All of Max_Carpendale's Comments + Replies

I'm not sure that really responds to my point.

You seem to think that we should only posit qualia if it's strictly necessary to observe a behaviour. I was pushing back by saying that, given evolutionary relatedness and observed similarities, I don't believe that should be the criteria. 

For example, you could try to explain a baby's pain behaviour without reference to qualia as not being strictly necessary, but given that we know that they are just developing versions of us, that's not the most likely explanation. With other animals obviously the infere... (read more)

I wasn't talking about the specific emotional state either. I think this example here casts some doubt on the idea that verbal report is the principal or only way that we come to believe that other humans have qualia.

The question is not whether these behaviours could strictly be explainable without qualia. The question as what's the most likely explanation given that these animals are related to us and we solve a lot of these problems through qualia (while showing similar external signs).

For example, yeah, a dog could just look like she is in pain. But then we have to invent this new concept of ersatz pain that looks and functions a lot like our pain, but is actually unconscious, in order to describe the dogs mental state in this case. To the extent it looks similar to our pain in a given animal, this looks like a ad hoc move.

Seems to me like the case for the importance of verbal report as evidence may be overstated. If my friend looks and behaves like they are suffering (cringing, recoiling away, etc.), but says they are not, I would assume that they actually are suffering. I assume you would agree? That suggests that other forms of evidence are actually more important than talking about qualia. 

I don't think the scale or expected value affects this strategy question directly. You still just use a strategy that is going to be most likely to achieve the goal.

If the goal is something you have really widespread agreement on, that probably leans you towards an uncompromising, radical ask approach. Seems like things might be going pretty well for AI safety in that respect, though I don't know if it's been established that people are buying into the high probability of doom arguments that much. I suspect that we are much less far along than the climate ... (read more)

I think this is tantamount to saying that we shouldn't engage within the political system, compromise, or meet people where they are coming from in our advocacy. I don't think other social movements would have got anywhere with this kind of attitude, and this seems especially tricky with something very detail orientated like a AI safety.

Inside game approaches (versus outside game approaches like this is describing) are going to require engaging in things this post says that no one should do. Boldly stating exactly the ideal situation you are after could ha... (read more)

What incredible altruism, despite the very difficult circumstances. They are truly a hero.

I teared up when I read this initially, and when I reread it.  Thank you so much for sharing.

Thanks for your engagement with the report!

One way to go is for animal protection to start advocating for a right bans at some point, yes. Another possibility is that the industry is simply run into the ground through costly welfare reforms and competition through alternatives. Maybe this wouldn't remove all animal exploitation, and some animal products would still be demanded as a luxury good, but it would seem pretty significant if the reform path way could bring us that far, would you agree? A agree there is more of a natural flow towards ending all ani... (read more)

Thanks for your thoughts on this!

I think there's a pretty good argument that animal protectionism demands the nonuse of animals in all cases when that use necessarily involves a significant amount of suffering, which represent almost all cases, and makes the remaining cases prohibitively expensive. I describe his pathway in the piece.

You could argue that this stronger animal protection view is not implied by current rhetoric,  but the idea is that you build momentum and work up to stronger asks.

Hi Enginar,

This is a very interesting post, thank you for writing it! It fits very well into the idea of megaprojects for animals, or ways of using additional funding, which may become increasingly relevant as more funding comes into EA.

I've been working on a report on improving wild caught fish welfare at Animal Ask and the report should be relatively soon. I certainly share your thoughts that smaller fish should be the priority.

I have some (not necessarily decisive) worries about how this fits into the long-term strategy of animal advocacy. As you ... (read more)

Thanks so much for writing this! It's really good to hear from other members of the community who have struggled with this. It sounds like there are a lot of shared elements, and I think talking about it openly makes it easier for other people to do so. It's certainly been easier for me to bring up my imposter syndrome now that it's widely understood to be a problem in the community and bringing it up helps with recovering from it. 

Some things I find are helping in my case:

- Getting a lot of feedback. I find that my doubts flourish and grow in "... (read more)

Hi James,

Thanks for your deep engagement with the report and thoughtful comment! No, it didn't come across as blunt or rude or anything! :)

I was thinking of something closer to a vegan outreach campaign that was optimized for delegitimizing the industry when I wrote that. We did write that we think that its an institutional focus is more effective, and perhaps its abolitionist focus too, though veganism can also be framed in that way. Perhaps the report should have talked more about how other types of animal  campaigns can (and should) leverage the st... (read more)

It's great to see the subject getting attention!

