All of CalebMaresca's Comments + Replies

Hi Jason, thanks for this. I was not aware of this review article. There is a new review article that came out this year, which concludes that there is insufficient evidentiary basis for harm from high protein intake. In particular, it seems like some of the results of previous studies may have been confounded with calorie intake.

I'm not a nutritionist or an exercise scientist, so I could be interpreting this incorrectly, but I think you are overly dismissive of the idea that people should be eating more protein.

The guideline's recommendation of 0.7 to 1 gram per kilogram daily represents the minimum intake needed to prevent malnutrition and maintain nitrogen balance; it is insufficient for optimal muscle growth when combined with strength training.^[1] For people who are trying to increase their muscle mass, Huberman's suggestion is accurate and helpful.^[2] Since muscle m... (read more)

Now, this isn’t the best way to maximize expected value. If you were an expected value maximizing robot, you would not pursue this strategy. You would say “bleep bloop, this brings about 93.5 fewer expected utils than the other strategy.” But I assume you are not an EV maximizing robot.

Hmmm. This is interesting, as diversification is expected utility maximizing in the finance context. The fact that it is not EV maximizing in the utilitarian framework makes me wonder if there is something wrong with the framing.

The obvious difference is that EV is ris... (read more)

Thanks for this Phil,

A couple of questions regarding SWE:

“Second-wave endogenous” (I’ll write “SWE”) growth models posit instead that technology grows exponentially with a constant or with a growing population. The idea is that process efficiency—the quantity of a given good producible with given labor and/or capital inputs—grows exponentially with constant research effort, as in a first-wave endogenous model; but when population grows, we develop more goods, leaving research effort per good fixed.

Only one SWE model avoids a conclusion along these li

I'm imagining something that is Cobb-Douglas between capital and land. Growth should be exponential (not super exponential) when A_auto is growing at a constant rate, same as a regular Cobb-Douglas production function between capital and labor. Specifically, I was thinking something like this:

X_old^beta(A_old K_old^alpha L^{1-alpha})^(1-beta) + X_auto^beta(A_auto K_auto)^(1-beta)

st X_old + X_auto = X_total (allocating land between the two production technologies)

As to your second point, yes, you are correct, as long as A_old is constant wages would not increase.

Thanks! Looks like I have access through my university.

Diverging utilities can be an issue. You can also get infinite output in finite time. The larger issue is that the economy has no steady state. In economic growth models, a steady state (or balanced growth path (BGP)) represents a long-run equilibrium where key economic variables per capita (like capital per worker, output per worker, consumption per worker) grow at constant rates. This greatly simplifies the analysis.

For example, I have a paper in which I analyze how households would behave if they expected TAI to transform the economy. To do this, I calc... (read more)

Thanks for this. If I understand correctly, the result is primarily driven by the elastic labor supply, which is a function of W and not of R, and the constant supply of capital. This seems most relevant for very fast takeoff scenarios.

My intuition is that as people realize that their jobs are being automated away, they will want to work more to bolster their savings before we move into the new regime where their labor is worthless and capital is all that matters. This would require fully modeling the household's intertemporal utility and endogenizing the ... (read more)

Thanks for this excellent primer and case study! I learned a lot about causal analysis from your explanation. The section on using three waves to control for confounders while avoiding controlling for potential mediators was particularly helpful. I would be interested in hearing more about how the sensitivity analysis for unmeasured confounders works.

The positive effect of activism on meat consumption that you found is especially concerning and important. I hope that we can gain more insight into this soon. If this finding replicates, then a lot of organizations might have to reevaluate their methods.

Hi Matthew,

Thank you for your comment. I think this is a reasonable criticism! There is definitely an endogenous link between investment and AI timelines that this model misses. I think that this might be hard to model in a realistic way, but I encourage people to try!

On the other hand, I think the strategic motivation is important as well. For example, here is Satya Nadella on the Dwarkesh Podcast:

And by the way, one of the things is that there will be overbuild. To your point about what happened in the dotcom era, the memo has gone out that, hey, you kno

Why would Knightian uncertainty be an argument against AI as an existential risk? If anything, our deep uncertainty about the possible outcomes of AI should lead us to be even more careful.

Similar campaigns have worked really well for animal advocacy, so I’m excited to see what you can accomplish.

I’m wondering, what kinds of tasks can volunteers help with? If I have no social media accounts or experience trying to promote causes on social media is there anything I can do?

• However, if they believe in near-term TAI, savvy investors won't value future profits (since they'll be dead or super rich anyways)

My future profits aren't very relevant if I'm dead, but I might still care about it even if I'm super rich. Sure, my marginal utility will be very low, but on the other hand the profit from my investments will be very large. Even if everyone is stupendously rich by today's terms, there might be a tangible difference between having a trillion dollars in your bank account and having a quadrillion dollars in your bank account. May... (read more)

I am not aware of any international treaties which sanction the use of force against a non-signatory nation except for those circumstances under which one of the signatory nations is first attacked by a non-signatory nation (e.g. collective defense agreements such as NATO). Your counterexample of the Israeli airstrike on the Osirak reactor is not a precedent as it was not a lawful use of force according to international law and was not sanctioned by any treaty. I agree that the Israeli government made the right decision in orchestrating the attack, but it ... (read more)

My argument doesn't hang on whether an X-risk occurs during my PhD. If AGI is 10 years away, it's questionable whether investing half of that remaining time into completing a PhD is optimal.

I think that when discussing career longtermism we should keep the possibility of short AGI timelines in consideration (or the possibility of some non-AI related existential catastrophe occuring in the short-term). By the time we transition from learning and building career capital to trying to impact the world, it might be too late to make a difference. Maybe an existential catastrophe has already occurred or AGI was successful and so outclasses us that all of that time building career capital was wasted.

For example, I am in my first year of an economics ... (read more)

I don't have an answer to which countries would be more receptive to the idea, definitely don't try here in Israel!


I am however interested in the claimed effectiveness of open borders. Do these estimates take into account potential backlash or political instability that a large number of immigrants could cause? I understand that theoretically, closed borders are economically inefficient and solidify inequality, but I fear that open borders could cause significant political problems and backlash. Even if we were to consider this backlash to be unj... (read more)

I agree that the urban/rural divide as opposed to clear cut boundaries is not a significant reason to discredit the possibility of civil war, however, there are other reasons to think that civil war is unlikely.


This highly cited article provides evidence that the main causal factors of civil wars are what the authors call conditions that favor insurgency, rather than ethnic factors, discrimination, and grievances (such as economic inequality). The argument is that even in the face of grievances that cause people to start a civil war if the right condition... (read more)

Hi Viadehi, I'm part of the new research group at EA Israel. For me personal fit and building career capital are the main reasons why I want to take part. I don't think that research I do now will save the world, but hopefully it will help me build relevant skills and knowledge and develop a passion for research.