a lacto-vegetarian who goes to vegan events, I never felt this way, though I can see how someone could. When asked, "How long have you been vegan?" I clarify that I'm not vegan -- that I've been vegetarian since January, and, sometimes, that I am thinking about going vegan -- and I ask them the question back. Sometimes they're vegan, sometimes they're not! But it's always a nice icebreaker and a fun experience; it's never been negative for me.
I also think a non-vegan answering the question and hearing back, "That's completely fine!" or "Oh, that's cool, I'm flexitarian myself, actually!" shows that the "vegan" community is not just for vegans but for all animal people.
And I do like “animal people” as a term, though. Sounds cool.
I'd also suggest "So, what's your story?" / "What brings you here?" as an icebreaker, where the context of being at an animal-people event makes it clear what you're asking, without assuming much.
(Disclosure: Charlie significantly helped restart EA at Penn, which I currently lead, so I may be biased toward agreeing with him.)
I've been watching and liking your stuff for a while, and I think the videos are great. You could benefit from an editor who extracts more clips from your interviews (though you're already doing this quite well!). My (limited) understanding is that social media is a consistency and frequency game, and you seem to be hitting the nail on the head with both. I particularly like how you engage with commenters in good faith, as you do in the street interviews.
I've sent your stuff to a couple of friends when they've said something along the lines of, "Normal, everyday people don't know what's happening and don't get to weigh in on the transformation AI will bring," because your work is the number-one example that comes to mind whenever someone says that. I think you should keep it up!
I agree with 1; I got the same impression from speaking with <100 Manhattan residents while street canvassing for Alex Bores. But Manhattan residents seemed more informed than the people in your interviews (prob. because they're more educated / wealthier / more politically active).
I agree with 2, especially this:
To summarize, the arguments for more transparency, safety, or regulation are actually quite Overpowered to the average person conditional on having ~soonish timelines and actually being prompted to think about 10 years from now.
I think that even without explicitly considering timelines, "transparency/safety/regulation around corporations building black boxes that might replace jobs" is very easy for the average person to support.
I partially agree with 3. I've heard everyday people mention fears about job loss a lot. Loss of meaning, less so, though that's probably because I didn't discuss it as much and because most of my convos were <10 minutes (too short to reach deep topics).
I think human extinction is believable but people don't actually believe it yet (i.e. they haven't thought about it enough to have a belief). I asked many everyday people about their concerns regarding AI, and they never mentioned extinction, but I also never directly raised the possibility.
On 4, I don't think the comparison between the "EA community" and Torchbearer is fair. Torchbearer is specifically focused on supporting advocacy, while the EA community is very broad. I suspect your quick take didn't break containment because it didn't reach the right people.
Also, consider cross-posting this to LW; I think it might get more traction.
Basically, if the creator has good justification for their belief, they should be able to give you that justification. If they can't, then why does their belief mean anything?
From a Bayesian perspective: if I hold credence P in X, and the creator says their credence is 100%, I update toward them because they are more reliable. Same way I'd move toward "vaccines work" if I were agnostic and learned that 90% of scientists believe they do (i.e. I don't need to see each [or any] scientist's reasoning/evidence to update toward their view). So the creator's belief can be evidence via reliability.
I agree that if the creator believes X there's some evidence for X somewhere; I just don't think that evidence has to be revealed for me to update. (Note: Scientists have a track record and the creator doesn't, but it's not the track record itself that makes me update, it's reliability; for scientists I get reliability via their track record, and for the creator it's a medium-confidence assumption [less-defensible, I know])
Also, "if they can't give you the justification" assumes silence = inability. A creator stating a belief without the reasoning/evidence doesn't mean they can't do so, just that they didn't. Besides, maybe they can't communicate; does that mean there is nothing to communicate? I don't think so. Either way (or other ways I can't think of, beyond choosing not to and not being able to communicate), I think learning about the creator's belief warrants an update.
Also, it’s not just the intuitions themselves that could change, but the confidence in them. Our intuitions (esp. when taken to their logical conclusions) contradict each other a lot; however, when doing moral philosophy, we often prioritize the higher-confidence one (e.g., my intuition that harming someone with no benefit to any is bad, beats my intuition that murderers deserve punishment). Confidence seems to vary between people (anecdotally), so if we were to scale up cognitively, I imagine that the intuitions we think will win could change.
Disagree. It would be evidence that the creator of the universe believes Kantian ethics is true. It would only be evidence if we have reason to believe that the creator of the universe is especially likely to be right about ethics, which I don't think we do.
Agree that it would be stronger evidence for the creator/simulator believing Kantian ethics is true. I, however, also think that the creator believing X is true is some evidence that X is true, since the creator would reasonably have more power and knowledge, which makes me guess that they might be more likely than us to be right (hence the update toward their view).
