Miquel Banchs-Piqué (prev. mikbp)
Bio
I studied Physics, hold a MSc in Photonics and was working for some years in a micro-cavitation lab. Then, as I wanted to work in improving the long-term future, I switched and did a PhD in applied foresight. Since then, I work as foresight researcher, first in the Centre for Foresight and Internationalisation of the Łukasiewicz Network and currently in Fraunhofer ISI. I helped to design Nüwa, a 1M people Mars city-state ranked top 10 in the Mars Society contest 2020, and have experience in sustainability projects and social volunteering. I'm very interested in the relation between global energy and progress, and their consequences for the environment, which may pose a global catastrophic risk. Dad of 2 still in that period when there's no time for anything else than taking care of them and working.
How others can help me
- Career advise
- Advise on avoiding sidetracking and help narrowing commitments
- Help becoming efficient and effective
- Find deep intellectual connection
- The opportunity to work with/for brilliant people and learn from them
- Career opportunities, especially within EA organisations
How I can help others
- Active listening
- Advise on living with few / frugality
- Share experiences as expat / making a life abroad
- First principles reasoning
- Fining bullshit (lack of logic, ungrounded reasoning, lack of generality, biases...)
- Explaining / giving info about: physics and off-world settling, foresight / futures research, the energy system, the Economy for the Common Good (ECOnGOOD)
Posts 16
Comments92
There is no universal value -not even moral value- scale. Each person has his/her own. If the mosquitoes cannot chose/feel, they don't have moral value for you. Other people may value life for its own sake.
I think I lean close to your values, giving moral value to whatever can feel. But this is mostly a rationalisation. I have no clue which animals or other living beings can feel and which don't (and, even we are scientifically improving in this regard, we cannot really know, at least for now) and still, I give or not give moral value to living beings. In addition, what these living beings do to me or to others (in an absolutely broad sense of others), how they look, how they move, etc. affect my moral judgement, the moral value I give them.
But where I wanted to go: you are going way too fast to determine that mosquitoes cannot feel. What is the relation between being able to chose or not and being able feel? Is a carnivore like a lion able to chose not to eat other animals? Is it able to feel? I think the answers for the lion are clear and make your argument fail.
Being net negative or positive and how much just depends on the values of whoever does this assessment. So I don't think such statements are useful. These EAs may be net negative given your values. Probably much less so given their values.
I don't think it is useful or helpful to speak in general terms about how positive/negative the (expected) value of something is. There is no universal way to value stuff.
I really like the paper and I appreciate the effort to put it together and easy to understand. And, I particularly appreciate the effort put in rising attention to this problem. But I am extremely surprised/puzzled that this was not common understanding! This is what lies below the AGI and even degrowth discourses, for example, no? This is why one has to first make sure AGI is safe before putting it out there. What am I missing?
I am sorry but I really don't like and don't find useful at all these kind of posts. Besides, I thought the aim of this forum is giving information, not advocating. Although this post provides some very good calculations and information, it misses the key point --it is 100% value-dependent-- and the post is plain advocacy. I'm not against the bottom line, I'm really not decided in this topic (though I tend to lean to the contrary position), but it is really uncomfortable (? probably not the word I'm searching for) to see this here.
"Replacing chicken meat with beef or pork is better than the reverse". Well, as said above, this is so if one holds your values or similar ones all else equal. You don't say how much pain would you agree to exchange for how much CO2. I find it totally understandable, I don't think anyone can give a good answer for their thresholds --I certainly don't have one for mine-- but this makes the whole post bullshit. "I think this, here are some not complete calculations that I say support thinking this, but if the calculations were different I state no reason to make anyone think I would stop thinking this. Don't you think that these calculations support this?"
You are not sure whether wild animal's lives are worth living, so you don't account for land. Well, it is alright, but it is again a values thing. In addition, we actually do know that the diversity and size of natural ecosystems are important not only for the "natural" world, also for us humans, so it should be accounted for. Health effects are mentioned, great. But not quantified and compared as well.
Making numbers can be useful to get the sense of problems, but reaching a conclusion through numbers is only possible if one is able to make all the numbers needed with enough accuracy. It is no problem to give rough estimates, of course, but they carry large errors and errors compound, so pretty soon conclusions cannot be based solely on making numbers over rough estimates. In addition, rough estimates are usually values-based, so why not just state the values? One can very well argue "this rough estimate seems to me larger than this other rough estimate and so on, and based on my values, then, this conclusion follows". Calculations can aid such comparisons. But your argumentation is not like this at all.
Compare the paragraph "Do you feel like the above negative effects (...) justify (...)? I do not" to "Based on my values the results of these quick calculations do not seem to justify (...)". It reads very different. And subsequently you give additional information relevant for whether or not the thing is justified! How can anyone decide if something is justified before having all the relevant information?
This post seems like just a rationalisation of your values. So, better plainly state what you feel, give arguments and uncertainties, maybe support some of those arguments with some calculations, but do not focus on calculations and, particularly, do not pretend that the solution follows from those calculations. And, please, acknowledge that this is a values thing. You have yours, I have mine, and everybody has theirs.
I don't have any intention to be harsh with you or this post --sorry if I've been too direct, I already spent way too much time writing to polish the text. I just tried to be comprehensive because these issues are quite common in this forum, and I really think they are harmful. Seeing the reality is the first step needed to be able to change it and numbers can put a scientific and objective gloss on things that are completely or mostly values-led. Let's avoid it or/and be clear with what we do!
[Edit: And please, for those of you who don't agree with the comment, spell out your disagreement instead of downvoting to hide it. A couple of sentences suffice.]