KFM

K.F. Martin

Student @ St. John's College (Annapolis)
35 karmaJoined Pursuing an undergraduate degreeUnited States

Bio

I'm a Sophomore at a liberal arts school, and I feel like EA is something I should keep an eye on.

Comments
19

It makes enough sense for you to disagree with it.

Thank you for this, both points are great food for thought! Oscar Horta convinced me that care for farmed animals—closer to us, without the public worry of messing with nature—is well condusive to advancing care for wild animals. Bruce Friedrich, also, brought up a point I think a lot about; that people more easily care about animals when they aren't eating meat, having to justify it, which I infer also leads into concern for wild animals.

I heard this in their respective Morality is Hard and 80,000 Hours interviews.

"Not enough is being done, somebody has to do it, and it may as well be us." That's what you all at Sentient Futures say and do about the future of all conscous beings at the coming of superintelligence, something I wouldn't have found hope in without the out-of-the-box thinking you've done, to spare concious beings by numbers I'd seem crazy to mention.

The results indeed seem bleak, but I'm glad someone's done the incredibly in-depth forecasting to foster a strategy against such scary things; thanks to you all and others scattered about, we're not living in a world where nobody has thought about this, let alone worked on it. You gathered the insight and put in the effort to so thoroughly factor in not two, but ten groups of key players who are soon to be shaping the future. The deep knowledge of several differing yet relevant studies is phenomenal to see in the effort for animals.

A particularly scary insight was the idea animal advocates could be branded as terrorists, something important I hadn't thought of before. As for the thing you were cleverest to factor in with this, I can't pick an answer. It could be the spread of Chinese tech to Africa, an astute geopolitical observation, with oppurtune eyes to where development is happening fast. Perhaps it's the inclusion of not-all-bad-intentioned motivations that bring Golden Wing into existence, something I feel will be glossed over by us advocates so used to evil from factory farming expansion. Maybe it's the consideration that the EU and UK could position itself as "the last bastion of liberal democracy" in a world where the far right becomes more of a norm in the US. The whole project is made of clever.

You've gone above and beyond with this extensively-considered trial to provide much information that we'll need. Thank you, on behalf of everyone you spare, for everything you do. 🐔

Aah, thank you! The in-depth views in this course, of specific problems any individual animal will go through, seem to be what I was looking for. 👍

Thank you for sharing! Being new to this stuff, I was just about to look for an unsugarcoated documentary to help me grasp the severity of suffering in the wild and importance of this issue.

Both very good points: the ick factor seems to be an important advantage to our effort, and for us early birds to be here before it's a political contest, or a livelihood, is indeed another opportunity. 👍

As somewhat of an amateur, it's good to hear I'm on the right track taking expected value as a core concept of EA, factoring it in with stuff daily. I'm reassured when I read the experts lend the same level of credence to it: a way of doing things that likely does an astronomical amount of good. Thank you for another contribution of great, well-written wisdom, Bentham! 🦐

This is an excellent post. I went into this with a very cursory understanding of biocomputing, and by the end of it, am convinced as strongly as I'm intended to be of what you seek to make happen. I understand clearly and agree that we're at a very opportune time to enact a ban on most biocomputing, that a ban is very reasonable, and that it is quite possible.

In a world where animal agriculture was some novel and experimental concept in our modern society, it seems likely that the public, knowing what it would entail, would easily be on board with a ban before it became mainstream.

The consideration you give to concerns of framing risk and the uncertainty of moral value at this current stage shows that you've thought this stuff through very deeply and very professionally, and does well to quell the little uncertainty I had going in. The two arguments that convinced me most are those on setting an extensive precedent and the success of early action on other scientific issues.

Very nice work! I wish you great success in this endeavor you are already working hard for, and thank you on behalf of the conscious agents this effort may well save. 🧠

Just some idiomatic language for animal rights efforts in effective altruism. 😁

This solid post of yours gets me thinking, and clears up a lot of the confusion I've had about how AI can negatively impact animals, and humans, too. I thought it was a weird topic to bring up the first time I've heard about it, but have been giving it credence the more I've seen the experts do so, and now I have some comprehensive reasons as to why this intersection may be very important to keep an eye on.

It's some valuable food for thought for the ever-multiplied situation of animals in longtermism, which has seemed very important to get into as I join the corps to do what we can for them. Thank you much for your contribution to early-stage learners like me here, and for keeping most of the world in mind while working to protect the future.

Load more