Getting plenty of honest – but understanding and contextualized – feedback has been particularly useful for me in dealing with imposter syndrome. It lets me worry less that I'm actually making tons of errors but they aren't being caught or that my managers are just being nice about it. It's a counterintuitive thing, so it was great to see it covered in this article.

This is a topical discussion topic in the movement. See this discussion for example: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/djQSjAQwXAcxMbFqQ/what-s-the-theory-of-change-theory-of-victory-for-farmed

Really looking forward to your articles!

It seems like you have a good strategy for producing high-quality articles (and particularly happy you'll be ordering by effect size).

It must be gorgeous, and definitely appealing, but isn't it in the top ten for murder rate per captita?

Really unfortunate development. Compassion In World Farming recently released a report on the subject and why it's a terrible idea.

I want to make a couple of points here:

1) Since octopuses are carnivorous, a much larger number of fishes will be used to feed them

2) Since this is such a new development, it's an important time to oppose this and try to nip it in the bud

I get quite bad imposter syndrome, and I can take a stab at this.

Here are some general points I'd make here.

1) My imposter syndrome seems to come from a quite separate psychological process. So I could have my rational assessment of the situation (including some beliefs that work against imposter syndrome) but still feel the imposter syndrome quite strongly. Obviously they aren't completely unrelated, but they often do seem quite separate.

2) Imposter syndrome for me isn't just the belief that I am the least competent person in the room/org, it is the belie... (read more)

I had a similar journey. I still think that utilitarian is a good description for me, since it seems basically right to me in all non-sci-fi scenarios, but I don't have any confidence in the extreme edge cases.  

Adam Shriver has a few papers on breeding animals with the pain genes knocked out. See this paper for example.

This Awesome! I'm a big fan of your work. There really aren't any other organizations like Sentience Institute, so it's a pity you're not getting more funding .

I'm curious about your reasoning for the greater focus specifically on artificial sentience? Does it seem like the right time now?

Congrats on being the new fund chair, Kieran!

I notice you've made a huge grant to Wild Animal Initiative. That's great! 

With work on this subject, I'm curious how you would prioritize between research to inform future interventions, advocacy to raise concern about the subject, and current interventions to improve wild animal welfare? 

Thanks for writing this. While doing research on invertebrate sentience I've wondered about this kind of thing. I don't deliberately harm arthropods, but I haven't stopped hiking (where I'll probably step on many arthropods), and I definitely haven't stopped washing. It's true that you could give a means ends justification that help more animals by continuing to work I'm doing without disrupting my lifestyle by worrying about these things, but I'd be horrified if my normal life involved harming even a fraction as many large animals - I just don't feel the ... (read more)

Yeah, even the information for total number of neurons is absent for many invertebrates. More specific information like that would rarely be available.

There is also the excellent book length treatment of the subject, The Ancient Origins of Consciousness.

In my case at least, I can say that both the money and the reputation for winning was extremely valuable. Thanks for that!

I get frequent muscle pain in my head and face and I normally believe that by massaging them. I've started to use use a part of my shirt or maybe another object as a barrier to let me do this without touching my hands to my face, but I guess my shirt could also pick up some of the virus, and I could be infected that way. Not sure what my other options are.

I think you can travel to another country to donate eggs there. I think in general you get paid more in other countries if you are of certain demographics.

There's is a trap that consequentialists can easily fall into that the author describes beautifully in this post. I think the solution solution within consequentialism is to see that consequentialism doesn't recommend that we we only praise the highest achievers. Praise and blame are only justified within consequentialism when they produce good consequences, and it's beneficial to praise a wide variety of people, most especially people who are trying their hardest to improve the world.

For a fuller spectrum account of what it is to live a mor... (read more)

I've been in the community since about 2011, and I've also noticed this happening in myself and quite a few others who have been in the community for a long time. I'm not aware of any data on the subject. Denise's explanation of this and this post sounds right to me.

I came to the hotel as I was finishing a contract for Rethink Prioritites, worked for them there for one month, then did indepenent research. Now I am employed at an EA org again, and I am paying cost price.

I agree that sentience, at least as we've defined it, is an all-or-nothing phenomenon (which is a common view in philosophy but not as common in neuroscience).

What do you think of the argument that there may be cases where it's unclear if the term is appropriate or not. So there would be a grey area where there is a "sort of" sentience. I've talked to some people who think that this grey area might be taxonomically large, including most invertebrates.

Yeah, I meant it to be synonymous with agent.

Do you mainly see these scenarios as likely because you don't think there is likely to be many beings in future worlds or because you think that the beings that exist in those future worlds are unlikely to be conscious?