Compared to the idea of different human philosophers taking different approaches and ultimately agreeing on ethics, it seems to me that this is only different in degree, in that the super-philosophers are better at philosophy.
Partially agree. The median AI super-philosopher would be better at developing and evaluating arguments than the median human philosopher, but that wouldn't be the only differentiator. There would be more AIs, and the entire process would be more systematic, allowing us to ask moral questions and receive higher-quality answers in a much shorter time. This matters because even if human philosophy is enough to reach true answers, there is less of a reason to be "on the search" if the rate of learning is too slow for big updates on moral claims to happen during our lifetimes.
If you have the ability to design minds, then it should be trivial to cause those minds to believe any ethical framework you want them to believe.
I think this assumes that moral intuitions are entirely downstream of the design of the mind. Also, having the ability to mostly force ethical frameworks into designed minds does not mean that you can't avoid doing this. The evidence would be weak(er) if we did not try to avoid this failure mode. I think simulating already-existing minds and then trying to idealize their cognition could lessen this distortion from us. Very naive guesses for ways to "scale up cognition" while avoiding "human influence": scaling up their neural capacity, or simulating millions of generations and letting evolution do its thing.
I think EAG/EAGx conferences should try (if possible) to avoid venues under active corporate campaign targeting for animal welfare failures.
I recently went to a protest against Marriott over their unfulfilled cage-free egg commitment and couldn't help but think back to EAGxDC which was held at one of their hotels in May.
I don't think the EAGxDC organizers intentionally ignored this; they probably didn't know, or the venue was just very logistically convenient (which I think outweighs this concern).
But I wonder whether organizers generally consider this when choosing venues. I feel like they should, assuming there are other options not under campaign targeting.
The NYC one will have more people, so I think you'd find more people to 1-1 on US-China AI governance. But it depends on how many 1-1s you want to have. If it's just a few, then both are equal; if you are willing to have 10+ 1-1s on US-China AI governance, I imagine it'd be slightly harder to get that at Berkeley.
Never thought about how labels could affect animal welfare until now.
Apparently the Good Food Insitute is looking into this. A study from 2022 had the following highlights:
Differentiation: Overall, “cultivated meat” and “cell-cultured meat” are similarly effective at differentiating from conventional meat.
Accuracy & descriptiveness: “Cultivated meat” and “cell-cultivated meat” are the most accurate and descriptive terms.
Appeal: “Cultivated meat” is the most appealing term, followed by “cultured meat.”
Use: When asked which names they could imagine using personally, more than four times as many respondents selected “cultivated meat” compared to “cell-cultured meat.” 75% of companies use the term “cultivated meat.”
You can run a 5 or 6-week one. Also, you can plan it so that students do the readings together, in-person, then discuss.
Good luck!
I would say, as a lacto-vegetarian who goes to vegan events, I never felt this way, though I can see how someone could. When asked, "How long have you been vegan?" I clarify that I'm not vegan -- that I've been vegetarian since January, and, sometimes, that I am thinking about going vegan -- and I ask them the question back. Sometimes they're vegan, sometimes they're not! But it's always a nice icebreaker and a fun experience; it's never been negative for me.
I also think a non-vegan answering the question and hearing back, "That's completely fine!" or "Oh, that's cool, I'm flexitarian myself, actually!" shows that the "vegan" community is not just for vegans but for all animal people.
And I do like “animal people” as a term, though. Sounds cool.
I'd also suggest "So, what's your story?" / "What brings you here?" as an icebreaker, where the context of being at an animal-people event makes it clear what you're asking, without assuming much.
(Disclosure: Charlie significantly helped restart EA at Penn, which I currently lead, so I may be biased toward agreeing with him.)
I've been watching and liking your stuff for a while, and I think the videos are great. You could benefit from an editor who extracts more clips from your interviews (though you're already doing this quite well!). My (limited) understanding is that social media is a consistency and frequency game, and you seem to be hitting the nail on the head with both. I particularly like how you engage with commenters in good faith, as you do in the street interviews.
I've sent your stuff to a couple of friends when they've said something along the lines of, "Normal, everyday people don't know what's happening and don't get to weigh in on the transformation AI will bring," because your work is the number-one example that comes to mind whenever someone says that. I think you should keep it up!
I agree with 1; I got the same impression from speaking with <100 Manhattan residents while street canvassing for Alex Bores. But Manhattan residents seemed more informed than the people in your interviews (prob. because they're more educated / wealthier / more politically active).
I agree with 2, especially this:
I think that even without explicitly considering timelines, "transparency/safety/regulation around corporations building black boxes that might replace jobs" is very easy for the average person to support.
I partially agree with 3. I've heard everyday people mention fears about job loss a lot. Loss of meaning, less so, though that's probably because I didn't discuss it as much and because most of my convos were <10 minutes (too short to reach deep topics).
