All of mikbp's Comments + Replies

Similar to what Brad says, posts not in line with EA mainstream, or just exploring or giving ideas, or not written in EA-style, or drafty are often down-voted very early on without engaging in discussion or giving any reason for the down-vote.

Even though forum moderators try to engage people to write even if the post is not perfectly polished or thought through --most people are very busy!-- to incentivize exchange of ideas, the dynamics of the forum make it basically useless as such posts are usually very quickly hidden. It often feels useless to write an... (read more)

4
Jason
22d
I know some people disagree, but very early downvoting (especially strong downvoting) often ends up functionally being a vote to cut off discussion of a post before it even starts. Those votes make it less likely that others will see and click on the post, will cause them to come to the post with a more negative lens (consciously or otherwise), and will make them less likely to engage (why make the effort if you think the post is headed into oblivion soon enough because of low karma?). That's a hard trifecta for a post to overcome. Like motions to cut off debate early in most parliamentary systems, the bar for functionally cutting off discussion of a post at an early juncture should be relatively high. (It is 2/3 majority in most parliamentary systems, IIRC.)

I've seen this paper: The effects of communicating uncertainty around statistics, on public trust. I thought its findings may be extensible for communicating uncertainty around not-statistics, so potentially useful for the community.

I just read an interview with Roberto Saviano (author of the book Gomorrah in which he denounced the organised crime in Italy) in which he says that his quest against the mafia has destroyed his life, not only he needs protection 24/7, he feels very alone. In his new book he explains the problems that the judge Giovanni Falcone run into because of his fight against the mafia, that led to his death. So, Salviano is now in "selling mode" in precisely this topic, but still, it made me think that making the life of whistle blowers and the like (like him or eve... (read more)

I write only as user, I don't have any further knowledge but I have never seen it. There are the hair dressers that collaborate with "whip organisations" but as far as I know, they only collect the hair of the people who want to donate it. 

In general, I don't think it is very common that people want to cut >20cm of hair in one go, and it makes the hair dresser's work somehow less natural, as they usually don't cut all hair at once (i.e. make a ponytail and cut it). Maybe those collaborating hair dresses would ask a customer who wants to cut their hair in one go if they may donate it?

I forgot to ask you who are those "degrowthers" that you refer to. I never came across them. Could you please give me a couple of names?

GDP contraction (=somebody's income contraction)

This is obvious. And, again, the point is that the relationship between GDP and social outcomes after some point breaks down or becomes irrelevant.

Many things can lead to degrowth, and some could be necesary. What I point out is that degrowth is allwayws a negative side consequence. You do not plan for it, you suffer it (the less, the better).

It seems strange to argue in favour of not planning for a negative consequence of something that may be necessary.

Has anyone, to your knowledge, assessed the chances that an energy descent ("Most Underrated EA Forum Post in 2022") poses a significant global catastrophic risk? If not, who should look into that? If yes, what were the outcomes and how do/should they change EA's priorities?

1
christian.r
6mo
Not that I know of, but my colleage @jackva may have more to say here

One thing I forgot to mention: a substantial carbon tax that accounts for its externalities would be a policy like the ones you describe and would most likely lead to, at least temporary, degrowth.

1
Arturo Macias
6mo
Oh, sure. Many things can lead to degrowth, and some could be necesary. What I point out is that degrowth is allwayws a negative side consequence. You do not plan for it, you suffer it (the less, the better). Economists often speak of "dematerialization" to refer to the natural trend of capitalism to increase GDP by unit of material input, both by increasing efficiency in inputs use and consumption substitution. You can imagine a future where that people becomes more interested in virtual reality instead of physical consumption. That is a form of "dematerialization" but  it cannot be considered degrowth (well, at least if our price indexes were properly constructed, that often is not the case).  But what shall be avoided at all costs, is people celebrating GDP contraction (=somebody's income contraction). 

It looks that income matters in the US, but then it does not matter across countries…

Well, this is the whole point. Some ways to organise countries achieve better social outcomes without the need of better GDP. You don't have Bulgaria and Denmark in each US city in this sense, which is the sense that counts in this conversation.

But you cannot separate material and non material prosperity.