I had some thoughts about the second case. I've done some research on consciousness, but I still feel quite lost when it comes to this type of question.

It definitely seems like some machine minds could be conscious (we are basically in existence proof of that), but I don't know how to think about if a specific architecture wou... (read more)

Thanks!

I personally would disagree that variety of experience is morally relevant. Obviously, most people enjoy variety of their own experiences, but that's already waded into the total hedonistic utilitarian equation because it makes us happier. So I don't think that we need to add it as a separate thing that has intrinsic moral value. Looking at diversity can also be aesthetically pleasing for us, but that gets waited in to the equation because it makes us happy, and so, again, I don't think we need to say it has intrinsic moral value. I d... (read more)

Imagine you heard about alien civilization that was pivoted towards colonizing the stars. But most of these aliens had almost no moral recognition and some of them were raised in inhumane conditions to be killed for trivial reasons for the other aliens. If I heard about this situation, I would be pretty concerned about what the aliens would do when they started colonizing the stars. I wouldn't be rooting for them by trying to prevent existential risk instead of trying to improve their values.


But of course, that's a description of our society. Th... (read more)

Thanks for your comment! I read your article and left a comment on it here. I'll try to think more about psychosomatics and add a section on it when I have time.

It seems to me like when most EA's are talking about an expanding circle what we are talking about is either an expanding circle of moral concern towards 1) all sentient beings or 2) equal consideration of interests for all entities (with the background understanding that only sentient beings have interests).

Given this definition of what it means to expand the moral circle, I don't think Gwern's talk of a narrowing moral circle is relevant. For the list of entities that Gwern has described us as having lost moral concern for, we did not lose... (read more)

Thank you! :)

Thanks for mentioning C. elegans behavioural flexibility. I had meant to comment about that, but forgot to. That's a great paper on the subject.

I think people sometimes unfairly minimize the cognitive abilities of some invertebrates because it gives them cleaner and more straightforward answers about which organisms are conscious, according to their preferred theory.

You are very welcome! :)

That passage is also one of my favourite parts of his answers, thanks for highlighting it.

I'll take a look at that David Pearce post, thanks for the link.

Thanks for pointing at the typo, fixed it now.

Another way that frugality can improve productivity is that it can reduce the amount of time you spend buying, looking after, organizing, tidying, and thinking about physical possessions (because you probably have fewer of them). Of course, people who aren't frugal don't necessarily have more things, but they tend to have more of them.

Bravo!

I'm particularly excited about the paper submissions and the increased academic expertise of your staff. That seems very important in getting this work taken more seriously.

Excellent post!

Staying within the phylum, snails are consumed by humans in many cultures[53] and have attracted some attention as an edge case of consciousness in philosophical circles. A representative from class Gastropoda would therefore be useful.

It looks like there is a small error here. Aplysia was included on the table and is from class Gastropoda.

Great article! I like the conceptual clarification that you do about what it means to say that a process is unconscious and how people use this term inconsistently in the literature. I've never seen that put so well and it's important.

I was wondering what you think of cases where a good idea 'spontaneously' occurs to someone while there thinking about something unrelated or while their mind is wandering. I only know anecdotes about this phenomenon, but I think it's a widespread phenomenon that most people would experience something... (read more)

Thanks! Good thoughts!

I'm also not sure if we know how expensive emotions are. In particular, even if some emotions are complicated, I'm not sure if the basic conscious experience of pain is complicated (at least the affective part of the experience, maybe not the sensory part). It subjectively seems like quite a simple feeling, but I don't know much about this, and I'd like to learn more.

Shelley Adamo misunderstands first question in part c) of her answer. I didn't mean to suggest that biology was required for consciousness, just that biological organisms might be more likely to have underlying homology with humans, which could mean that they might be conscious while similarly complex AI would not be.I think that our best theories of consciousness suggest that at some point AI will be conscious.

An issue with a written interview like this is that you can't make clarifications on the fly to head off misunderstandings. I hope to improve on conducting these interviews in the future.

That's fantastic!

Thanks for the recommendations! I'll try to take a look at the evidence for eccentric training, I wasn't aware of that. I didn't go into any specific recommendations about strength training, because I expect that because I wanted to keep the post fairly short and because I expect my recommendations would depend a lot on specific case, and so couldn't be communicated well in a general post. But if it's as effective as you say, I definitely should have mentioned it.

I'm planning on updating this post at some point and I'll mention eccentric training and mention you in the acknowledgements if the evidence find it does look good.