All of Tejas Subramaniam's Comments + Replies

I lean in favor of (some kind of) normative realism. My grounds for this are the relatively-basic ones: it certainly seems, for example, that some choices are plain irrational or that some states-of-affairs are bad in a stance-independent way. And of course, robust realists will always point to the partners-in-crime of moral facts, in other kinds of a priori domains. 

My main source of uncertainty — indeed, the reason I flip back and forth between realism and anti-realism — is (various presentations of) the epistemological objection to moral realism. I... (read more)

Strong upvoted. This (otherwise well-written) post made me update (mildly) in favor of these reforms, so for someone with my specific views, the original title felt a bit misleading, even if not technically wrong. 

In my opinion, this is a neutral-to-positive update in favor of broiler welfare reforms (even though it increases the variance of possible outcomes as far as net harm goes). With high uncertainty, my best guess is that the average arthropod lives a net negative life (assuming sentience) — I’m aware you are more undecided about this than I am. Additionally, also with high uncertainty, my best guess is that additional land use from feed reduces arthropod populations, which is also your conclusion. So for me, this is an increase in the expected value of broiler welfare reforms. 

I’m not completely sure I would call your view constructivist, because of this comment by Sebo under the same piece. 

Also, here’s a random thought, which I don’t necessarily think works/holds for your view, but I’m curious what you think. I think objective tends to mean, as Huemer puts it in Ethical Intuitionism, constitutively independent of the attitudes of observers specifically, rather than anyone’s attitudes or stances. For example, a preference utilitarian can think there is an objective moral fact that it is bad to, all else equal, do something... (read more)

I think the expected value of the long-term future, in the “business as usual” scenario, is positive. In particular, I anticipate that advanced/transformative artificial intelligence drives technological innovation to solve a lot of world problems (e.g., helping create cell-based meat eventually), and I also think a decent amount of this EV is contained in futures with digital minds and/or space colonization (even though I’d guess it’s unlikely we get to that sort of world). However, I’m very uncertain about these futures—they could just as easily contain ... (read more)

The fourth objection, on who the victim is, has always seemed like the strongest explanation of the deontological moral difference to me. When you offset your CO2 emissions, you haven‘t actually harmed anyone. (I’m personally inclined to place higher credence on utilitarianism than most other moral theories, so I‘m not too bothered by this, and I also think it’s certainly better than the most plausible alternative – people eat meat but don’t offset it – but regardless, interesting philosophical question.)

The Carlsmith article you linked -- post 1 of his two-post series -- seems to mostly argue against the standard arguments people might have for ethical anti-realists reasoning about ethics (i.e., he argues that neither a brute preference for consistency nor money-pumping arguments seem like the whole picture). You might be talking about the second piece in the two-post series instead?

Brian Tomasik considers more selection toward animals with faster life histories in his piece on the effects of climate change on wild animals. He seems to think it‘s not decisive (and ends up concluding that he’s basically 50–50 on the sign of the effects of climate change on overall animal suffering) for ~three reasons (paraphrasing Tomasik):

• Some of the animals with slower life histories which get replaced are often carnivorous/omnivorous, which might mean climate change decreases invertebrate populations.
• Instability might also affect plants, which could

I didn’t say they fell under the ethics of killing, I was using killing as an example of a generic rights violation under a plausible patient-centered deontological theory to illustrate the difference between “a rights violation happening to one person and help coming for a separate person as an offset” and “one’s harm being directly offset.”

(I agree that it seems a bit more unclear if potential people can have rights, even if they can have moral consideration, and in particular rights to not be brought into existence, but I think it’s very plausible.)

Note, however, that I think the question of whether there can be deontic side-constraints regarding our treatment of animals is unclear even conditioning on deontology. Many deontologist philosophers – like Huemer – are uncertain whether animals have “rights” (as a patient-centered deontologist would put it), even though they think (1) humans have rights and (2) animals are still deserving of moral consideration. Deontologists sometimes resort to something like “deontology for people, consequentialism for animals” (although some other deontologists, like Nozick, thought that this was insufficient for animals). 

I think offsetting emissions and offsetting meat consumption are comparable under utilitarianism, but much less comparable under most deontological moral theories, if you think animals have rights. For instance, if you killed someone and donated $5,000 to the Malaria Consortium, that seems worse – from a deontological perspective – than if you just did nothing at all, because the life you kill and the life you save are different people, and many deontological theories are built on the “separateness of persons.” In contrast, if you offset your CO2 emissions... (read more)

Why do you think excruciating pain is 10k as intense as disabling pain? If I use these conversion factors (p. 30) instead, chicken welfare campaigns seem to win. 

Do you think there are promising ways to slow down growth in aquaculture?

This post by Carl Shulman is very similar to this, I think.