This is not what degrowthers claim and it is not what I claimed: "*Past a certain point*, the relationship between GDP and social outcomes breaks down *or becomes irreleva... (read more)

Thanks. I'll try to take a look at the paper (at some point). The issue of comparing bads (effects of ecological collapse vs effects of full degrowth) still stands, though.

I do remember that we tweeted about this (and it made me blush that you too remember). I just want to read something longer than just a tweet. At the time I couldn't find any paper.

2
Davidmanheim
6mo
Haha - I didn't at all realize that we had talked about it / noticed that you were the person I tweeted with before, I just searched different places I would have said this before, when looking for where I has said it.

Sorry, the claim "UK basically do not have enough land to produce the energy they'd need"... misses "with solar".

According ESO, in 2022 the UK renewals mix was Wind - 26.8%, Biomass - 5.2%, Solar - 4.4%, Hydro - 1.8%, less than 40%. And wind is roughly half-half regarding on- and off-shore. Many countries are not big islands, or are more or less close to the equator, or have a lot of land. Really hard to scale.

EROI: low but acceptable EROI + storage + need to overinstall = pretty bad effective EROI. And EROI is not all that counts, of course.

 

While ta... (read more)

I really have not come across academic "degrowthers" that claim that we need to have fewer people or less prosperity (Kallis, Hickel, Raworth, Jackson, Van den bergh). In any case, in the post I deliberately spoke about to "degrowth the economy in rich countries", not about degrowth in general or (any group of) degrowthers to try avoid these kinds of misunderstandings.

1
mikbp
6mo
I forgot to ask you who are those "degrowthers" that you refer to. I never came across them. Could you please give me a couple of names?

From the post: "economic degrowth in rich countries". From your quote: "global negative growth".

But in any case this is irrelevant if the ecological collapse that some argue about has worse global effects.

2
jackva
6mo
Yes, but degrowth only in rich countries doesn't really do much: "Using the International Futures model, this article shows that negative growth and societal transformations in the Global North are possible without dramatically damaging long-term global socioeconomic development, though these interventions do not solve the global climate crisis, reducing future cumulative carbon emissions by 10.5% through 2100. "

I don't find "Spain's life expectancy is 5 years longer than that of USA's" to be subjective. Do you?

1
Arturo Macias
6mo
What about life expectancy by income bucket in the US? How objective is that relation? It looks that income matters in the US, but then it does not matter across countries… The US is an extremely diverse society, with extreme outcomes. You have a Bulgaria and a Denmark in each city, we have them in different countries. In fact the positive relation at the micro level between health and income shall be more relevant that aggregate comparisons, that can be extremely affected by ecological fallacies. Of course, there is a lot causal reversion in the income - welfare relation; both people and countries that are richer are often better in extra economic terms. But you cannot separate material and non material prosperity. It is the loop of activity and personal virtue what allows people to became affluent, and income gives the resources to have a fulfilling life. What were the social and moral consequences of stagnating socialism in the USRR? Demoralization and collapse. Macro growth can be disputed, because is removed from personal experience, but parents always try to put their children in the path of (micro) growth…

I am curious about the arguments from the person who voted disagree to alexherwix's comment.

You are Spanish. Spain's GDP per capita is much lower than that in the USA, yet Spain's life expectancy is 5 years longer than that of USA's and Spain outperforms USA in many other social indicators. There's much more than GDP in prosperity. Past a certain point, the relationship between GDP and social outcomes breaks down *or becomes irrelevant*, at least for many indicators.

-1
Arturo Macias
6mo
Objective measures of subjetive welfare?  The problem with macro GDP skepticism is that it implies micro personal income skepticism, and that is totally implausible (among other consequences of personal income skepticism, imagine how irrelevant becomes unequality for USA where more than 20.000 per capita income is so prevalent). Those who tell me that more income will not make me happier are telling me that I do not know how to use additional freedom. It is a very marxist position: as (Groucho) Marx said: “Who are you going to believe, me, or your lying eyes?”" Regarding Spain, of course, many British people retire here: you have the Sun, the sunny people, and structural unemployment levels (or the realtive lack of tech and other "high end" jobs) do not affect you. 

