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PodcastsEffective Altruism Forum (All audio)
Audio narrations from the Effective Altruism Forum, including curated posts and posts with 125+ karma.
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29 May 2023
Dear EA Forum readers,
The EA charity, Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC), just filed our second lawsuit!
As many of you know, LIC is a litigation nonprofit dedicated to making factory-farm cruelty a liability. We focus on chickens because of the huge numbers in which they suffer and the extreme severity of that suffering. Today, we sued one of the country’s largest poultry producers and a KFC supplier, Case Farms, for animal cruelty. The complaint comes on the heels of a 2021 undercover investigation by Animal Outlook, revealing abuse at a Morganton, N.C. Case Farms hatchery that processes more than 200,000 chicks daily. Our lawsuit attacks the notion that Big Ag is above the law. We are suing under North Carolina’s 19A statute, which lets private parties enjoin animal cruelty. Case Farms was documented knowingly operating faulty equipment, including a machine piston which repeatedly smashes chicks to death and a dangerous metal conveyor belt which traps and kills young birds. Case Farms was also documented crushing chicks’ necks between heavy plastic trays. Case Farms supplies its chicken to KFC, Taco Bell, and Boar’s Head, among other customers.
Thank you so much to all the EA Forum readers who helped make this happen, by donating to, and volunteering for, Legal Impact for Chickens!
Sincerely, Alene
The EA charity, Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC), just filed our second lawsuit!
As many of you know, LIC is a litigation nonprofit dedicated to making factory-farm cruelty a liability. We focus on chickens because of the huge numbers in which they suffer and the extreme severity of that suffering. Today, we sued one of the country’s largest poultry producers and a KFC supplier, Case Farms, for animal cruelty. The complaint comes on the heels of a 2021 undercover investigation by Animal Outlook, revealing abuse at a Morganton, N.C. Case Farms hatchery that processes more than 200,000 chicks daily. Our lawsuit attacks the notion that Big Ag is above the law. We are suing under North Carolina’s 19A statute, which lets private parties enjoin animal cruelty. Case Farms was documented knowingly operating faulty equipment, including a machine piston which repeatedly smashes chicks to death and a dangerous metal conveyor belt which traps and kills young birds. Case Farms was also documented crushing chicks’ necks between heavy plastic trays. Case Farms supplies its chicken to KFC, Taco Bell, and Boar’s Head, among other customers.
Thank you so much to all the EA Forum readers who helped make this happen, by donating to, and volunteering for, Legal Impact for Chickens!
Sincerely, Alene
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8Z2uFCkrg2dCnadA4/kfc-supplier-sued-for-cruelty
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As an experiment, we’re releasing AI narrations of all new posts with >125 karma on the “EA Forum (All audio)” podcast.
Please share your thoughts and/or report bugs in the narration.
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
26 May 2023
Charity Entrepreneurship is frequently contacted by individuals and donors who like our model. Several have expressed interest in seeing the model expanded, or seeing what a twist on the model would look like (e.g., different cause area, region, etc.) Although we are excited about maximizing CE’s impact, we are less convinced by the idea of growing the effective charity pool via franchising or other independent nonprofit incubators. This is because new incubators often do not address the actual bottlenecks faced by the nonprofit landscape, as we see them. There are lots of factors that prevent great new charities from being launched, and from eventually having a large impact. We have scaled CE to about 10 charities a year, and from our perspective, these are the three major bottlenecks to growing the new charity ecosystem further: Mid-stage funding, Founders and Multiplying effects.
Source:
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
25 May 2023
Underrated is relative.[1] My position is something like “most people should consider going to >1 EAG talk” and not “most people should spend most of their EAG in talks.” This probably most applies to people who are kind of like me. (Been involved for a while, already have a strong network, don’t need to do 1-1s for their job.)
There’s a meme that 1-1s are clearly the most valuable part of EAG(x) and that you should not really go to talks. (See e.g. this, this, this, they don’t say exactly this but I think push in the direction of the meme.)
I think EAG talks can be really interesting and are underrated. It’s true that most of them are recorded and you could watch them later but I’m guessing most people don’t actually do that.[2] It also takes a while for them to be uploaded.I still think 1-1s are pretty great, especially if you’renew and don’t know many people yet (or otherwise mostly want to increase the number of people you know),have a very specific thing you’re trying to get out of EAG and talking to lots of people seems to be the right thing to achieve it.
I’m mostly writing this post because I think the meme is really strong in some parts of the EA community. I can imagine that some people in the EA community would feel bad for attending talks because it doesn’t feel “optimal.”[2] If you feel like you need permission, I want to give you permission to go to talks without feeling bad.
Another motivation is that I recently attended my first set of EAG talks in years (I was doing lots of 1-1s for my job before) and was really surprised by how great they were. (That said, it was a bit hit or miss.) I previously accidentally assumed that talks and other prepared sessions would give me ~nothing.
There’s a meme that 1-1s are clearly the most valuable part of EAG(x) and that you should not really go to talks. (See e.g. this, this, this, they don’t say exactly this but I think push in the direction of the meme.)
I think EAG talks can be really interesting and are underrated. It’s true that most of them are recorded and you could watch them later but I’m guessing most people don’t actually do that.[2] It also takes a while for them to be uploaded.I still think 1-1s are pretty great, especially if you’renew and don’t know many people yet (or otherwise mostly want to increase the number of people you know),have a very specific thing you’re trying to get out of EAG and talking to lots of people seems to be the right thing to achieve it.
