All of johnburidan's Comments + Replies
Forgive me if I'm thick, but isn't this equivalent to saying the elasticities of supply and demand for offense and defense rarely change over time? The price might go up or down, factor markets might change, but ratios remain stable?
This makes sense, but I worry it is not Hayekian enough. People are the ones who respond to price changes; nations are the ones who respond to price changes in the cost of defense, deterrence, and attack. In the long run, there is equilibrium. But in the short run, everyone is making adjustments all the time and the costs fluct...
I can't believe I didn't read this until just now. You are attacking unstated assumption of the philanthropy community writ large, but which includes EA. One is that better psychology is an area for philanthropy and altruism minded people to care about. Most people in our society put the needs of the body far higher than psychological/"spiritual" needs (and neglect taking care of the psychological distress of others as a work of charity). I think this argument would actually have to be won in order for the psychedelics argument to work as a promising new s...
I love this!
How to Measure Anything is in the Global Poverty section, so don't forget to fix that!
Governance could probably handle The Myth of the Rational Voter.
I wonder if The Model Thinker should be included as a high-value easy to read mathematical modelling book.
Is there a physical location or office? Whom does the role report to? What are example emergencies where reservists would be activated? What would they do when activated? Are there comparable orgs in other domains I should index to when thinking about ALERT? How many hours / week, roughly? What does it mean that the role would not be on duty most days? Is there an existing staff or would one need to be hired? When the National Guard is activated they are called away to a physical space to work with others, is it like that?
Great questions. Most of the below could be reshaped by the director:
- No physical location - director has discretion. (One cool idea we had was to enlist existing teams at EA orgs, so that they're constantly building readiness and already colocated or functionally remote.)
- Role reports to the board, currently Jan Kulveit, Vishal Maini, Ales Flidr and me but likely to need more.
- Some unvetted examples we came up with: COVID in late December 2019; Russia-Ukraine (minor investigation from December 2021, expanding to active nuclear risk forecasting by end January
The idea that life is inherently sweet and good is from Aristotle (Politics III.6).
...And therefore, men, even when they do not require one another's help, desire to live together; not but that they are also brought together by their common interests in proportion as they severally attain to any measure of well-being. This is certainly the chief end, both of individuals and of states. And also for the sake of mere life (in which there is possibly some noble element so long as the evils of existence do not greatly overbalance the good) mankind meet toget
I am open for correction here, but I believe it works like so:
Consider this argument from The New Geography of Jobs. Productivity is higher where jobs are of the smarter type. However in those places blue collar jobs are higher paid and in demand too. The high productivity job-holders have more income to dispose on a variety of service sectors. But if there is not enough saturation of the labor market there will not be the quantity and quality of service sector jobs will be lower and the cost will be higher. If the service sector labor market is significantly constricted, the productive, smart jobs will be less productive too.
Is the birthrate of Western countries a long-term risk, given that even immigrants and developing countries also seem to have falling rates? And if so, what is it a risk of? What's the downside?
Rare voice of disagreement here, or at least an alternative perspective. I agree with basic idea, but it's too specific.
My motto: One should not let school get in the way of one's education. Sometimes that means taking fewer classes... Usually it means not wasting time in other ways, though. You shouldn't cut classes until you've already cut out many other non-educational low impact things. Classes are usually the most valuable thing offered by a university - finding the good ones pays dividends longer than most other things one does in college.
After fres...
When you have these long term predictions which you plan on keeping track of, it is helpful, if possible, to create multiple models to apply to each forecast so that in the retrospective one can determine which, if any of the models, was more successful than the others.
So perhaps you have a prediction about how many volunteers will be required for a particular initiative to save x lives 10 years out. If you keep three separate forecasting reports which are explicit about their reasoning, then the iterative improvement process can happen a bit more quickly.
Will MacAskill: I think this was a huge realization for me. And I have to thank a very excellent therapist, who I have subsequently put a bunch of EAs onto. I think she was really confused with why she gets so many referrals from me. Because when I came in there — in 2012, 2013, probably even earlier, 2011 — I definitely had this mindset that the self-flagellation, the negative blame propaganda was very important. I remember she said, “Well, you seem very stressed.” I was like, “Of course I’m stressed. I’m a utilitarian.”
Rob Wiblin: “We have to suffer!”
Wil... (read more)