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All of the_jaded_one's Comments + Replies

Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA

The idea of introducing social justice into an existing movement has already been tried, and I think it's worth going over the failures and problems that social justice has caused in the atheist movement before jumping headlong into it in the EA movement. This reddit page about why Atheism+ failed makes for interesting reading: https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/2ygiwh/so_why_did_atheism_plus_fail/

Unfortunately, the people who ended up in charge of the movement cared much more about perpetuating their radical ideologies, their cults of personality

... (read more)

Kelly_Witwicki

Regarding your "red flags": 1) The post does not advocate for identity categories over competence, but competence over identity categories. As I've argued, we're missing out on a lot of people because they don't match irrelevant criteria. 2) No skepticism of questionable claims has been suspended. You are welcome, as others have, to point out what claims are too confident and why. You'll note that I've edited the post to qualify a claim I made that a commenter pointed out is debated in the literature, and an implication I made that a commenter convinced me I made too confidently. You are also welcome to provide arguments for the position you seem to take that the status quo (or an even more exclusive community, which we may be becoming) is better than a more inclusive community. Bringing up the risk is a valuable contribution to this discussion and I really appreciate it. Let's go further with our analysis of tradeoffs and discuss specific steps we can take to become more inclusive while limiting the risks in either direction, and let's have a healthy skepticism of the status quo. 3) A dismissal of the whole project of inclusion because of the risk that it will go too far is itself something of a silencing of dissenting opinions and an abandoning of free speech. As I said very explicitly in my comment about free speech, the term is often used to justify speech that pushes people out and reduces the diversity of opinions in the community and the freedom that people have to speak. The question is where the line is -- and it's probably a blurry, messy one -- and how we should address transgressions of it to keep our debates as free and productive as possible.

Kelly_Witwicki

I already commented this on your earlier, similar comment, but since you're repeating this here I will too so it's not missed: I entirely appreciate the concern of going too far. Let's just be careful not to assume that risks only come with action -- the opposite path is an awful one too, and with inaction we risk moving further down it.

Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA

the_jaded_one6y8

Came to say this as well.

See, for example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/2ygiwh/so_why_did_atheism_plus_fail/

The atheists even started to disinvite their intellectual founders, e.g. Richard Dawkins. Will EA eventually go down the same path - will they end up disinviting e.g. Bostrom for not being a sufficiently zealous social justice advocate?

All I'm saying is that there is a precedent here. If SJW-flavored EA ends up going down this path, please don't say you were not warned.

David_Moss6y12

People nominally within EA have already called for us to disavow or not affiliate with Peter Singer so this seems less hypothetical than one might think.

'Yvain' gives a good description of a process along along these lines within his comment here (which also contains lots of points which pre-emptively undermine claims within this post).

Kelly_Witwicki

I entirely appreciate the concern of going too far. Let's just be careful not to assume that risks only come with action -- the opposite path is an awful one too, and with inaction we risk moving further down it.

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one6y0

Thanks for the info on the worm wars, will look into it.

Why & How to Make Progress on Diversity & Inclusion in EA

the_jaded_one6y-14

kbog

So it is "social justice warrior" ideology. So what? Maybe some kinds of social justice warrior ideology are good. See: http://lesswrong.com/lw/e95/the_noncentral_fallacy_the_worst_argument_in_the/

xccf

I found this comment frustrating because I see it making the mistake described here: I.e. "rounding to the nearest outgroup" instead of trying to understand what Kelly in particular is trying to communicate. Anyway, I wrote a long reply here where I took a first stab at differentiating between "SJWs" vs "diversity advocates I can get behind".

Chris Leong

I am also worried about something similar; that the social justice community has certain epistemic problems that I do not want to see us make the same mistakes in EA. So I'd like to encourage you comment on this issue, but in a way that is less combative, as you might then find more success. In particular, I would like to note that several people here have made critiques of part of the argument and been upvoted.

Hi, I'm Luke Muehlhauser. AMA about Open Philanthropy's new report on consciousness and moral patienthood

the_jaded_one7y0

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explanatory_gap

jayd

A late thank you!

Hi, I'm Luke Muehlhauser. AMA about Open Philanthropy's new report on consciousness and moral patienthood

the_jaded_one7y0

I think that functionalism is incorrect and that we are super-confused about this issue.

Specifically, there is merit to the "Explanatory gap" argument. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explanatory_gap

I also sort of think I know what the missing thing is. It's that the input is connected to the algorithm that constitutes you.

If this is true, there is no objective fact-of-the-matter about which entities are conscious (in the sense of having qualia). From my point of view only I am conscious. From your point of view, only you are. Neither of us are wrong.

jayd

What's the explanatory gap argument?

the_jaded_one7y3

I do think indeed every physical punishment, however "mild" or "reasonable", is child abuse

I think this claim is a bit problematic...

moral claim masquerading as factual via reification of moral categories (there is no objective fact of the matter about whether something is or is not child abuse)
supporting a deontological claim with consequentialist evidence of harm that (presumably) arises from only a subset the more extreme violations
never physically punishing children is a much less defensible, less persuasive position than doing so in a limited set of circumstances

How accurately does anyone know the global distribution of income?

the_jaded_one7y1

If a shanty town opens down the road from me, giving me the option to live like the global poor, I become richer relative to my neighbors, but I don't become richer in absolute terms. Even if a shanty town opened, I'd buy the same stuff as before, so my quality of life would be exactly the same.

