All of RogerAckroyd's Comments + Replies

Interesting. Previously this was a major criticism I had of utilitarianism.  The fact that the order of summing infinite series matters still seems like a big remaining problem. 

Should you hope that you are doing good? Perhaps not. For a number of cause areas you should probably hope that you are achieving nothing, or actually doing harm. Eg, if you are working on x-risk reduction you should hope what you are doing is not neccessary, in which case you are probably doing harm by reducing growth. 

Nor in Scandinavia. Driving, or riding trains, you often see cows grazing on pastures. Of course, that is not in the slaughterhouse, or when their young are taken away from them, but I still wonder whether their life on average is worse than mine. (I am also going to die one day, and adjusted for my greater understanding I am not sure mine will be a more pleasant death than a cow's.) 

Alternative protein work does not involve a direct focus on welfare, but it equally seems to not involve a direct focus on advocacy. 

For PR-reasons, something involving anti-cruelty might be a good term. 

The last I read about Integrated Information Theory was Scott Aaronsson's criticism of it. Has his arguments been addressed, because I found it very compelling? 

I would be careful about psycholigical explanations for followers of the EA movement committing fraud. It might be due to ends-justify-the-means thinking, but other possibilities, such as EA alignment being a useful tool to faciliate fraud, are also possible. 

At least on Twitter I felt that EA followers gave quite a lot of attention to SBF in particular. It certainly was positive PR for him and his companies, but I think an obvious risk for the movement. 

I had no inkling the problems with FTX, but I had was somewhat surprised to see the crypto influence on the EA movement. Even absent fraud crypto currency businesses seemed to be financially risky, and also posing a PR-problem. 

I wish Giving What We Can's donation page had my credit card number saved. Would remove a slight moment of annoyance each month. 

There is a lot of EA content on Twitter. It can't replace this forum for serious debate, but for someone like me who mainly consumes EA content to maintain motivation long-term it does well enough. 

For people with math/technical background the easiest way to express certain ideas may be in a mathy way. 

From animal EAs in the US there is talk about upcoming Supreme court case where California import restrictions on pork produced to lower standards are likely to be overturned. A sad turn of events if it happens. Also find it annoying that some activists are trying to ally it with larger left-wing cause, and warn it will lead to general race to bottom when it comes to regulations. As someone who is more right-wing on many issues I am not very worried about race to bottom when it comes to labor market regulation. I also don't see how it is tactically smart t... (read more)

Would this be specifically violence against women and girls in poor countries, or globally? 

Been reading about cryptocurrencies and block-chain. Cool technologies, but the valuation of current cryptocurrencies seems like a bubble that must crash, and the people who are "investing" in crypto right now are gambling, and I worry they do not know they are gambling. 

I hope current EA-aligned people in crypto manage to cash out, and that there is no reputational harm for the movement from the fact that some well-known proponents work in the field. 

Gresham College is hosting an event with the title "Does Philanthropy do the Public Good?" by Professor David King. It can be watched afterwards here https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/good-philanthropy. 

It might be interesting, or alternatively it might be terrible but relevant for EAs to know what views are put out in the public debate. 

The current conflict with Russia has increased my estimate of the importance of democratization. I think a democratic Russia would be unlikely to go to war with brother country like Ukraine.  Many efforts to spread democracy seem pretty unsuccesful. 

I wonder whether democratic countries sometimes could make deals with dictators to allow a gradual change to democracy, only finishing when the dictator dies or decides to retire. Assuming the dicator cares somewhat about his country's long-term future he might be persuaded that democracy is best way of ensuring peace and prosperity for it long-term. 

Of course we can't be, but sanctions are also nothing new. And rogue countries like Russia also understand how sanctions work and would already use them if it could. 

Definitely worrying about WW3 or nuclear holocaust at the moment. I gave an extra donation to long-terminst causes this month. Don't usually donate to them, but the argument that some long-term thinking should be promoted seemed convincing now. 

I hope, but have no real reason to believe, that western leaders know how far they can support Ukraine without causing the war to spread. 

