All of Tobias_Baumann's Comments + Replies

We've now put together a new and improved audio version, which can be found here.

Thanks! 

An audiobook is a good idea and I'll look into it, though I don't expect it to be done any time soon (i.e. it would at least take several months, I think).

The easiest way to download it as an epub is here.

I agree with this answer.

I don't need to be persuaded to care about animal/insect/machine suffering in the first place.

That's great, because that is also the starting point of my book. From the introduction:

Before I dive deeper, I should clarify the values that underlie this book. A key principle is impartiality: suffering matters equally irrespective of who experiences it. In particular, I believe we should care about all sentient beings, including nonhuman animals. Similarly, I believe suffering matters equally regardless of when it is exp

Thanks for writing this up! It's great to see more people think about the relationship between animal advocacy and longtermism. 

It seems important to distinguish between a) the abolition of factory farming and b) a long-term change in human attitudes towards animals (i.e. establishing antispeciesism). b) is arguably more important from a long-term perspective, and it is a legitimate concern cultivated meat (and similar technologies) would only achieve a). 

However, proponents of the "technology-based strategy" usually argue that a) also indirectly... (read more)

Thanks! I've started an email thread with you, me, and David.

Thanks for the comment, this is raising a very important point. 

I am indeed fairly optimistic that thoughtful forms of MCE are positive regarding s-risks, although this qualifier of "in the right way" should be taken very seriously - I'm much less sure whether, say, funding PETA is positive. I also prefer to think in terms of how MCE could be made robustly positive, and distinguishing between different possible forms of it, rather than trying to make a generalised statement for or against MCE.

This is, however, not a very strongly held view (despite having thought a lot about it), in light of great uncertainty and also some degree of peer disagreement (other researchers being less sanguine about MCE). 

'Longtermism' just says that improving the long-term future matters most, but it does not specify a moral view beyond that. So you can be longtermist and focus on averting extinction, or you can be longtermist and focus on preventing suffering (cf. suffering-focused ethics); or you can have some other notion of "improving". Most people who are both longtermist and suffering-focused work on preventing s-risks.  

That said, despite endorsing suffering-focused ethics myself, I think it's not helpful to frame this as "not caring" about existential risks; t... (read more)

I'm somewhat less optimistic; even if most would say  that they endorse this view, I think many "dedicated EAs" are in practice still biased against nonhumans, if only subconsciously. I think we should expect speciesist biases to be pervasive, and they won't go away entirely just by endorsing an abstract philosophical argument. (And I'm not sure if "most" endorse that argument to begin with.)

Fair point - the "we" was something like "people in general". 

This makes IRV a really bad choice. IRV results in a two-party system just like plurality voting does.

I agree that having a multi-party system might be most important, but I don't think IRV necessarily leads to a two-party system. For instance, French presidential elections feature far more than two parties (though they're using a two-round system rather than IRV).

Everything is subject to tactical voting (except maybe SODA? but I don't understand that argument). So I don't see this as a point against approval voting in particular.

I think that approval voti... (read more)

Great post - thanks a lot for writing this up! 

It's quite remarkable how we hold ideas to different standards in different contexts. Imagine, for instance, a politician that openly endorses CU. Her opponents would immediately attack the worst implications: "So you would torture a child in order to create ten new brains that experience extremely intense orgasms?" The politician, being honest, says yes, and that's the end of her career. 

By contrast, EA discourse and philosophical discourse is strikingly lenient when it comes to counterintuitive implications of such theories. (I'm not saying anything about which standards are better, and of course this does not only apply to CU.)

The key thing is that the way I’m setting priors is as a function from populations to credences: for any property F, your prior should be such that if there are n people in a population, the probability that you are in the m most F people in that population is m/n. 

The fact that I consider a  certain property F should update me, though. This already demonstrates that F is something that I am particularly interested in, or that F is salient to me, which presumably makes it more likely that I am an outlier on F. 

Also, this principle can have p... (read more)

I’m at a period of unusually high economic growth and technological progress

I think it's not clear whether higher economic growth or technological progress implies more influence. This claim seems plausible, but you could also argue that it might be easier to have an influence in a stable society (with little economic or technological change), e.g. simply because of higher predictability.

So, as I say in the original post and the comments, I update (dramatically) on my estimate of my influentialness, on the basis of these considerations. But by how much? Is

I was just talking about 30 years because those are the farthest-out US bonds. I agree that the horizon of patient philanthropists can be much longer.

Yeah, but even 30 year interest rates are low (1-2% at the moment). There is an Austrian 100 year bond paying 0.88%. I think that is significant evidence that something about the "patient vs impatient actors" story does not add up.

It is fair to say that some suffering-focused views have highly counterintuitive implications, such as the one you mention. The misconception is just that this holds for all suffering-focused views. For instance, there are plenty of possible suffering-focused views that do not imply that happy humans would be better off committing suicide. In addition to preference-based views, one could value happiness but endorse the procreative asymmetry (so that lives above a certain threshold of welfare are considered OK even if there is some severe suffering), or one... (read more)

Re: 1., there would be many more (thoughtful) people who share our concern about reducing suffering and s-risks (not necessarily with strongly suffering-focused values, but at least giving considerable weight to it). That results in an ongoing research project on s-risks that goes beyond a few EAs (e.g., it is also established in academia or other social movements).