I think this is incorrect. Right now I am looking for accommodation. The cheapest option I can find (which doesn't have a working washing machine and is a single small room with shared facilities) costs €5400 per year. It would be very useful for me to have the o... (read more)

How accurately does anyone know the global distribution of income?

the_jaded_one7y1

it would indeed be harder to live in the west on $2/day, because the low-quality goods that the global poor use are not available to buy. I think the relevant comparison is more like "if there were lots of people living on $2/day in the west, what quality of living would you get?". It's artificial to imagine one person living in extreme poverty without a market and community around them.

OK, so maybe appeals to donate money based on factors of 100 wealth difference should be limited to people who actually have a third-world price/quality market... (read more)

Benjamin_Todd

I agree that makes sense given one interpretation of the claim. But that definition also has some odd implications. Why does the actual option need to be available to you, even if you're never going to take it? If a shanty town opens down the road from me, giving me the option to live like the global poor, I become richer relative to my neighbors, but I don't become richer in absolute terms. The reason the super cheap goods the global poor buy don't exist in the West is because no-one wants them. Even if a shanty town opened, I'd buy the same stuff as before, so my quality of life would be exactly the same. Your definition, however, would say I've become ~10x richer, which seems odd. I think both senses of the term are relevant and interesting. Personally, I find the sense used by the World Bank better at capturing what I intuitively think about when comparing living standards and income. But it's useful to consider both. You also haven't shown that the differences would amount to a factor of 10. Even though the exact goods the global poor would use are not available in the West, there are still very cheap goods available (as in Will's comment). That's a good point - you're likely a net contributor of taxes right now. But many of things I mentioned aren't a result of taxes. There are lots of public goods produced by being around lots of other educated, wealthy people that you benefit from but aren't captured in the income figures, such as lower crime, more beautiful buildings, more opportunities to talk to people like that, lack of sewage on the street and so on. Moreover, you're going to get some of those taxes back in the future (and you've benefited from taxes when younger). I think the lifecycle comparison is more relevant. Over your life, you're probably not net-losing more than 10-20% of your income, so it's not a big factor in the comparison. We're looking for a 10x difference, not a 10% difference. You can also reclaim tax on donations, so if the mess

How accurately does anyone know the global distribution of income?

the_jaded_one7y0

I think that on £1.53/day you could easily die, depending on your location (esp. cold locations). No food in the bins for a while, police evict you from your tent or destroy your shelter, you get drenched with water and then really cold, you get an injury or infection.

Are these kind of things (dying from exposure or hunger, police bulldoze your house) actually happening all the time to the median person in India at $700? I don't think so. I don't imagine it's easy to be the median average Indian, but I expect that you would have a shack, and food, and not... (read more)

How accurately does anyone know the global distribution of income?

the_jaded_one7y0

I didn't bring up the $70k figure or the $200k figure

that may be true, but they are figures that have been brought up

FWIW I doubt this is actually true.

Maybe. But the promotional materials certainly seem to frame it that way.

How accurately does anyone know the global distribution of income?

the_jaded_one7y4

If minimum standards rise to $90,000 and I'm earning $100,000, I would argue they do probably affect me substantially and my original premise of 'minimum standards that basically don't affect me' no longer holds.

And I think the reality of the situation facing many people in the intended audience of the original graph is at least somewhat like that.

As this debate has progressed, the amount of income corresponding the targeted person has gradually moved upwards from $70k gross in an expensive area of The West (Bay Area, Oxford UK, NYC, London) to $200k ... (read more)

AGB

Was this intended as a response to my comment? I didn't bring up the $70k figure or the $200k figure. I did take up one part of your argument (the 'minimum standards' part) and try to explain why I don't think using a $2k - $5k minimum as equivalent to the median Indian actually makes sense. FWIW I doubt this is actually true. I have generally strongly preferred to understate people's relative income rather than overstate it when 'selling' the pledge, because it shrinks the inferential distance.

How accurately does anyone know the global distribution of income?

the_jaded_one7y0

why do increases in minimum standards that basically don't affect me (I was already buying higher-than-minimum-quality things) and don't at all affect the median Indian make me much poorer relative to the median Indian?

Well, this itself may prove too much.

Suppose that the minimum to survive in the west is raised to $90,000, and if you have less than that you are thrown out onto the streets and made homeless.