Estimates of Trump's wealth vary. He is certainly controversial, but I don't think his detractors view him as a billionaire. 

Scott Aaronsson has received a grant to redistribute and is asking for charity recommendations. https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6232 Note that he indicates AI-risk and other rationalist-flavored organisations are disfavored, but the blog post might still be of some interest. 

It would seem to enourage competition inside parties, and even sabotaging party comrades, in a way that does not happen in most proportional representation systems, since it is important to be among the most popular candidates in the party. 

I think spreading democracy might be something that is a prerequisite for long-term EA gains in many areas. If there were effective organisation that spread or helped preserve democracy I might donate to them, but I would be skeptical of the benefits of changing voting systems in existing democracies. 

Merry Christmas! I hope you all have great holidays, and are able to draw inspiration from them, even if Christmas presents are often an example of the most inefficient altruism there is. 

Can one indicate briefly how intelligent octopuses are in comparison to vertebrates? Are they as smart as monkeys for example? 

A cynical atheist would say that early Christians on some level were not certain of their beliefs, which was an important factor in the recommendations. 

People who believe in transformative AI can openly acknowledge that there is uncertainty about the future but maybe that will amount to the same thing. 

Yay for me: I have found that I can increase my donations in way that seems long-term sustainable in terms of finances and emotional engagement. I have also found that a moderate engagement with the movement is the best way for me to maintain an interest, while avoiding getting depressed by the state of the world.  

I thought the Clickhole post was both funny, and a good illustration of how cause prioritization can be perceived by many people. 

I think it was the GWWC page that I eventually linked to. 

I looked at the Centre for Effective Altruism home page first, and somewhere else that I can not remember, and did not find them very suitable as a starting point for the general public. 

I was recently looking for a page with donation advice to link to. I found one, but it struck me that some general EA-organisations could start their homepages more focused on effective donation. (As opposed to getting people involved in other ways.) Most people are not looking to join an organistion or change jobs to more altruistically effective ones, but probably donate something to charity and could repriotize those donations. Having a "hook" which is about what to donate to might be more helpful. 

I am not convinced federalism does much to mitigate risk of totalitarianism. I think there is tendency for power to get concentrated to the federal level, regardless of what legal documents say, and to achieve totalitarianism it should be enough to get power over armed forces, law enforcement and highest courts. 

If that was done before the slave trade was abolished it would have encouraged the enslavement of more people. 

Another question: Would it have supported Christian missionary efforts because of education/healthcare they spread? Would it instead have competed with such efforts? 

(I am assuming that we are talking of an organisation founded in the Western world. What a Chinese GiveWell in the 19th century would have done I have absolutely no idea about.) 

Going back a little more than 200 years, would it have recommended supporting the anti-slavery movement? Presumably it would agree that abolishing slavery was good, but the evidence that the movement would work would not be there beforehand, and it might have seemed very unlikely to succeed. 

Professor Abigail Marsh writes in NYT that individualism promotes altruism: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/26/opinion/individualism-united-states-altruism.html?smid=tw-share

I have not made any attempt to vet the study, and for studies of this kind you don't expect one study to be more than a small piece of evidence but it is clearly an interesting research question. 

Thank you for those links. 

Sometimes when I see people writing about opposition to the death penalty I get the urge to mention Effective Altruism to them, and suggest it is borderline insane to think opposition to capital punishment in the US is where a humanitarian should focus their energies. (Other political causes don't cause me to react in the same way because people's desire to campaign for things like lower taxes, feminism or more school spending seems tied up with self-interest to a much larger degree, so the question if it is the most pressing issue seems irrelevant.) I always refrain from mentioning EA because I think it would do more harm then good, so I will just vent my irrational frustation here. 

 

I would think associating the EA "brand" with drug legalisation would cause a negative reaction among at least as many people who would appreciate it because it shows concern for systemic change. I also don't see how it more of an example of systemic change than changing animal welfare laws to ban a lot of current practices, or regulating AI, to cite two political goals that some EA pursue. 

