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.

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.

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.

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:

• 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.”

Great job starting this! One small correction, though:

... the first official EA community in Egypt and the Arab world.

Not quite. Check these out:

• EA in Arabic
• EA at NYU Abu Dhabi
• Effective Altruism UAE
• EA at American University of Sharjah
• Effective Altruism Middle East (currently dead)

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!

I specified undergrads because I assume they're similar to me. This can of course apply to non-undergrads.

Also, I recommend checking prediction markets and prioritizing elections that are close calls (e.g. don't volunteer for a 90%-likely-to-win candidate, or a 10% one that is dwarfed by two other 40% candidates). Aim for 35-50% (judgement call)

More EA undergrads should do political volunteering. It's impactful AND fun.

Choose an election that's impactful (e.g. AI safety candidate) and neglected (e.g. primaries in always-blue/red places), couch-crash the weekend there, and volunteer with the campaign.

I say this after doing 15 hours of street canvassing myself. I was surprised by how anecdotally impactful and fun it was. If you like people-watching, talking to strangers, and/or joining passionate projects for a weekend, I think you'll also love this.

I wish I thought of this earlier.

Literature on the impact (Claude-generated): Kalla & Broockman's meta-analysis of 49 field experiments finds zero average persuasive effect in general elections, but effects do show up when voters lack a partisan cue (i.e. primaries and ballot measures). Mann & Haenschen (2024) find mobilization effects (e.g. canvassing) are 33-76% larger in low-attention races than in high-attention ones. Your marginal volunteer hour goes much further in a primary.

Thank you for the correction and apologies for the error.

I'm actually not sure where 0.75% came from now that I look at it. I wrote this a month ago and cannot remember my state of mind. I probably didn't double-check the number while Claude-source-finding.

I'm adding a disclaimer at the top of the post and will update the calculator. Thanks again.