If the minimum to not be homeless is $90,000 and you earn $100,000, are you REALLY 100 times richer than someone on $1000 who has a shack to live ... (read more)

AGB

If minimum standards rise to $90,000 and I'm earning $100,000, I would argue they do probably affect me substantially and my original premise of 'minimum standards that basically don't affect me' no longer holds. For example, I might to start putting substantial money aside to make sure I can meet the minimum if I lose my job, which will eat into my standard of living. That's why I used numbers where I think that statement does actually hold ($10,000 minimum versus $100,000 income). Sure, this is why I said 'hypothetically' and 'in 50 years'. I'm not sure your above claim is true in the UK even as of today in any case. (UK benefits are a bit of a maze so I'm wary of saying anything too general, but running through one website (www.entitledto.co.uk) and trying to select answers that correspond to '22 year old single healthy male living in my area with no source of income', I get an entitlement of £8,300 per year, most of which (around £5,200) is meant to cover the cost of shared housing. Eyeballing that number I think 100pw should indeed be enough to get a room in a shared property at the low end of the housing market around here. I think it is also true that a 21 year old wouldn't get that entitlement because they are supposed to live with their parents, but there are meant to be 'protections' in place where that isn't possible for whatever reason. I haven't dug further than that.)

How accurately does anyone know the global distribution of income?

the_jaded_one7y2

these bottom lines remain in every estimate of the global income distribution I’ve seen so far... Many people in the world live in serious absolute poverty, surviving on as little as one hundredth the income of the upper-middle class in the US.

But is this bottom line really approximately true?

A salary of $70,000 could be considered upper-middle-class. 1/100th of $70,000 is $700.

According to the chart, that is slightly greater than the income of the median Indian, adjusted for PPP.

Since these figures have been adjusted, that should mean that $700 in W... (read more)

Benjamin_Todd

Hey, a few comments: Rob is saying “in every estimate of the global income distribution I’ve seen so far”, there has been a 100:1 ratio, which is true because this is what's shown by all the official data. You could, of course, doubt the existing estimates. My general policy is to go with the expert view when it comes to issues that have been thoroughly researched, unless I've looked into it a lot myself. At 80,000 Hours, we don't see ourselves as experts on measuring global income, so instead go with the World Bank, Milanovic and others. Moreover, to our knowledge, the objections raised here are all well understood by the experts on the topic, and have already been factored into the analyses. That said, here a few comments to show why the Milanovic etc. estimates are not obviously wrong. First, I'll state the problem, then consider the arguments. I'm claiming that US upper middle class = $100k+ for the reason above. The World Bank estimated 800m people live under $1.9 per day in their 2015 figures, or $600 per year. In reality, many of them will live well below that level. So there's probably hundreds of millions living under $300 per year. This means there's over a factor of 300 difference between "upper middle class" and "large numbers of the global poor" So, for the claim to be strictly wrong, the consumption of the poor have to be relatively underestimated by a factor of 3. Given the difficulties in making these estimates, this doesn't seem out of the question, but is not obvious. Moreover, for it to be wrong in a way that becomes decision-relevant, you'd need the understatement to be more like a factor of 10. Even then, it would still be true that upper middle class earn 30x what the global poor earn, so they'd still be able to benefit others at little cost of themselves, and have a disproportionate influence on the world. But, it would be less pressing than a 300x difference. Here are a couple of reasons why it's not obvious the world bank etc is off b

William_MacAskill

"However, $700/year (= $1.91/day, =€1.80/day, =£1.53 /day) (without gifts or handouts) is not a sufficient amount of money to be alive in the west. You would be homeless. You would starve to death. In many places, you would die of exposure in the winter without shelter." One could live on that amount of money per day in the West. You'd live in a second-hand tent, you'd scavenge food from bins (which would count towards your 'expenditure', because we're talking about consumption expenditure, but wouldn't count that much). Your life expectancy would be considerably lower than others in the West, but probably not lower than the 55 years which is the life expectancy in Burkina Faso (as an example comparison, bear in mind that number includes infant mortality). Your life would suck very badly, but you wouldn't die, and it wouldn't be that dissimilar to the lives of the millions of people who live in makeshift slums or shanty towns and scavenge from dumps to make a living. (Such people aren't representative of all extremely poor people, but they are a notable fraction.)

Benjamin_Todd

Just a quick aside: currently the mean individual income for a US college grad is about $77,000. If you have a kid, that's a bit lower, and these are 2016 figures, which makes them a bit higher. Still, I think upper middle class implies higher earning than the mean college grad. See footnote 2 here: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/job-satisfaction/ I think of 'upper middle class' as jobs like doctor, finance, corporate management. The means here are quite a bit higher e.g. the mean income of doctors in the US is over $200k.