Somewhat relevant (takes the hard proves-too-much stance): https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/10/dear_identity_p.html

She co-authored a piece a few months back about finding AI safety emotionally compelling. I’d be interested in her thoughts on the following two questions related to that!

• How worried should we be about suspicious convergence between AI safety being one of the most interesting/emotionally compelling questions to think about and it being the most pressing problem? There used to be a lot of discussion around 2015 about how it seemed like people were working on AI safety because it’s really fun and interesting to think about, rather than because it’s actually

Thanks for writing this up! I disagree for a few reasons:

• This feels more like a problem at the point between “alternative proteins have scaled up and we’ve replaced a bunch of meat” and “this results in a meat ban.” It seems possible to me that moral advocacy efforts can happen after alternative proteins have scaled up, but before there are laws to stop factory farming for food entirely. I don’t think alternative proteins replacing, say, 80% of meat will result in people thinking non-meat uses of animals is morally okay in a lock-in kind of way. 
• I thi

These two pieces are of interest. Lots of similar conclusions.

Thanks for this! You may also find this post of interest.

Benjamin Todd makes some similar points here. 

Greg Mankiw’s introductory econ textbook has a good explanation of a similar point:

LeBron James is a great athlete. One of the best basketball players of all time, he can jump higher and shoot better than most other people. Most likely, he is talented at other physical activities as well. For example, let’s imagine that LeBron can mow his lawn faster than anyone else. But just because he can mow his lawn fast, does this mean he should? 

Let’s say that LeBron can mow his lawn in 2 hours. In those same 2 hours, he could film a television commercial and e... (read more)

Thanks for the link! I will look into this soon. 

My immediate reaction is that that depends on the specific objectives of the advocacy organizations, as well as who they’re aiming to influence. 

For example, the article mentions the patent waiver a lot. While this is (I think) a point of difference between Manya and me, I’m currently unsure (50-50 split, in fact) about the sign of the effect of the patent waiver, and pretty convinced the magnitude is small (and that it obscures the deeper problems with vaccine supply). 

From talking to the people helping the Swasti fundraiser in question, they seem to be working on data and coordination, but appear to be working separately on procurement and distribution! In any case, our point was more that Swasti and Swasth are separate organizations (and the similar name seems like a coincidence). 

That’s why our third recommendation (not in order of importance) under oxygen is the Swasth/ACT Grants fundraiser! From our post: “Swasth’s Oxygen for India concentrator fundraiser on Milaap (for the price at which they are buying oxygen concentrators, room for more funding, and transparency about procurement and funding).”

From a conversation with the people running the Swasti Oxygen for All fundraiser, our guess is the two are equally cost-effective. 

Hi! So the Swasti Oxygen for All fundraiser does not offer a tax deduction for the United States (I asked them recently). Swasth’s Oxygen for India fundraiser offers tax deductions for donations from the United States for donations above $1,000 (the details are specified in the link). We are happy to check about other countries!

We really appreciate it!

Thanks a lot for this estimate! I will link your comment on our post. 

I’ve added Swasth as a recommendation, because it seems to purchase concentrators at lower prices and seems to have more room for funding at the moment, and because our concerns on accessible payment options are likely less relevant among EAs (as opposed to the high school and college students who will likely attend our debate lecture series). Thanks for pointing it out!

I don’t think the two are related!

We actually looked at Swasth and think it’s another very promising opportunity – definitely comparable to our other two recommendations – but we didn’t recommend it because it only accepted the payment method of a bank transfer for foreign donations, which could be less accessible (particularly for the lecture series that we originally wrote this for). 

In general, however, it looks quite good, both for the prices at which Swasth is getting concentrators and given their focus on concentrators, which we think are the most cost-effective option. 

Thanks for sharing! Manya and I will look this up/check the actual size of the oxygen tanks and times, and see how it affects Jeff’s model. 

Thanks for the comment! We are honestly quite unsure about the margin,  especially because the cost-effectiveness analyses we have access to are about the cause area and not a model for the specific charitable donations. 

Our guess is that donations to oxygen likely beat GiveWell top charities – here are Jeff Coleman’s calculations for the GiveIndia’s various programs for magnitudes.  It’s hard to give a precise estimate partly because each oxygen concentrator or cylinder, for instance, is a fixed cost which can be used for a while (and we‘re... (read more)

My  guesses at the moment are that: 

• Oxygen concentrators are more cost-effective than B-type cylinders, and much more cost-effective than ventilators or D-type cylinders, but there’s a lot more uncertainty around oxygen generators. This is both due to Coleman’s calculations and transport constraints. Even though concentrators are used in less severe cases, they can prevent cases from becoming severe enough to require hospitalization, given serious bed shortages. 
• Effective Indian charities (or ones that operate more extensively in India) are

Was so surprised and happy to see this when just scrolling through EA Forum today! Thanks a lot for conducting it, I really enjoyed competing. The high school pilot program looks incredible!