Do you have some references for this? Is the claim more that EA hasn't seen the degrowth arguments at all, or that it has and has dismissed them unjustifiably (in your opinion)?

I don't have references but, for example searching for the term Degrowth in the forum only returns 22 results. The claim is a bit of both, but more that EA has dismissed them unjustifiably. And I partly understand it because the term degrowth is very misleading.

That the world is getting better in some senses and worse in some others I think it is nothing anyone in either side disput... (read more)

The issue is not only climate change, here. We are in dangerous territory for most of the planetary boundaries.

AI presents large existential risk in my mind

One of the points is that EAs do not seem to engage with large close-to-existential risks in the minds of degrowthers and the like. It is true that they do not have fleshed out to what extent their fears are existential, but this is because they are large enough for worrying them. See "Is this risk actually existential?" may be less important than we think.

I like your second point. But still, even if it... (read more)

One can say the same about intelligence:

a) Intelligence growth is intrinsically "good" (it expands human possibility space-> improve individual welfare for each person with more possibilities->increase total welfare for the society)

b) If intelligence growth has downsides, the downsides have to be addressed at the minimum cost.

-3
Arturo Macias
6mo
Of course not. There can be substantial externalities and zero sum games related to IA, as to any other tecnology. AI is like the "internal combustion engine".  But "income" is a direct input for human welfare.  You can consider that externalities are not properly priced, and that natural resources are too cheap because their owners have too high discount rates. Then you need to tax both things to limit the resource use/ externality production.  Still, after you have put this "extra market" constraints in the economy, you want maximum GDP (that is more or less, the "aggregate" budget contraint). More degrees of freedom are inescapably "good", and that is what growth give us. When you are against GDP, you are against people.

If I understood you well, yes, I disagree. EAs at large basically do not enter the degrowth debate. They act a bit like LeCuns of the degrowth debate, sort to say.

Maybe what I mean is more meta than what you are referring to?

EAs complain that many people just disregard the dangers of AI by saying something in the lines of "AI development is good and stopping it is anyway impossible", or "we will manage the issues", etc. And what I mean is that EAs do/have done the same kind of things with growth.

(which I've discussed on this forum before!)

Could you link to the post, please? I tried to quickly find it but failed... (I found other very good looking posts, though!)

2
Davidmanheim
6mo
I can't find it either - I may have been misremembering, apologies. I've commented on other's relevant posts, and tweeted about it, as well as giving feedback on some reports EAs wrote that mentioned it.

I explicitly said that I do not have the time to write a good post and that I rather post this so that people discuss.

Incidentally, I read the Vox article long ago when it came out but I did not know that the writer is EA. I don't remember much of it now, but maybe the answers from Kallis and Hickel (I'm not a fan of his) suffice to show that the article may not be as good as you think.

I will try to read the forum post soon -maybe I have done it in the past and I just don't remember.

Actually, thanks to this commentary I have found an inteesting  post ... (read more)

ignoring the fact that energy can be plentiful with solar and other renewable sources.

But can it? and with what consequences? The EROI (Energy Return On energy Investment) of solar and wind are not great (wind better than solar), they are very resource-intensive, they need storage (effectively making their EROI lower and their resource-intensivity larger) and there needs to be over-capacity of production. In addition, they use space, a lot of it if we want to produce most of the energy demand with them -AFAIK, eg. UK basically do not have enough land to pr... (read more)

3
Arturo Macias
6mo
All this EROI issues are far easier to follow when you use the inverse of EROI (energy auto consumption). https://www.bde.es/f/webbde/SES/Secciones/Publicaciones/PublicacionesSeriadas/DocumentosTrabajo/12/Fich/dt1217e.pdf
2
Davidmanheim
6mo
The idea of a net energy cliff was about comparing fossil fuels, solar and wind, and corn ethanol. Solar is near the letter f on your graph - not nearly as efficient on an EROI basis, but clean, renewable, and well within the sustainable and useful range of the graph. But if you're arguing against corn-ethanol, I'm on your side. Regarding the UK specifically, renewables currently provide close to half of UK power, so it's strange to claim they can't provide more. Storage tech is mediocre at present, but the focus of a lot of investment, and rapidly falling in price over tiem. And they have accelerated their nuclear power plans for coming decades.