AGB

I think your last paragraph is plausibly true and relevant, but this is a common argument and it has common rebuttals, one of which I'm going to try and lay out here. The basics of survival are food, water, accommodation and medical care. Medical care is normally provided by the state for the poorest in the West so let's set that to one side for a moment. For the rest we set a lot of minimum standards on what is available to buy; you can't get rice below some minimum safety standard even if that very low-quality rice is more analogous to the rice eaten by a poor Indian person, I would guess virtually all (maybe actually all?) dwellings in the US have running water, etc. This presents difficult problems for making these comparisons, and I think it's part of what Rob is talking about in his point (2). One method that comes to mind is to take your median Indian and find a rich Indian who is 10x richer, then work out how that person compares to poor Americans since (hopefully) the goods they buy have significantly more overlap. Then you might be able to stitch your income distributions together and say something like [poor Indian] = [Rich Indian] / 10 = [Poor American] / 10 = [Rich American] / 100. I have some memory that this is what some of the researchers building these distributions actually do but I can't recall the details offhand; maybe someone more familiar can fill in the blanks. Building on the above, hypothetically suppose over the next 50 years the West continues on its current trend of getting richer and putting more minimum standards in place; the minimum to survive in the West is now $10,000 per year and the now-much-richer countries have a safety net that enables everyone to reach this. However, in India nothing happens. Is it now true that I need at least $1,000,000 per year to be 100x richer than the median Indian? That seems peverse. Supposing my income started at $100,000 and stayed constant in real terms throughout, why do increases in minimum s

Introducing CEA's Guiding Principles

the_jaded_one7y3

Gets almost no upvotes

Actually you got 7 upvotes and 6 downvotes, I can tell from hovering over the '1 point'.

Peter Singer no-platformed by pro-disability protestors at Canadian university

the_jaded_one7y1

you are effectively "bundling" a high-quality post with additional content, which grants this extra content with undue attention.

A post which simply quotes a news source could be criticized as not containing anything original and therefore not worth posting. Someone has already complained that this post is superfluous since a discussion already exists on Facebook.

Actually if I had to criticize my own post I would say its weakness is that it lacks in-depth analysis and research. Unfortunately, in-depth analysis takes a lot of time...

RyanCarey

Posting news together with analysis, arguments, and a few opinions is great. If you find yourself posting news and polemics together, you should think really hard if they should rather be split. I don't think this post is too bad.

Introducing CEA's Guiding Principles

the_jaded_one7y4

Also, I am somewhat concerned that this comment has been downvoted so much. It's the only really substantive criticism of the article (admittedly it isn't great), and it is at -3, right at the bottom.

Near the top are several comments at +5 or something that are effectively just applause.

-1

Austen_Forrester

LOL. Typical of my comments. Gets almost no upvotes but I never receive any sensible counterarguments! People use the forum vote system to persuade (by social proof) without having a valid argument. I have yet to vote a comment (up or down) because I think people should think for themselves.

Introducing CEA's Guiding Principles

the_jaded_one7y4

dangerous ideas of mass-termination of human and non-human life,

Specifically?

Peter Singer no-platformed by pro-disability protestors at Canadian university

the_jaded_one7y12

Facebook requires that you give your real name to post an opinion, be part of the group etc. That is certainly a serious limitation to open discussion, and this topic in particular exacerbates that problem.

Not everyone will necessarily want to comment on this issue under their real name.

Also, I presume this forum exists because someone decided that something other than Facebook is required. Are we questioning this logic in general? Or are we making a special case of this issue? Why?

But if you would be so kind as to post anything you see as particularly relevant, I would appreciate it.

Randomized, Controlled

+1 this. Hate FB. EA is the only reason I semi-regularly think about returning.

Vote Pairing is a Cost-Effective Political Intervention

the_jaded_one7y0

there's a difference between "politics is hard to predict perfectly" and "politics is impossible predict at all".

I think there's a lot of improvement to be had in the area of "refining which direction we are pushing in".

Was there ever a well-prosecuted debate about whether EA should support Clinton over Trump, or did we just sort of stumble into it because the correct side is so obvious?

Vote Pairing is a Cost-Effective Political Intervention

the_jaded_one7y2

2016 only one candidate had any sort of policy at all about farmed animals, so it didn't require a very extensive policy analysis to figure out who is preferable.

Beware of unintended consequences, though. The path from "Nice things are written about X on a candidate's promotional materials" to "Overall, X improved" is a very circuitous one in human politics.

The same is true for other EA focus areas.

A lot of people in EA seem to assume, without a thorough argument, that direct support for certain political tribes is good for all... (read more)

Ben_West

In order to think vote trading is a good idea, you have to think that, with some reasonable amount of work, you can predict the better candidate at a rate which outperforms chance. Humility is important, but there's a difference between "politics is hard to predict perfectly" and "politics is impossible predict at all".

The Moral Obligation to Organize

the_jaded_one7y0

I think we can push issues towards being less political by reframing them and persuading others to reframe them.

Abortion, gun control, tax rate - these issues are so central to the left-right political divide that they will never be depoliticized.

Climate change is not like them IMO. I think it can be pushed away from the political left-right axis if it can be reframed so that doing something about climate change is no longer seen as supporting left-wing ideas about big government. There is an angle about efficiency, fairness & cutting red tape (carbon tax) and another angle about innovation and industry (e.g. Tesla). I think we should be pushing those very hard.

The Moral Obligation to Organize

the_jaded_one7y15

Political organizing is a highly accessible way for many EAs to have a potentially high impact. Many of us are doing it already. We propose that as a community we recognize it more formally as way to do good within an EA framework

I agree that EAs should look much more broadly at ways to do good, but I feel like doing political stuff to do good is a trap, or at least is full of traps.

