All of Ramiro's Comments + Replies

Anyone else consders  the case of Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland (application no. 53600/20) of the European Court of Human Rights a possibly useful for GCR litigation?

I never said Stoics reflected on GCR

Elon Musk? So last year... 2024 is time for Trump scandals.
Let's buy some Truth shares and produce new scandals!

you can totally have scandals involving dead or imaginary people. So, definitely no.

I'm not sure where is the best place to share this, but I just received a message from GD that made think of Wenar's piece: John Cena warns us against giving cash with conditions | GiveDirectly (by Tyler Hall)
Ricky Stanicky is a comedy about three buddies who cover for their immature behavior by inventing a fictitious friend ‘Ricky’ as an alibi. [...]

When their families get suspicious, they hire a no-name actor (played by John Cena) to bring ‘Ricky’ to life, but an incredulous in-law grills Ricky about a specific Kenyan cash transfer charity he’d supposedl

As a civil servant from a developing country, I can say that those estimates mean almost nothing. I don't think they are well invested, and they are tiny in comparison to adaptation gaps
I think there's a huge problem of prioritization when it comes to adaptation investment - because developing countries seldom link infrastructure resilience to adaptation policies

Thinking about this one year later, I realize that Global Catastrophic events are much like Carnival in Brazil: unlivable climatic conditions, public services are shut down, traffic becomes impossible, crowds of crazy people roam randomly through the streets... but without Samba and beaches, of course (or, in the case of Curitiba, without zombies selling you beer)

but your song was actually written as an apolyptic message: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_(can%C3%A7%C3%A3o_de_Umberto_Tozzi)#:~:text=A%20letra%20da%20can%C3%A7%C3%A3o%20mistura%20fic%C3%A7%C3%A3o%20cient%C3%ADfica%20p%C3%B3s%2Dapocal%C3%ADptica%20com%20inspira%C3%A7%C3%A3o%20na%20B%C3%ADblia%20e%20%C3%A9%20narrada%20por%20um%20homem
 

For more, see this brilliant podcast: https://globoplay.globo.com/podcasts/episode/choque-de-cultura-ambiente-de-musica/7b0c4362-3a28-4ed4-be45-e6786aaba9f9/

How consistent are "global risk reports"?

We know that the track record of pundits is terrible, but many international consultancy firms have been publishing annual "global risks reports" like the WEF's, where they list the main global risks (e.g. top 10) for a certain period (e.g., 2y). Well, I was wondering if someone has measured their consistency; I mean, I suppose that if you publish in 2018 a list of the top 10 risks for 2019 & 2020, you should expect many of the same risks to show up in your 2019 report (i.e., if you are a reliable predictor, ris... (read more)

Let me briefly try to reply or clarify this:

I think there is a massive difference between one's best guess for the annual extinction risk^[1] being 1 % or 10^-10 (in policy and elsewhere). I guess you were not being literal? In terms of risk of personal death, that would be the difference between a non-Sherpa first-timer climbing Mount Everest^[2] (risky), and driving for 1 s^[3] (not risky).

I did say that I'm not very concerned with the absolute values of precise point-estimates, and more interested in proportional changes and in relative prob... (read more)

Something that surprised me a bit, but that is unlikely to affect your analysis:

I used Correlates of War’s data on annual war deaths of combatants due to fighting, disease, and starvation. The dataset goes from 1816 to 2014, and excludes wars which caused less than 1 k deaths of combatants in a year.

Actually, I'm not sure if this dataset is taking into account average estimates of excess deaths in Congo Wars (1996-2003, 1.5 million - 5.4 million) - and I'd like to check how it takes into account Latin American Wars of the 19th century.

Thanks for the post. I really appreciate this type of modeling exercise.