A recent project looking into those sort of things in the context of Europe is the MEDEAS project

For the French speaking around here, Jean-Marc Jancovici has a lot of material in French in his lessons at the Ecole des Mines. I have only seen a couple of his talks which happened to be in English.

Hagens has an online course, Reality 101, which I found really good. I find his podcast too "sentimental".

the central claim, that we need to have fewer goods, fewer people, and less prosperity, isn't really worth debate.

As far as I understand it this is not what they claim. Particularly "fewer people", I am sure they do not claim this. And prosperity either. Prosperity without growth is a classic book.

There may be some people who claim this, they may use the term degrowth, but they are not the "serious" degrowthers. And I find the term Degrowth really misleading. Some use the terms a-growth, post-growth, growth agnostics. I should probably have been more expli... (read more)

2
Davidmanheim
6mo
I agree with most of your modified claims - but claiming the serious degrowthers are the ones on your side, that the term is misleading, and the popular movement is wrong, seems to be conceding everything?

Almost the entire question, for resolving either of these issues, is working out whether these premises are really true or not

Exactly. What I try to point to is that EA as movement has not engaged in working out whether degrowth is desirable or not. I don't say anything about the conclusions --in part because I myself am not clear. I actually believe it is extremely difficult to get a clear answer so I would expect a lot of nuance.

3
Ben Millwood
6mo
OK, but this post is about drawing an analogy between the degrowth debate and the AI pause debate, and I don't see the analogy. Do you disagree with my argument for why they aren't analogous?

Julia Nefsky is giving a research seminar in the Institute for Futures Studies titled "Expected utility, the pond analogy and imperfect duties", which sounds interesting for the community. It will be on September 27 at 10:00-11:45 (CEST) and can be attended for free in person or online (via zoom). You can find the abstract here and register here.

I don't know Julia or her work and I'm not philosopher, so I cannot directly assess the expected quality of the seminar, but I've seen several seminars from the Institute for Futures Studies that where very good (e... (read more)

Ok, thanks. Edited to add an approx min length and that whips are expensive. I didn't state any specific length because the minimum depends on the organisation, but yes, a guideline is good. More than that... there is actually nothing. It is super easy to do and it is common sense that many people who don't have hair because of cancer are really not comfortable with this, and specially for children this makes them stand out and be an easy target for jokes and comments. For those that struggle with money, this is very valuable —at an almost negligible cost ... (read more)

Yep, sorry! Not native here.

Besides the general and deep reasons to avoid EA communities to become silos, thinking this would be a bit myopic, since plenty of people noticed red flags about SBF and nothing happened nonetheless.

I did the online course Writing in the sciences, by Kristin Sainani. I liked it a lot and I think it helped me write much better. I actually did it twice!

You can find it here and here.

Ah, I see. Thanks. It makes total sense.

My social life is pretty much only people who aren't in the EA community at this point.

Super! :-D

I think I would also agree regarding the community building organisations. I haven't really thought about that case, but it intuitively makes sense.

I'm sad that such events are often needed to make some common sense ideas arise, but I am very happy that they nonetheless arose! 

Some particular comments:

if someone who might feel ‘on your side’ appears to be doing unusually well, try to increase scrutiny rather than reduce it

Yes! This is general. Mostly everyone is interested that their side is "good". Taking shortcuts, low moral standards, etc. help doing particularly well, so one needs to be particularly careful with those people.

 

we should be skeptical about the idea that EAs have better jud

... (read more)
5
Larks
1y
Perhaps undermined a little by the context that Rob was attributing his not noticing a possible red flag about SBF to his disengagement from the community.
4
Benjamin_Todd
1y
Thanks! My social life is pretty much only people who aren't in the EA community at this point. Small comment on this: It depends on the org, but for smaller orgs that are focused on EA community building, I still think it could make sense for them to pretty much only people who are very interested in EA. I wouldn't say the same about e.g. most biorisk orgs though.

Measure growth from peak-to-peak or trough-to-trough rather than trough-to-peak – I knew crypto was in a huge bull market

What does this mean?