Why do humans have politics? Why don't we just fire all the politicians and have a professional civil service that just does what's good?

Because people have different go

... (read more)

Brian_Tomasik

Nice points. I would distinguish "politics as rhetorical battles" vs. "getting things done in the halls of power". The latter could be executed in the way that special interests have done so well: by hiring full-time lobbyists who push their agendas with members of Congress, not necessarily in a public way (though enlisting public outcry when needed). Ralph Nader (my political hero growing up) makes this point:

Stefan_Schubert

I agree with much of this. Prior to joining CEA, I worked a bit on the bipartisan issue of how to make politics more rational (1, 2, 3, 4). I still think this is a wortwhile area, though my main focus right now is on other areas.

The Moral Obligation to Organize

the_jaded_one7y1

I think we should align with the left on climate change, for example.

re: climate change, it would be really nice if we could persuade the political right (and left) that climate change is apolitical and that it is just a generally sensible thing to tackle it, like building roads is apolitical and just generally sensible.

Technology is on our side here: electric cars are going mainsteam, wind and solar are getting better. I believe that we have now entered a regime where climate change will fix itself as humanity naturally switches over to clean energy, and the best thing that politics can do is get out of the way.

Daniel_Eth

In an ideal world, it would be apolitical, but that's not the world we live in. Actually, the same is true about building roads - investments in infrastructure is a liberal cause. Consider how Obama proposed a massive investment in infrastructure, which Republicans rejected. When Trump proposed investing in infrastructure, Democrats implied this was one of the only areas where they would go along with him, but then other Republicans were against it and pressured him to change course on this.

Collaborators Wanted: Could war disrupt EA orgs in the US or UK in the next 10 years?

the_jaded_one7y1

What disruptions are EAs especially well placed to mitigate?

I like this one. If you plan to do good in an uncertain future, it makes sense to take advantage of altruism's risk neutrality and put a lot of effort into scenarios that are reasonably likely but also favour your own impact.

In the event of a major disruption or catastrophe such as a war or negative political event in the EA heartland, this would mean that global health work would suddenly become pretty useless - no-one would have the will or means to help distant (in space) people. But we wou... (read more)

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y0

some of OpenPhil are probably reading it

...

The fix is to email them a link, and to try to give arguments that you think they would appreciate as input for how they could improve their activities.

Those arguments are in the post.

I am writing under a pseudonym so I don't have an easy way of emailing them without it going to their spam folder. I have sent an email pointing them to the post, though.

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y0

If the issue is that the charities are in fact ineffective, then you haven't provided any direct evidence of this, only the indirect point that political charities are often ineffective.

Where is the direct evidence that Cosecha is highly effective?

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y1

I don't think this is the right way to model marginal probability, to put it lightly. :)

Well really you're trying to look at d/dx P(Hillary Win|spend x), and one way to do that is to model that as a linear function. More realistically it is something like a sigmoid.

For some numbers, see this

So if we assume: P(Hillary Win|total spend $300M) = 25% P(Hillary Win|total spend $3Bn) = 75%

Then the average value of d/dx P(Hillary Win|spend x) over that range is going to be 2700M/0.5 = $5.5Bn per unit of probability. Most likely the value of the derivative a... (read more)

Linch

Thanks for the edit! :) I appreciate it. I think your model has MUCH more plausible numbers after the edit, but on a more technical level, I still think a linear model that far out is not ideal here. We would expect diminishing marginal returns well before we hit an increase in spending by a factor of 10. Probably much better to estimate based on "cost per vote" (like you did below), and then use something like Silver's estimates for marginal probability of a vote changing an election. To be clear, I have nothing against linear models and use them regularly.

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y0

Well if we go with $1000 per vote and we need to shift 3 million votes, that's $3bn. Now let's map $3bn to, say, a 25% increased probability of winning, under a reasonable pre-election distribution.

Then you can think of the election costing $12bn, for a benefit of 4tn, which is a factor of 400.

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y-1

Hillary outspent Trump by a factor of 2 and lost by a large margin, so it's something of a questionable decision.

EDIT: I think a more realistic model might go something like this; you can tweak the figures to shift a factor of 2-3 but not much more:

P(Hillary Win|total spend $300M) = 25% P(Hillary Win|total spend $3Bn) = 75%

Then the average value of d/dx P(Hillary Win|spend x) over that range is going to be 2700M/0.5 = $5.5Bn per unit of probability. Most likely the value of the derivative at the actual value isn't too far off the average.

