All of Bentham's Bulldog's Comments + Replies

Note the U.S. hasn't had 10+% GDP growth since the great depression.  But yeah I'd be happy to take some bets about this--north of 5% for instance.

Weirdly aggressive reply.  

First of all, the AI 2027 people disagree about the numbers.  Lifland's median is nearer to 2031.  I have a good amount of uncertainty, so I wouldn't be shocked if, say, we don't get the intelligence explosion for a decadeish.  

"you've predicted a 95-trillion-fold increase in AI research capacity under a 'conservative scenario.'" is false. I was just giving that as an example of the rapid exponential growth.  

So the answer, in short, is that I'm not very confident in extremely rapid growth within the next few years.  I'd probably put +10% GDP growth by 2029 below 50%.  

Sure.  I'd bet that in the next 15 years the U.S. will have 10+% GDP growth in at least one year.   

Less sure about pre 2028 bets. 

I meant why the low probability of bee sentience.

Out of curiosity, why so low? 

Want to come on the podcast and argue about the person-affecting view? 

Probably our disagreements are too vast to settle much in a comment. 

I mean, that might help with a few problems, but doesn't help with a lot of the problems.  Also, it just seems so crazy.  Giving up axiology to hold on to a not even very widely shared intuition?  Giving up the idea that the world would be better if it had lots of extra happy people and every existing person was a million times better? 

Amazing stuff!

The apples being unbounded thing was just a brief intuition pump.  It wasn't really connected to the other stuff.  

I don't think the argument actually requires that different value systems can be compared in fungible units.  You can just compare stuff that is, in one value system, clearly better than something in another value system.  So, assume you have a credence of .5 in fanaticism and of .5 in bounded views.  Well, creating 10,000 happy people given bounded views is less good than creating 10 trillion suffering people given un... (read more)

Awesome post! 

Would be curious why people are downvoting. 

Thanks!  

I don't think the analogy with subsistence humans is a good one because the basic argument for net negative animal welfare doesn't apply to them.  The basic argument is: most animals have very short lives that culminate in a painful death, and a few days of life isn't enough to recoup the harms of a painful death.  This doesn't apply to long-lived hunter-gatherers.  Fwiw, I don't think it applies to animals either--it seems plausible that elephants mostly live good lives, for example.  But the most numerous animals are wor... (read more)

I'm pretty worried about this because I think most wild animals have bad lives, and so increasing their numbers is very bad https://benthams.substack.com/p/against-biodiversity?utm_source=publication-search

I don't think the case for Vasco's argument depends really on sentience in non-arthropods. There are like a billion soil arthropods for every person, so funding research on soil animals looks similarly important.  And a lot of these are ants who are more likely to be sentient than black soldier flies. 

I do find the comment "I also want robustness in the case for sentience," a bit puzzling in context.  As I understood it, Vasco's argument was that it's not very unlikely that animals even simpler than arthropods are sentient (mites, springtail... (read more)

Yes it would imply that a bit of extra energy can vastly increase consciousness.  But so what?  Why be 99.9999% confident that it can't? 

I think it's a bad result of a view if it implies that no actions we perform are good or bad.  Intuitively it doesn't seem like all chaotic actions are neutral. 

Thanks!

Thank you!

It’s a somewhat long post.  Want to come on the podcast to discuss?

I don't agree with that.  Cluelessness seems to only arise if you have reason to think that on average your actions won't make things better.  And yet even a very flawed procedure will, on average across worlds, do better than chance.  This seems to deal with epistemic cluelessness fine. 

Why can't you take seriously every plausible argument with huge implications? 

What sorts of things do they do?

Thanks, yes I think I fired this post off too quickly without taking time to read deeper analysis of it.  I'll try to give your post a read when I get the chance. 

Interesting point, though I disagree--I think there are strong arguments for thinking that you should just maximize utility https://joecarlsmith.com/2022/03/16/on-expected-utility-part-1-skyscrapers-and-madmen/

It's made me a bit more Longtermist.  I think that one of the more plausible scenarios for infinite value is that God exists and actions that help each other out infinitely strengthen our eternal relationship, and such a judgment will generally result in doing conventionally good things.  I also think that you should have some uncertainty about ethics, so you should want the AI to do reflection.

