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Thanks for sharing!

Can I ask why you recommend both a Kindle and a Remarkable 2? Do you think there's a need for Kindle if one has a Remarkable?

Mark Xu

kindle's are smaller, have backlights, and the kindle store is a good user experience.

Things I recommend you buy and use.

MaximeCdS2y1

Thanks for your recommendations! Very much appreciated.

Your link to order vitamin B12 seems to point to a study instead. Do you have any specific brand recommendation?

BenSchifman

The website Labdoor tests supplements for quality and recommends several b12 brands. I don't recall which one I ended up purchasing, I think the NatureNow? (I remove the pills from the container so I can store them more easily)

Growth and the case against randomista development

MaximeCdS2y10

Review for the Decade Review

I think this post makes a very good point in a very important conversation, namely that we can do better than our currently identified best interventions for development.
The argument is convincing, and I would like to see both more people working on growth-oriented interventions, and counter-arguments to this.
As a PhD in economics, this post may influence what topic I choose to work on during the dissertation phase. I think most EA economists at the start of their PhD would benefit from reading this.

Want To Be An Expert? Build Deep Models

MaximeCdS2y20

So let me know in the comments if you’re interested in a followup post on *how* to build models.

Yes please!

emily.fan

Same here. I feel like I don't have the executive function to do so since I tend to be interested in a bunch of things at once and generally have generalist tendencies. I'd also be curious to hear more about the niche of being a generalist in the EA community, since they do provide value in our society.

Solving the moral cluelessness problem with Bayesian joint probability distributions

MaximeCdS3y3

Her choice to use multiple, independent probability functions itself seems arbitrary to me,...

I'm not sure what makes you think that. Prof. Greaves does state that rational agents may be required "to include all such equally-recommended credence functions in their representor". This feels a lot less arbitrary that deciding to pick a single prior among all those available and decide to compute the expected value of your actions based on it.

Instead of multiple independent probability functions, you could start with a set of probability distributions fo

... (read more)

ben.smith

> Hope this helps. It does, thanks--at least, we're clarifying where the disagreements are. All you need to do to come up with that meta-probability distribution is to have some information about the relative value of each item in your set of probability functions. If our conclusion for a particular dilemma turns on a disagreement between virtue ethics, utilitarian ethics, and deontological ethics, this is a difficult problem that people will disagree strongly on. But can you even agree that these each bound, say, to be between 1% and 99% likely to be the correct moral theory? If so, you have a slightly informative prior and there is a possibility you can make progress. If we really have completely no idea, then I agree, the situation really is entirely clueless. But I think with extended consideration, many reasonable people might be able to come to an agreement. I agree with this. If the question is, "can anyone, at any moment in time, give a sensible probability distribution for any question", then I agree the answer is "no". But with some time, I think you can assign a sensible probability distribution to many difficult-to-estimate things that are not completely arbitrary nor completely uninformative. So, specifically, while I can't tell you right now about the expected long-run value for giving to Malaria Consortium, I think I might be able to spend a year or so understanding the relationship between giving to Malaria Consortium and long-run aggregate sentient happiness, and that might help me to come up with a reasonable estimate of the distribution of values. We'd still be left with a case where, very counterintuitively, the actual act of saving lives is mostly only incidental to the real value of giving to Malaria Consortium, but it seems to me we can probably find a value estimate. About this, Greaves (2016) says, And I wholeheartedly agree, but it doesn't follow from the fact you can't immediately form an opinion about it that you can't, with much

Solving the moral cluelessness problem with Bayesian joint probability distributions

MaximeCdS3y10

Hey!

I think Hilary Greaves does a great job at explaining what cluelessness in non-jargon terms in her most recent appearance on 80K podcast.

As far as I understand it, cluelessness arises because, as we don't have sufficient evidence, we're very unsure about what our credence should be, to the point they feel -or maybe just are- arbitrary. In this case, you could still just carry out the expected value calculation and opt to do the most choice worthy action as you suggest. However, it seems unsatisfying because the credence function... (read more)

ben.smith

Her choice to use multiple, independent probability functions itself seems arbitrary to me, although I've done more reading since posting the above and have started to understand why there is a predicament. Instead of multiple independent probability functions, you could start with a set of probability distributions for each of the items you are uncertain about, and then calculate the joint probability distribution by combining all of those distributions. That'll give you a single probability density function on which you can base your decision. If you start with a set of several probability functions, with each representing a set of beliefs, then calculating their joint probability would require sampling randomly from each function according to some distribution specifying how likely each of the functions are. It can be done, with the proviso that you must have a probability distribution specifying the relative likelihood of each of the functions in your set. However, I do worry the same problem arises in this approach in a different form. If you really do have no information about the probability of some event, then in Bayesian terms, your prior probability distribution is one that is completely uninformative. You might need to use an improper prior, and in that case, they can be difficult to update on in some circumstances. I think these are a Bayesian, mathematical representation of what Greaves calls an "imprecise credence". But I think the good news is that many times, your priors are not so imprecise that you can't assign some probability distribution, even if it is incredibly vague. So there may end up not being too many problems where we can't calculate expected long-term consequences for actions. I do remain worrying, with Greaves, that GiveWell's approach of assessing direct impact for each of its potential causes is woefully insufficient. Instead, we need to calculate out the very long term impact of each cause, and because of the value of the long-

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