This isn't too f... (read more)

Linch

I'm really confused by both your conclusion and how you arrived at the conclusion. I. Your analysis suggest that if Clinton doubles her spending, her chances of winning will increase by less than 2% (!) This seems unlikely. II. "Hillary outspent Trump by a factor of 2 and lost by a large margin." I think this is exaggerating things. Clinton had a 2.1% higher popular vote. 538 suggests (http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/under-a-new-system-clinton-could-have-won-the-popular-vote-by-5-points-and-still-lost/) that Clinton would probably have won if she had a 3% popular vote advantage. First of all, I dispute that losing by less than 1-in-100 of the electoral body is a "large margin." Secondly, I don't think it's very plausible that shifting order 1 million votes with $1 billion in additional funding has less than a 2% chance. ($1,000 per vote is well within the statistics I've seen on GOTV efforts, and actually seriously on the high end). III. "I mean presumably even with 10x more money or $6bn, Hillary would still have stood a reasonable chance of losing, implying that the cost of a marginal 1% change in the outcome is something like $500,000,000 - $1,000,000,000 under a reasonable pre-election probability distribution." I don't think this is the right way to model marginal probability, to put it lightly. :)

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y0

I don't think that can function as an argument that the recommendation shouldn't have been made in the first place

I agree, and I didn't mention that document or my degree of trust in it.

I feel your overall engagement here hasn't been very productive.

I suppose it depends what you want to produce. If debates were predictably productive I presume people would just update without even having to have a debate.

it feels like you're reaching for whatever counterarguments you can think of, without considering whether someone who disagreed with you woul

the_jaded_one7y0

Can you elaborate?

RyanCarey

I agree that people should be allowed to give criticism without talking to the critiqued organizations first. It does usually improve informativeness and persuasiveness, but if we required every critique to be of extremely high journalistic quality then we would never get any criticism done, so we have a lower standard. By this point, though, the thread has created enough discussion that at least some of OpenPhil are probably reading it. Still you're effectively talking about them as though they're not in the room, even though they are. The fix is to email them a link, and to try to give arguments that you think they would appreciate as input for how they could improve their activities.

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y2

Comments from anyone involved in Open Philanthropy are welcome here.

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y0

policy expertise in a particular field

What is policy expertise in the field of deciding that it is a good idea to encourage illegal immigration? I feel like we are (mis)using words here to make some extremely dodgy inferences. Chloe studied worked for the ACLU and a law firm, focusing on litigating police misconduct and aiming to reduce incarceration, and then Open Phil. This doesn't IMO qualify her to decide that increasing legal and illegal immigration is a good idea, and doesn't endow her with expertise on that question.

Is your claim that Chloe Co

the_jaded_one7y0

I am confused. If you took it as given, why bother talking about whether Alliance for Safety and Justice and Cosecha are good charities?

Well, I am free to both assert that it is a sensible background assumption that it is not usually good for EA to do highly political things, and also argue a few relevant special cases of highly political EA things that aren't good, without taking on the bigger task of specifying and defending my assumption. But I offer Robin Hanson's post as some degree of defence.

I expect that they would become culture-war issues a

... (read more)

Cornelius

I guess you aren't up to speed with worm-wars. Things have gotten pretty tribal here with twitter wars between respected academics (made worse by a viral Buzzfeed article that arguably politicized the issue...), but nobody (to date) would argue EAs should stay out of deworming altogether because of that. On the contrary precisely because of all this shit I'd think we need more EAs working on deworming. Of course in the case of deworming it seems more clear that throwing in EAs will lead to a better outcome. This isn't nearly as clear when it comes to politics so I am with you that EAs should be more weary when it comes to recommending political/politicized work. Either way, I think ozymandias's point was that just like we don't tell EAs in deworming to leave the sinking ship, it also seems absurd to have a blanket ban on EA political/politicized recommendations. You don't want a blanket ban and don't mind EA endorsing political charities because as you've said you don't mind your favourite immigration charity being recommended. So the argument between you and ozymandias seems to mostly be about "to what degree." And niether of you have actually operationalized what your stance is on "to what degee" and as such, in my view, this is why the argument between the two of you dwindled into the void.

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y0

More generally, you keep trying to frame your points as politically neutral "meta" considerations but it definitely feels like you have an axe to grind against the activist left which motivates a lot of what you're saying.

Well if EA is funding the activist left, justifying it by saying that a "trusted expert" (who just happens to be a leftist activist!) said it was a good idea, what exactly do you expect me to do?

And if people who disagree with leftist activism aren't allowed to bring up "meta" considerations when those considerations are inconvenient for leftist activism, then who is going to do it?

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y0

if your argument were taken to its endpoint, we ought not trust GiveWell because its employees sometimes talk about how great malaria nets and deworming are on social media.

I don't trust them, to the extent that I endorse these causes, I trust their arguments (having read them) and data, and I trust the implicit critical process that has failed to come up with reasons why deworming isn't that good (to the extent that it hasn't).

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y1

reducing deportations of undocumented immigrants would reduce incarceration (through reducing the number of people in ICE detention)

That is true, but it is politicized inference. You could also reduce the number of people in ICE detention at any given time by deporting them much more quickly. Or you could reduce the number of undocumented immigrants by making it harder for them to get in in the first place, for example by building a large wall on the southern US border.