I've been thinking about this for a while, and there are some reflections it might be proper to share here. In summary, I'm afraid a lot of effort in x-risks might be misplaced. Let me share some tentative thoughts on this:

a) TBH, I'm not very concerned with precise values of point-estimates for the probability of human extinction. Because  of anthropic bias, or the fact that this is necessarily a one-time event, the incredible values involved, and doubts about how to extrapolate ... (read more)

Thanks for this report. It'll be quite useful.
I'd like to share some critical remarks I had previously sent RCG by e-mail:

1. Definition of “RCG”

<Los RCG se definen como aquellos con el potencial de infligir un daño grave al bienestar humano a escala global. > (p.2; cf. p. 6)

This definition might be too wide – it could include the global financial crisis of 2008, for instance. It is constrained, though, by the subsequent sentence: <Si bien se han identificado diversos riesgos que cumplen con esta definición, el presente trabajo se enfoca en ... (read more)

Opportunity for Austrians
Article by Seána Glennon: “In the coming week, thousands of households across Austria will receive an invitation to participate in a citizens’ assembly with a unique goal: to determine how to spend the €25 million fortune of a 31-year-old heiress, Marlene Engelhorn, who believes that the system that allowed her to inherit such a vast sum of money (tax free) is deeply flawed."

T20 Brasil | T20 BRASIL CALL FOR POLICY BRIEF ABSTRACTS: LET’S RETHINK THE WORLD
 

The T20 Brasil process will put forward policy recommendations to G20 officials involved in the Sherpa and Finance tracks in the form of a final communiqué and task forces recommendations.

To inform these documents, we are calling upon think tanks and research centres around the world – this invitation extends beyond G20 members – to build and/or reach out to their networks, share evidence, exchange ideas, and develop joint proposals for policy briefs. The latter should pu... (read more)

For me it's hard to believe that companies will spend much more with compliance thatn what they are already spending with marketing and offsets to greenwash their reputations. And when we implement carbon taxes / markets, they'll need to disclose that info anyway

Sorry for being contentious, but.... Cochrane is remarkably clever in his papers, but I fail to see cleverness here. For instance, one of his main rants is about SEC’s proposing that firms disclose their carbon footprint; it’d be financially irrelevant, right? However, there’s a strong consensus among economists and institutions on the need for higher carbon prices. So it’s expected that, in the long run, carbon intensive companies will pay more for their emissions; disclosing data on emissions is all about allowing investors to manage long-term financial ... (read more)

In case you're still interested in the subject: Consultative document - disclosure of climate-related financial risks (bis.org)
 

Idea for free (feel free to use, abuse, steal): a tool to automatize donations + birthday messages. Imagine a tool that captures your contacts and their corresponding birthdays from Facebook; then, you will make (or schedule) one (or more) donations to a number of charities, and the tool will customize birthday messages with a card mentioning that you donated $ in their honor and send it on their corresponding birthdays.

For instance: imagine you use this tool today; it’ll then map all the birthdays of your acquaintances for the next year. Then you’ll selec... (read more)

Thanks. D'you have all the CURVE posts published as some sort of ebook somewhere? That would be helpful

Adding a new layer to your confusion: since most of the lives in question are probably newborns (as most of the mortality is captured by neonatal disorders), and since the time lag between one's specific donation and its corresponding effects is likely more than 9 months, this means that one's donation will probably impact the identity of the affected kids. If for some reason (e.g., non-identity problem) one believes that helping existing people is more important than helping future people, then this counts against donating to clean water projects.
(I totally disagree with this, ofc)

Thanks for this.

I have seen many informative comments here, especially on the stats of the paper...

Let's suppose your postulated "30% all mortality reduction" effect is real; on your figure on GBD cause of deaths above "neonatal disorders" occupy almost the same area. So, if such an effect is real, it likely has to affect neonatal disorders - i.e., preterm birth complications, neonatal encephalopathy due to birth asphyxia and trauma, neonatal sepsis and other neonatal infections, haemolytic disease and other neonatal jaundice, and other neonatal disor... (read more)

Why aren't you running the Effective Thesis Exceptional Research Award for 2023?

OMG thanks for this. My bad. I edited the original to contemplate this.

It's kind of sad to revisit this discussion during SBF's trial

I recently heard a great episode on him on this podcast: https://spotify.link/pyTNXYsTODb

Come to Brazil. We can make room for +1bi individuals, easy. With nuclear winter, we may even manage to get some ski resorts ;)
(Ofc if we don't start a war w Argentina. That's the problem w South America)

My research group is designing a course on Global Risks for academic students in Brazil. I am looking for syllabi and teaching materials that could help inspire us. Right now I am using the WEF report, the Global Challenges report, the Legal Topics in Effective Altruism |and taking a look at the more practical topics in teaching materials from GPI. But I would like to see something from CSER, maybe? Anyone has any tips?