I also think the fact that it is non-neglected means that anyone who thinks this is the most good they can do could easily find a current organisation to join and ... (read more)

Research into the human brain and mind does not seem neglected. I am skeptical of our ability to make much progress into the question of consciousness and in particular I don't think we will ever be able to be confident which animals and AI are conscious. But to whatever extent we can make progress on these questions it seems it will come from research areas that are not neglected. Of course, if you are passionate about the area you might think that going into it and donating part of your salary is the best decision overall. 

Does your feeling that the default state is positive also apply to farm animals? Their reward system would be shaped by aritifical selection for the past few generations, but it is not immediately clear to me if you think that would make a difference. 

Sometimes the concern is raised that caring about wild animal welfare is seen as unituitive and will bring conflict with the environmental movement. I do not think large-scale efforts to help wild animals should be an EA cause at the moment, but in the long-term I don't think environmentalist concerns will be a limiting factor. Rather, I think environmentalist concerns are partially taken as seriously as they are because people see it as helping wild animals as well. (In some perhaps not fully thought out way.) I do not think it is a coindince that the ext... (read more)

Thank you for writing this, this is indeed concerning. I will acknowledge that I have a bias against the social justice movement, for many different reasons, but if I want to be altruistic I have to also see if it has good sides. 

I can certainly see a case that working with diversity and inclusion can have instrumental value for EA organisations, including animal advocacy ones. The idea that having representatives from diverse backgrounds can help to give a movement broad appeal seems very likely correct. The idea that this can also generate useful id... (read more)

It is not obvious that non-extinction is an attractor state. If there is some minimal background risk of extinction that we can not get below (whether due to asteroids, false vacuum decay, nuclear war,  everyone becoming a negative utilitarian and stops reproducing, whatever) then it is the nature of exponential discounting that the very long-term future can quickly become essentially unimportant. 

Personally I give mostly to animal welfare, on the ground that it is comparitively neglected within the movement, and even more neglected in the larger philantropic world. Your data seems to confirm my intuition on that score.

 One could say thatlong-termism is also neglected, but I am not convinced of the effectiveness of long-termist charities. (I should say I have not looked deeply into it.) 

You assume here that other wild animals have net-positive lives. It is also possible from a utilitarian viewpoint that their lives are net-negative, or that their lives are neutral since they lack conscioussness. I don't think there is any way, even in principle, of knowing which is true. I do feel comfortable saying however  that humans are both more intrinsically valuable than other animals, and have a higher potential to live a good life than other animals. 

It is definitely possible to reach the utilitarian conclusion that the extinction of hu... (read more)

There is a well-known argument that rule utilatarianism actually collapses into act utilatarianism. I wonder if rule utilitarians are not getting at the notion of dynamic inconsistency. If might be better if utilitarians can pre-commit to following certain rules, because of the effect that has on society, even if after one has adopted the rules there are circumstances where a utilitarian would be tempted to make exceptions. 

I think there might be some interest among the EA community in recent social media discussions about Scott Alexander and SlateStarCodex. My impression is that among some committed leftists the movement will face suspiscion rooted in its support from rich people, its current demographic profile, because some leftists are suspiscious of rationality itself and because the movement might detract from the idea that the causes popular now among leftists are also objectively the most important issues facing the world. 

I agree that ignoring psychological harms completely is arbitrary. Many people would prefer moderate physical pain to public humiliation and this seems pretty hard-wired in our psychology.

 At the same time, in the current climate claims of psychological harm are clearly used strategically. People supposedly feel unsafe if a colleague has political views that they disagree with for example, which clearly is not some sort of universal fact of human psychology. Certain claims of emotional harm should be discounted not because they are necessarily false, but because indulging them leads to a bad equilibrium. 

The problems of feral cats seems to receive a fair amount attention among mainstream animal protection and animal rights groups. Eg there are campaigns to neuter them (humanely) to prevent over-population etc. Birds are fed by many humans but it is unclear to me whether that is net-positive in long run, much less an effective intervention. Rodents and bugs receive less attention, quite possibly rightly so.