So I would characterize this as a politically biased opinion first and foremost. It... (read more)

ozymandias

Well, yes, anyone can come up with all sorts of policy ideas. If a person has policy expertise in a particular field, it allows them to sort out good policies from bad ones, because they are more aware of possible negative side effects and unintended consequences than an uninformed person is. I don't think the fact that a person endorses a particular policy means that they haven't thought about other policies. Is your claim that Chloe Cockburn has failed to consider policy ideas associated with the right-wing, and thus has not done her due diligence to know that what she recommends is actually the best course? If so, what is your evidence for this claim?

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y1

when you just as easily could have addressed it to OpenPhil

This is true - and I would say that a lot of the same questions could be directed to OpenPhil.

process that minimised the influence of my personal opinions

But there should be some ultimate sanity checking on that process; if some process ends up recommending something that isn't really a good recommendation, then is it a good process?

it can save you from wasting time going down rabbit holes.

Yes, that's true, and I would consider it a pro which I consider to be outweighed by other factors.

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y5

I think dividing these three claims more clearly would make it easier for me to follow your argument: effective altruist charity suggestion lists should not endorse political charities.

This is a rather large topic, I don't think it would be wise to try and specify and defend that abstract claim in the same post as talking about a specific situation. I take it as given, at least here. Perhaps I will do a followup, but I think it would be hard to do the topic justice in, say, 5-10 hours which is what I realistically have.

Of course, an identical critiq

... (read more)

ozymandias

I am confused. If you took it as given, why bother talking about whether Alliance for Safety and Justice and Cosecha are good charities? It surely doesn't matter if someone is good at doing something that you think they shouldn't be doing in the first place. Perhaps you intended to say that you mean to discuss the object-level issue of whether these charities are good and leave aside the meta-level issue of whether EA should be involved in politics, in which case I am puzzled about why you brought up the meta-level issue in your post. I disagree that animal welfare activism hasn't been subsumed into the culture war. For instance, veganism is a much more central trait of the prototypical hippie than immigration opinions are. PETA is significantly more controversial than any equally prominent immigration charity. I think that wild-animal suffering and synthetic meat are mostly not part of the culture war because they are obscure. I expect that they would become culture-war issues as soon as they become more prominent. Do you disagree? Or do you think that the appropriate role of EA is to elevate issues into culture-war prominence and then step aside? Or something else? Do you mean that EA shouldn't take sides in e.g. deworming, because that's a tribal war between economists and epidemiologists? Or do you mean that they shouldn't take sides in issues associated with the American left and right, even if they sincerely believe that one of those issues is the best way to improve the world? Or something else?

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y2

Informed opinions can still be biased, and we are being asked to "trust" her.

I am uncertain why someone would choose to figure out what other people's area of expertise is from Twitter.

Well I am worried about political bias in EA. Her political opinions are supremely relevant.

On a strictly legal question such as "In situation X, does law Y apply" I would definitely trust her more than I would trust myself. But that is not the question that is being asked, the question that is being asked is "Will the action of funding Cosech... (read more)

ozymandias

I am perhaps confused about what your claim is. Do you mean to say "Chloe Cockburn does not have expertise except in the facts of the law and being a left-wing anti-Trump activist"? Or "Chloe Cockburn has a good deal of expertise in fields relevant to the best possible way to reduce mass incarceration, but her opinion is sadly biased because she has liberal political opinions"? Regarding her Twitter, I think Chloe Cockburn might have an informed opinion that reducing deportations of undocumented immigrants would reduce incarceration (through reducing the number of people in ICE detention) while maintaining public safety. That would cause her both to recommend Cosecha and to advocate on her Twitter feed for reducing deportations. Indeed, it is very common for people to do awareness-raising on Twitter for causes they believe are highly effective: if your argument were taken to its endpoint, we ought not trust GiveWell because its employees sometimes talk about how great malaria nets and deworming are on social media. Probably, like all people, Chloe Cockburn supports the causes she supports for both rational and irrational reasons. That is something to take into account when deciding how seriously to take her advice. But that is also a fully general counterargument against ever taking advice from anyone.

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y4

One way to resolve our initial skepticism would be to have a trusted expert in the field

And in what field is Chloe Cockburn a "trusted expert"?

If we go by her twitter, we might say something like "she is an expert left-wing, highly political, anti-trump, pro-immigration activist"

Does that seem like a reasonable characterization of Chloe Cockburn's expertise to you?

Characterizing her as "Trusted" seems pretty dishonest in this context. Imagine someone who has problems with EA and Cosecha, for example because they were wo... (read more)

RyanCarey

I'm all for criticising organizations without having your post vetted by them. But at some point, it is useful to reach out to them to let them know your criticism, if you want it to to be useful, and it seems like you've now well-passed this point.

jsteinhardt

OpenPhil made an extensive write-up on their decision to hire Chloe here: http://blog.givewell.org/2015/09/03/the-process-of-hiring-our-first-cause-specific-program-officer/. Presumably after reading that you have enough information to decide whether to trust her recommendations (taking into account also whatever degree of trust you have in OpenPhil). If you decide you don't trust it then that's fine, but I don't think that can function as an argument that the recommendation shouldn't have been made in the first place (many people such as myself do trust it and got substantial value out of the recommendation and of reading what Chloe has to say in general). I feel your overall engagement here hasn't been very productive. You're mostly repeating the same point, and to the extent you make other points it feels like you're reaching for whatever counterarguments you can think of, without considering whether someone who disagreed with you would have an immediate response. The fact that you and Larks are responsible for 20 of the 32 comments on the thread is a further negative sign to me (you could probably condense the same or more information into fewer better-thought-out comments than you are currently making).