Re: 2., a possible scenario is that suffering-focused ideas just never gain much traction, and consequently efforts to reduce s-risks will just fizzle out. However, I think there is significant... (read more)

I would guess that actually experiencing certain possible conscious states, in particular severe suffering or very intense bliss, could significantly change my views, although I am not sure if I would endorse this as “reflection” or if it might lead to bias.

It seems plausible (but I am not aware of strong evidence) that experience of severe suffering generally causes people to focus more on it. However, I myself have fortunately never experienced severe suffering, so that would be a data point to the contrary.

I was exposed to arguments for suffering-focused ethics from the start, since I was involved with German-speaking EAs (the Effective Altruism Foundation / Foundational Research Institute back then). I don’t really know why exactly (there isn’t much research on what makes people suffering-focused or non-suffering-focused), but this intuitively resonated with me.

I can’t point to any specific arguments or intuition pumps, but my views are inspired by writing such as the Case for Suffering-Focused Ethics, Brian Tomasik’s essays, an... (read more)

I agree that s-risks can vary a lot (by many orders of magnitude) in terms of severity. I also think that this gradual nature of s-risks is often swept under the rug because the definition just uses a certain threshold (“astronomical scale”). There have, in fact, been some discussions about how the definition could be changed to ameliorate this, but I don’t think there is a clear solution. Perhaps talking about reducing future suffering, or preventing worst-case outcomes, can convey this variation in severity more than the term ‘... (read more)

One key difference is that there is less money in it, because OpenPhil as the biggest EA grantmaker is not focused on reducing s-risks. In a certain sense, that is good news because work on s-risks is plausibly more funding-constrained than non-suffering-focused longtermism.

In terms of where to donate, I would recommend the Center on Long-Term Risk and the Center for Reducing Suffering (which I co-founded myself). Both of those organisations are doing crucial research on s-risk reduction. If you are looking for something a bit less abstract, you could con... (read more)

I think a plausible win condition is that society has some level moral concern for all sentient beings (it doesn’t necessarily need to be entirely suffering-focused) as well as stable mechanisms to implement positive-sum cooperation or compromise. The latter guarantees that moral concerns are taken into account and possible gains from trade can be achieved. (An example for this could be cultivated meat, which allows us to reduce animal suffering while accommodating the interests of meat eaters.)

However, I think suffering reducers in particular shoul... (read more)

I don’t think this view is necessary to prioritise s-risk. A finite but relatively high “trade ratio” between happiness and suffering can be enough to focus on s-risks. In addition, I think it’s more complicated than putting some numbers on happiness vs. suffering. (See here for more details.) For instance, one should distinguish between the intrapersonal and the interpersonal setting - a common intuition is that one man’s pain can’t be outweighed by another’s pleasure.

Another possibility is lexicality: one... (read more)

We have thought about this, and wrote up some internal documents, but have not yet published anything (though we might do that at some point, as part of a strategic plan). Magnus and I are quite aligned in our thinking about the theory of change. The key intended outcome is to catalyse a research project on how to best reduce suffering, both by creating relevant content ourselves and by convincing others to share our concerns regarding s-risks and reducing future suffering.

Apart from the normative discussions relating to the suffering focus (cf. other questions), I think the most likely reasons are that s-risks may simply turn out to be too unlikely, or too far in the future for us to do something about it at this point. I do not currently believe either of those (see here and here for more), and hence do work on s-risks, but it is possible that I will eventually conclude that s-risks should not be a top priority for one of those reasons.

I would refer to this elaborate comment by Magnus Vinding on a very similar question. Like Magnus, I think a common misconception is that suffering-focused views have certain counterintuitive or even dangerous implications (e.g. relating to world destruction), when in fact those problematic implications do not follow.

Suffering-focused ethics is also still sometimes associated with negative utilitarianism (NU). While NU counts as a suffering-focused view, this often fails to appreciate the breadth of possible suffering-focused views, including pluralist and... (read more)

Great question! I think both moral and factual disagreements play a significant role. David Althaus suggests a quantitative approach of distinguishing between the “N-ratio”, which measures how much weight one gives to suffering vs. happiness, and the “E-ratio”, which refers to one’s empirical beliefs regarding the ratio of future happiness and suffering. You could prioritise s-risk because of a high N-ratio (i.e. suffering-focused values) or because of a low E-ratio (i.e. pessimistic views of the future).

That suggests tha... (read more)

Yeah, I would perhaps say that the community has historically been too narrowly focused on a small number of causes. But I think this has been improving for a while, and we're now close to the right balance. (There is also a risk of being too broad, by calling too many causes important and not prioritising enough.)

Thanks for writing this up! I think you're raising many interesting points, especially about a greater focus on policy and going "beyond speculation".

However, I'm more optimistic than you are about the degree of work invested in cause prioritisation, and the ensuing progress we've seen over the last years. See this recent comment of mine - I'd be curious if you find those examples convincing.