3
Benjamin_Todd
1y
If you're tracking the annual change in wealth between two periods, you should try to make sure the start at the end point are either both market peaks or both market lows. e.g. from 2017 to 2021, or 2019 to Nov 2022 would be valid periods for tracking crypto. If you instead track from e.g. 2019 to 2021, then you're probably going to overestimate. Another option would be to average over periods significantly longer than a typical market cycle (e.g. 10yr).

Why is gender separated into "men" and "non-men"? I find it very weird but I guess there is a reason. Is something like "men", "women", "other" not optimal for any reason? If so, is there a reason to keep "men" instead of "women"?

6
Jason
1y
See footnote 3.

Here’s a video that gives you a decent overview of the author’s approach

Very interesting! (Although I think, at least for people living in Europe, not too surprising). But I deeply hated his Florida's-car-seller-from-the-80's style of speaking. The worse is that I will listen to it again because I was not too focused on it!

BTW, you made me buy a Roomba... It never crossed my mind I could buy it second hand :-)

1
BenSchifman
1y
Welcome to the roomba club!

Do you have any quote from someone who says we shouldn't care about catastrophic risks at all?

I'm not saying this. And I really don't see how you came to think I do.

The only thing I say is that I don't see how anyone would argue that humanity should devote less effort to mitigate a given risk just because it turns out that it is not actually existential even though it may be more than catastrophic. Therefore, finding out if a risk is actually existential or not is not really valuable.

I'm not saying anything new here, I made this point several times above. Maybe it is not very clearly done, but I don't really know how to state it differently.

Let's speak about humanity in general and not about EAs, cause where EA focus does not only depend on the degree of the risk.

Yes, I don't think humanity should currently devote less efforts to prevent such risks than x-risks. Probably the point is that we are doing way too less to tackle dangerous non-immediate risks in general, so it does not make any practical difference whether the risk is existential or only almost existential. And this point of view does not seem controversial at all, it is just not explicitly stated. It is not just not-EAs that are devoting a lot of effort to prevent climate change, an increasing fraction of EAs do as well.
 

1
nathan98000
1y
I suppose I agree that humanity should generally focus more on catastrophic (non-existential) risks. That said, I think this is often stated explicitly. For example, MacAskill in his recently book explicitly says that many of the actions we take to reduce x-risks will also look good even for people with shorter-term priorities. Do you have any quote from someone who says we shouldn't care about catastrophic risks at all?

Exactly. Even if the ant path may not be permanent, ie. if we could climb out of it. 

My point is that, in terms of the effort I would like humanity to devote to minimise this risk, I don't think it makes any difference whether the ant state is strictly permanent or we could eventually get out of it. Maybe if it were guaranteed to get out of it or even "only" very likely that we could get out of this ant state I could understand devoting less effort in mitigating this risk than if we'd think the AGI will eliminate us (or the ant state would be unescapable). 

If we agree on this, the fact that a risk is actually existential or not is in practice close to irrelevant.

2
nathan98000
1y
Maybe a more realistic example would be helpful here. There have been recent reports claiming that, although it will negatively affect millions of people, climate change is unlikely to be an existential risk. Suppose that's true. Do you think EAs should devote as much time and effort preventing climate change-level risks as they do preventing existential risks?

Even if we think we eventually could climb out of our 'ant state' to a state with more potential for humanity...

 

;-)

1
nathan98000
1y
I'm not sure I understand your point then... Surely a future in which humanity flourishes into the longterm future is a better one than a future where people are living as "ants." And if we have uncertainty about which path we're on and there are plausible reasons to think we're on the ant path, it can be worthwhile to figure that out so we can shift in a better direction.

[I just quickly listened to the post and I'm not philosopher, nor I know deeply about Ergodicity Economics]

Maybe Ergodicity Economics (EE) [site, wikipedia] could be relevant here? It is relevant for the St. Petersburg experiment. It has to do with expected values of stochastic processes not being equal to their time averages (ensemble average ≠ time average). 

I am sure there is much more to EE than this, but the one insight that I took from it when I got to know about EE is that when one of the outcomes of the game is to lose everything, expected val... (read more)

Thanks for the answer. I was referring to 2. I thought it was something we'll established. But I think I was so convinced of it because I did not think much about and I probably conflated it with 1 as well.

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