JoshYou

Support for a cause area isn't bias. That's just having an opinion. Your argument would imply that ACE is biased because they are run by animal activists, or that Givewell is biased because they advocate for reducing global poverty. These groups aren't necessarily an authority when you're deciding between cause areas, of course. But in deciding which organization is most effective within a given cause area, the "trusted experts" are almost always going to be advocates for that cause area. More generally, you keep trying to frame your points as politically neutral "meta" considerations but it definitely feels like you have an axe to grind against the activist left which motivates a lot of what you're saying.

ozymandias7y10

I am uncertain why someone would choose to figure out what other people's area of expertise is from Twitter. Most people's Twitters contain their political opinions-- as you point out-- and do not contain their CV.

If you look at her LinkedIn, which seems to me to be a more appropriate source of information about her expertise, you'll discover that in addition to being the current program officer at OpenPhil specializing in criminal justice (which is presumably why she was asked), she was also a former advocacy and policy counsel for the ACLU specializing ... (read more)

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y0

suggesting that they provide some additional disclaimers about the nature of the recommendation.

I most certainly wouldn't suggest that, I would suggest that they cease recommending both of these organisations, with the caveat that Cosecha is the worse of the two and first in line for being dropped.

Kerry_Vaughan

As far as I can tell, nothing in your post or subsequent comments warrant that conclusion. If the issue is making sensitive recommendations seem like the opinion of EA, then better caveating can solve that issue. If the issue is that the charities are in fact ineffective, then you haven't provided any direct evidence of this, only the indirect point that political charities are often ineffective. I'd find it hard to believe that there is something problematic in transmitting a recommendation along with your epistemic status with regards to the recommendation in a post. It seems like 80K could do a better job of transmitting the epistemic status of the recommendation, but that's not an argument against recommendation the charities to begin with.

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y3

it seems you could get the same results by emailing the 80K team

Given that the response given by 80,000 Hours here is

[we] don't really have independent views or goals on any of these things. We're just syndicating content

I am extremely glad that I didn't email them and try to keep this private. I believe that 80,000 Hours should take responsibility for recommendations that appear on its site, with the unavoidable implicit seal of approval that that confers.

80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes

the_jaded_one7y2

based on a misconception about how we produced the list and our motivations.

I would disagree; to me it seems irrelevant whether 80,000 hours is "just syndicating content", or whether your organisation has a "direct view or goal".

It's on your website, as a recommendation. If it's a bad recommendation, it's your problem.

Robert_Wiblin

Perhaps, but the article is peculiar because it's directed at 80,000 Hours rather than the ultimate source of the advice - when you just as easily could have addressed it to OpenPhil. It would be as though you had a problem with AMF and criticised 80,000 Hours over it (wondering what specifics could have caused us to recommend it), when you could just as easily direct it as GiveWell. This leads you to speculation like "maybe [80,000 Hours] likes left-wing social justice causes". Had you reached out you wouldn't have had to speculate, and I could have told you right away that the list was designed to a follow a process that minimised the influence of my personal opinions. Had it been based on my personal views rather than a survey of experts and institutions, it probably wouldn't have included the Criminal Justice Reform category. Anyway, I do think if you're writing a lengthy piece about a person or a group speaking with them to ask clarificatory questions is wise - it can save you from wasting time going down rabbit holes.

EAG 2017 Boston Update: moved to June

the_jaded_one7y8

I would like to post an article but I only have 2 karma, this website requires that I have 5 karma in order to post an article. I have been a member for almost a year, though I mostly lurk. I have an account on LessWrong as The_Jaded_One where I post more frequently.

So... can anyone be altruistic and spare a few upvotes?

Rational Politics Project

the_jaded_one7y1

You claim this is non-partisan, yet you make highly partisan claims,

I made a similar point on the LW version of this post. I think it is going to be hard to fix politics and the links between the object level and the meta level, which are especially strong in politics, are close to the root cause of why politics is so hard to be rational about.

But I feel like it might be useful to poke around a bit at that link.

the_jaded_one8y0

I have heard about retreats and closed conferences/workshops to get people together, I would imagine something like that would be better from the point of view that Eliezer is coming from.

In order for people to have useful conversations where genuine reasoning and thinking is done, they have to actually meet each other.

A review of the safety & efficacy of genetically engineered mosquitoes

the_jaded_one8y1

How feasible is it to use a gene drive coupled with a "genetic time bomb" to completely wipe out a mosquito species? By a "genetic time bomb", I mean some gene that kills only after, e.g. 10 generations?

If you could assign a very high probability to completely wiping out a species (or all species) of mosquito, then worries about reduced acquired immunity could be put aside.