Thanks for this. i just had a similar idea, and ofc I'm glad to see another EA had a similar insight before. I am no expert on the field, but I agree that this "atemporal avg utilitarianism" seems to be underrated; I wonder why. The greatest problem I see with this view, at first, is that it makes the moral goodness of future actions depend on the population and the goodness of the past. I suspect this would also make it impossible (or intractable) to model goodness as a social welfare function. But then... if the moral POV is the "POV of the universe", or... (read more)

Two “non-spoilers” for the movie Oppenheimer

Since the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Elders have been talking about this lately…

1) "Now I become Death, the destroyer of worlds"

The famous passage from Bhagavad Gita (BG), the Hindu religious epic. It suggests that Nolan is associating Oppie with the terrible form of Vishvaruppa – call this the “promethean” interpretation. But Oppie is actually more similar to prince Arjuna: the hero with a crisis of conscience who doesn't want to join the battlefield of Kurukshetra because it will bring incontroll... (read more)

Thanks for this! Vegan pets is awesome (even a "not so strictly carinvore" would be super great", but I still think feral cats might be a worse (and more neglected) issue

I was wondering if you considered anyway to take into account "adversarial dynamics" (i.e., the industry increasing its investments in lobbying against such measures) and substitution effects (e.g., people spending more on other harmful products, such as alcohol)

[...] this post is a high-level summary intended for busy forum readers who are definitely not browsing the forum when they should actually be working.

You have just become my favorite EA-charity.

Thanks for the post. I find it weird that we sort of neglect scalable interventions regarding non-communicable diseases (except for tobacco).

I was hoping that after covid-19 this would become a priority. Btw, I noticed that you do not use evidence associated with the pandemic - even though DMT was one of the main predictors of mortality:
Diabetes is most important cause for mortality in COVID-19 hospitalized patients: Systematic review and meta-analysis - PMC (nih.gov)

Diabetes prevalence and mortality in COVID-19 patients: a systematic review, meta-analysis... (read more)

Thanks for the post.

Maybe the answer is more mundane than you imagine: light pollution
I'm only half-joking. If you think about it, we are sort of the 1st or 2nd generation to have lived most of their waking lives indoors, without really looking at the stars - without ever perceiving why we call this galaxy Milky Way.

Thanks for the post! When I first started studying intergenerational justice, I was kind of surprised that political philosophers in the area pay little attention to the debate on discount rates (not even to argue about how to decide it democratically), and put a lot of pressure on discussios on representation and on the so-called "boundary problem". (which is sort of curious: most of the scholars I've talked to buy the consequences of the nonidentity problem, and so conclude that future people don't really have rights... and yet, they think it's ok to dis... (read more)

+1 for the pun 'Costco Shareholders Cry “Fowl” Over Chicken Neglect'

Congratulations! you're on The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/09/australia-and-new-zealand-best-placed-to-survive-nuclear-apocalypse-study-finds

oh i thought effective tourism would take care of making your post-EAG time awesome just imagine how an EAG Torres del Paine could be ;)

Because of timezones, the date of this post is displayed as Apr 2nd for me, and I read it while listening to a sad song saying "I've got this funny feeling that the end is near" (From "Mayflower, New york") - making it all a bit funnier

is it April's Fool?

Btw, I just noticed that the GCR Act is followed by Subsection B - Technological Hazards 
Preparedness and Training that nobody is talking about...

And preceded by Sec. 7201-7211: Intragovernmental Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act and Sec. 7221-7228: Advancing American AI Act

Hi. I'll have to present WWOTF's first chapter to a class of philosophers and economists... I was wondering if someone has any ".pptx" about the book they'd be willing to share, pretty plz? 😅

Hi. I'll have to present WWOTF's first chapter to a class of philosophers and economists... I was wondering if someone has any ".pptx" about the book they'd be willing to share, pretty plz?

Thanks for this post.
Just one remark though:

The enactment of the Global Catastrophic Risk Management Act 

This links to the original proposal. However, as explained by Matt Boyd, the bill that was passed (with some changes - such as placing responsibility over Homeland Security instead of the President) is part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023  (p. 1290).