I think human extinction is believable but people don't actually believe it yet (i.e. they haven't thought about it enough to have a belief). I asked many everyday people about their concerns regarding AI, and they never mentioned extinction, but I also never directly raised the possibility.
On 4, I don't think the comparison between the "EA community" and Torchbearer is fair. Torchbearer is specifically focused on supporting advocacy, while the EA community is very broad. I suspect your quick take didn't break containment because it didn't reach the right people.
Also, consider cross-posting this to LW; I think it might get more traction.
From a Bayesian perspective: if I hold credence P in X, and the creator says their credence is 100%, I update toward them because they are more reliable. Same way I'd move toward "vaccines work" if I were agnostic and learned that 90% of scientists believe they do (i.e. I don't need to see each [or any] scientist's reasoning/evidence to update toward their view). So the creator's belief can be evidence via reliability.
I agree that if the creator believes X there's some evidence for X somewhere; I just don't think that evidence has to be revealed for me to update. (Note: Scientists have a track record and the creator doesn't, but it's not the track record itself that makes me update, it's reliability; for scientists I get reliability via their track record, and for the creator it's a medium-confidence assumption [less-defensible, I know])
Also, "if they can't give you the justification" assumes silence = inability. A creator stating a belief without the reasoning/evidence doesn't mean they can't do so, just that they didn't. Besides, maybe they can't communicate; does that mean there is nothing to communicate? I don't think so. Either way (or other ways I can't think of, beyond choosing not to and not being able to communicate), I think learning about the creator's belief warrants an update.
On 1, I'm not sure I understand why moral intuitions wouldn't change in a CEV. Why would intutions not be partly downstream of cognitive capacity? (Also: this is probably cherry-picking (Googled the question), but people with higher cognitive (verabl) abilities seem to have weaker "purity"-based moral intutions.)
Also, it’s not just the intuitions themselves that could change, but the confidence in them. Our intuitions (esp. when taken to their logical conclusions) contradict each other a lot; however, when doing moral philosophy, we often prioritize the higher-confidence one (e.g., my intuition that harming someone with no benefit to any is bad, beats my intuition that murderers deserve punishment). Confidence seems to vary between people (anecdotally), so if we were to scale up cognitively, I imagine that the intuitions we think will win could change.
On 2, I agree. Didn't think of this.
Thank you for the comment! I mostly agree.
Agree that it would be stronger evidence for the creator/simulator believing Kantian ethics is true. I, however, also think that the creator believing X is true is some evidence that X is true, since the creator would reasonably have more power and knowledge, which makes me guess that they might be more likely than us to be right (hence the update toward their view).
Partially agree. The median AI super-philosopher would be better at developing and evaluating arguments than the median human philosopher, but that wouldn't be the only differentiator. There would be more AIs, and the entire process would be more systematic, allowing us to ask moral questions and receive higher-quality answers in a much shorter time. This matters because even if human philosophy is enough to reach true answers, there is less of a reason to be "on the search" if the rate of learning is too slow for big updates on moral claims to happen during our lifetimes.
I think this assumes that moral intuitions are entirely downstream of the design of the mind. Also, having the ability to mostly force ethical frameworks into designed minds does not mean that you can't avoid doing this. The evidence would be weak(er) if we did not try to avoid this failure mode. I think simulating already-existing minds and then trying to idealize their cognition could lessen this distortion from us. Very naive guesses for ways to "scale up cognition" while avoiding "human influence": scaling up their neural capacity, or simulating millions of generations and letting evolution do its thing.
Thanks, I didn't know that, esp. the booking timeline. The campaign over Marriott's noncompliance apparently started in late 2025, so it makes sense.
I think EAG/EAGx conferences should try (if possible) to avoid venues under active corporate campaign targeting for animal welfare failures.
I recently went to a protest against Marriott over their unfulfilled cage-free egg commitment and couldn't help but think back to EAGxDC which was held at one of their hotels in May.
I don't think the EAGxDC organizers intentionally ignored this; they probably didn't know, or the venue was just very logistically convenient (which I think outweighs this concern).
But I wonder whether organizers generally consider this when choosing venues. I feel like they should, assuming there are other options not under campaign targeting.
The NYC one will have more people, so I think you'd find more people to 1-1 on US-China AI governance. But it depends on how many 1-1s you want to have. If it's just a few, then both are equal; if you are willing to have 10+ 1-1s on US-China AI governance, I imagine it'd be slightly harder to get that at Berkeley.
Never thought about how labels could affect animal welfare until now.
Apparently the Good Food Insitute is looking into this. A study from 2022 had the following highlights:
Great job starting this! One small correction, though:
Not quite. Check these out:
Also, there are groups that are not strictly "Arab" but are (semi?)active in the region like Muslims for EA and EA Israel.
Good luck!