Also, speaking as someone who is working on this myself, there is quite a bit of research on s-risks and cause prioritisation from a suff... (read more)

Thanks for the comment! I fully agree with your points.

People with and without suffering-focused ethics will agree on what to do in the present even more than would be expected from the above point alone. In particular, this is because many actions aimed at changing the long-term future in ways primarily valued by one of those groups of people will also happen to (in expectation) change the long-term future in other ways, which the other group values.

That's a good point. A key question is how fine-grained our influence over the long-term future is - t... (read more)

Yeah, I meant it to be inclusive of this "portfolio approach". I agree that specialisation and comparative advantages (and perhaps also sheer motivation) can justify focusing on things that are primarily good based on one (set of) moral perspectives.

That seems plausible and is also consistent with Amara's law (the idea that the impact of technology is often overestimated in the short run and underestimated in the long run).

I'm curious how likely you think it is that productivity growth will be significantly higher (i.e. levels at least comparable with electricity) for any reason, not just AI. I wouldn't give this much more than 50%, as there is also some evidence that stagnation is on the cards (see e.g. 1, 2). But that would mean that you're confident that the cause of higher pro... (read more)

I agree that it's tricky, and am quite worried about how the framings we use may bias our views on the future of AI. I like the GDP/productivity growth perspective but feel free to answer the same questions for your preferred operationalisation.

Another possible framing: given a crystal ball showing the future, how likely is it that people would generally say that AI is the most important thing that happens this century?

As one operationalization, then, suppose we were to ask an economist in 2100: "Do you think that the counterfactual contribution

What is your overall probability that we will, in this century, see progress in artificial intelligence that is at least as transformative as the industrial revolution?

What is your probability for the more modest claim that AI will be at least as transformative as, say, electricity or railroads?

I also recently wrote up some thoughts on this question, though I didn't reach a clear conclusion either.

This could be relevant. It's not about the exact same question (it looks at the distribution of future suffering, not of impact) but some parts might be transferable.

Great stuff, thanks!

Hi Michael,

thanks for the comment!

Could you expand on what you mean by the first part of that sentence, and what makes you say that?

I just meant that proposals to represent future non-human animals will likely gain less traction than the idea of representing future humans. But I agree that it would be perfectly possible to do it (as you say). And of course I'd be strongly in favour of having a Parliamentary Committee for all Future Sentient Beings or something like that, but again, that's not politically feasible anytime soon. So we have to fin... (read more)

Hi Tyler,

thanks for the detailed and thoughtful comment!

I find much less compelling the idea that "if there is the political will to seriously consider future generations, it’s unnecessary to set up additional institutions to do so," and "if people do not care about the long-term future," they would not agree to such measures. The main reason I find this uncompelling is just that it overgenerates in very implausible ways. Why should women have the vote? Why should discrimination be illegal?

Yeah, I agree that there are plenty of... (read more)

Hey Jamie, thanks for the pointer! I wasn't aware of this.

Another relevant critique of whether colonisation is a good idea is Daniel Deudney's new book Dark Skies.

I myself have also written up some more thoughts on space colonisation in the meantime and have become more sceptical about the possibility of large-scale space settlement happening anytime soon.

Great work, thanks for sharing!

Great post - I think it's extremely important to explore many different problem areas!

Some further plausible (in my opinion) candidates are shaping genetic enhancement, reducing long-term risks from malevolent actors, invertebrate welfare and space governance.

Great work, thanks for writing this up! I agree that excessive polarisation is an important issue and warrants more EA attention. In particular, polarisation is an important risk factor for s-risks.

Political polarization, as measured by political scientists, has clearly gone up in the last 20 years.

It is worth noting that this is a US-centric perspective and the broader picture is more mixed, with polarisation increasing in some countries and decreasing in others.

If there’s more I’m missing, feel free to provide links in the comment section.

Amazing work, thanks for writing this up!

The drawdowns of major ETFs on this (e.g. EMB / JNK) during the corona crash or 2008 are roughly 2/3 to 3/4 of how much stocks (the S&P 500) went down. So I agree the diversification benefit is limited. The question, bracketing the point on leverage extra cost, is whether the positive EV of emerging markets bonds / high yield bonds is more or less than 2/3 to 3/4 of the positive EV of stocks. That's pretty hard to say - there's a lot of uncertainty on both sides. But if that is the case and one can borrow at very good rates (e.g. through futures or box

What are your thoughts on high-yield corporate bonds or emerging markets bonds? This kind of bond offers non-zero interest rates but of course also entail higher risk. Also, these markets aren't (to my knowledge) distorted by the Fed buying huge amounts of bonds.

Theoretically, there should be some diversification benefit from adding this kind of bond, though it's all positively correlated. But unfortunately, ETFs on these kinds of bonds have much higher fees.

Peter's point is that it makes a lot of sense to have certain norms about not causing serious direct harm, and one should arguably follow such norms rather than expecting some complex longtermist cost-benefit analysis.

Put differently, I think it is very important, from a longtermist perspective, to advance the idea that animals matter and that we consequently should not harm them (particularly for reasons as frivolous as eating meat).

Great post, thanks for writing this up!