Thanks!

Majorly disagree!  I think that while probably you'd expect an animal to behave aversively in response to stimuli, it's surprising that: 

1. This distracts them from other aversive stimuli (nociception doesn't typically work that way--it's not like elbow twitches distract you and make you less likely to have other twitches.  
2. They'd react to anaesthetic (they could just have some aversive behavior without anaesthetic).
3. They'd rub their wounds.  

etc

No!  It implies only that if you inflict some comparable injury on a human and bee (adjusting for e.g. bees diminshed size) the human will feel, on average (though lots of uncertainty), around 10X as much pain.  Moral evaluation of this is something different! 

If you want to read the longer defense of the RP numbers, you can read the RP report or my followup article on the subject https://benthams.substack.com/p/you-cant-tell-how-conscious-animals. Suffice it to say, it strikes me as deeply unwise to base your assessments of bee consciousness on how they look, rather than on behavior.  I think the strong confidence that small and simple animals aren't intensely conscious rests on little more than unquestioned dogma, with nothing very persuasive having ever been said in its favor https://benthams.substack.co... (read more)

You can read a brief summary of his findings here--he also read my article and didn't point out anything major, so it's unlikely that I majorly distorted what he said. 

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BvNxD66sLeAT8u9Lv/climate-change-and-longtermism-new-book-length-report

Oh and one point about the update: all of these errors came from me being a dumbass and misreading Halstead or posting the wrong link, so this shouldn't affect your update from Halstead. 

Okay yes you are totally right, these are embarrassing errors that I will now fix!

Sorry, just saw this, will double-check and then fix the various claims if you are right.

I think there is probably a pretty strong moral reason to abstain from those but honey provides much stronger reasons.  Disagree on strategy--people really like bees! 

How is this different from, say, the external world?  Like, in both cases you'll ultimately ground out at intuitions, but nonetheless, the beliefs seem justified. 

Moral realism is just the idea that some moral propositions are objectively true, not that all of them are true. 

They're doing nothing subjectively wrong if they really don't know.  But if they knowingly don't look into it then they're a bit blameworthy. 

There's a distinction between subjective rightness and objective rightness (these are poor terms given that they're both compatible with using moral realism).  I'd say that if you torture someone thinking it will be bad but it turns out good, that was subjectively bad but objectively good.  Given what you knew at the time you shouldn't have done it but it was ultimately for the bets.

See my reply :)

Objective just means that its truth doesn't depend on what people think about it.  The Earth being round is objective--even if everyone thought it was flat, it wouldn't be. 

//I think that these things really are wrong and don't depend on what people think about it. But I also think that that statement is part of a language game dictated by complex norms and expectations.// 

To me this sounds a bit like moral naturalism.  You don't think morality is something non-physical and spooky but you think there are real moral facts and these don't depend on our attitudes.  

I guess I don't quite see what your puzzlement is with morality.  There are moral norms which govern what people should do.  Now, you might d... (read more)

Morality is Objective

Um, see above :)

Biodiversity isn't ultimately what matters but unfortunately it's the best proxy that we have for learning about the distant past.  There aren't really studies about past NPP after mass extinctions.  More diverse ecosystems tend to be richer and more productive. 

Also, humans have, in fact, been drastically reducing insect populations--https://reducing-suffering.org/humanitys-net-impact-on-wild-animal-suffering/

Why does being cage free need more feed?

Why do cage free reforms increase crop land? 

:)

Thanks, you too!

1. I'm doubtful that any of those are conscious, but I agree that given that it's possible they are, their interests matter a decent amount in expectation--though probably less than insects.  
2. If the world is very weird then the right ethical view should get weird results.  For more on this see https://wonderandaporia.substack.com/p/surely-were-not-moral-monsters and https://benthams.substack.com/p/lyman-stone-continues-being-dumb?utm_source=publication-search starting at "Lyman's a pro-natalist".  A view shouldn't be judged by matching intuitio

Well, all Christians will need to explain why evangelism isn't the only thing of any importance.  In my view universalists have the best answer, but whatever one's answer is, it can explain why to give to effective anti-poverty charities.