I’m mostly writing this post because I think the meme is really strong in some parts of the EA community. I can imagine that some people in the EA community would feel bad for attending talks because it doesn’t feel “optimal.”[2] If you feel like you need permission, I want to give you permission to go to talks without feeling bad.
Another motivation is that I recently attended my first set of EAG talks in years (I was doing lots of 1-1s for my job before) and was really surprised by how great they were. (That said, it was a bit hit or miss.) I previously accidentally assumed that talks and other prepared sessions would give me ~nothing.
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jpsugrAbjsgfm9gZM/eag-talks-are-underrated-imo
Did you find this narration helpful? How could it be improved?
As an experiment, we’re releasing AI narrations of all new posts with >125 karma on the “EA Forum (All audio)” podcast.
Please share your thoughts and/or report bugs in the narration.
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
25 May 2023
I went to EAG London this weekend. I had some interesting chats, wrote some cryptic squiggles in my notebook (“Clockify” “the Easterlin paradox”, “functionalist eudaimonic theories”), and gave and received some hopefully-useful advice. Overall, the conference was fun and worthwhile for me. But at times, I also found the conference emotionally difficult.
I think this is pretty common. After last year’s EAG, Alastair Fraser-Urquhart wrote about how he burnt out at the conference and had to miss a retreat starting the next day. The post was popular, and many said they’d had similar experiences.
The standard euphemism for this facet of EA conferences is ‘intense’ or ‘tiring’, but I suspect these adjectives are often a more socially-acceptable way of saying ‘I feel low/anxious/exhausted and want to curl up in a foetal position in a darkened room’.
I want to write this post to: balance out the ‘woo EAG lfg!’ hype, and help people who found it a bad or ambivalent experience to feel less alonedig into to why EAGs can be difficult: this might help attendees have better experiences themselves, and also create an environment where others are more likely to have good experienceshelp people who mostly enjoy EAGs understand what their more neurotic or introverted friends are going through.
I think this is pretty common. After last year’s EAG, Alastair Fraser-Urquhart wrote about how he burnt out at the conference and had to miss a retreat starting the next day. The post was popular, and many said they’d had similar experiences.
The standard euphemism for this facet of EA conferences is ‘intense’ or ‘tiring’, but I suspect these adjectives are often a more socially-acceptable way of saying ‘I feel low/anxious/exhausted and want to curl up in a foetal position in a darkened room’.
I want to write this post to: balance out the ‘woo EAG lfg!’ hype, and help people who found it a bad or ambivalent experience to feel less alonedig into to why EAGs can be difficult: this might help attendees have better experiences themselves, and also create an environment where others are more likely to have good experienceshelp people who mostly enjoy EAGs understand what their more neurotic or introverted friends are going through.
Did you find this narration helpful? How could it be improved?
As an experiment, we’re releasing AI narrations of all new posts with >125 karma on the “EA Forum (All audio)” podcast.
Please share your thoughts and/or report bugs in the narration.
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
10 May 2023
We've just passed the half-year mark for this project! If you're reading this, please consider taking this 5 minute survey — all questions optional. If you listen to the podcast version, we have a separate survey for that here. Thanks to everyone that has responded to this already!
Original text:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9QcmyGAjERHRFfrr7/summaries-of-top-forum-posts-1st-to-7th-may-2023
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
9 May 2023
How worried about AI risk will we feel in the future, when we can see advanced machine intelligence up close? We should worry accordingly now.
Original article:
https://joecarlsmith.com/2023/05/08/predictable-updating-about-ai-risk
Narrated by Joe Carlsmith and included on the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
8 May 2023
We've just passed the half-year mark for this project! If you're reading this, please consider taking this 5 minute survey — all questions optional. If you listen to the podcast version, we have a separate survey for that here. Thanks to everyone that has responded to this already!
Original text:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wzn7hEj3BSz7us7ge/summaries-of-top-forum-posts-24th-30th-april-2023
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
4 May 2023
People often ask me for career advice related to AGI safety. This post summarizes the advice I most commonly give. I’ve split it into three sections: general mindset, alignment research and governance work. For each of the latter two, I start with high-level advice aimed primarily at students and those early in their careers, then dig into more details of the field. See also this post I wrote two years ago, containing a bunch of fairly general career advice. ## General mindset In order to have a big impact on the world you need to find a big lever. This document assumes that you think, as I do, that AGI safety is the biggest such lever. There are many ways to pull on that lever, though—from research and engineering to operations and field-building to politics and communications. I encourage you to choose between these based primarily on your personal fit—a combination of what you're really good at and what you really enjoy. In my opinion the difference between being a great versus a mediocre fit swamps other differences in the impactfulness of most pairs of AGI-safety-related jobs.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xg7gxsYaMa6F3uH8h/agi-safety-career-advice
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
2 May 2023
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/m2Y6HheC2Q2GLQ3oS/summaries-of-top-forum-posts-17th-23rd-april-2023
This podcast has just passed the 6-month mark! Please give us your feedback and suggestions so we can continue to improve — the survey should take no more than 10 minutes, and we really appreciate your input!
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
2 May 2023
The excellent report from Rethink Priorities was my main source for this. Many of the substantial points I make are taken from it, though errors are my own. It’s worth reading! The authors are Gavriel Kleinwaks, Alastair Fraser-Urquhart, Jam Kraprayoon, and Josh Morrison.
Clean water
In the mid 19th century, London had a sewage problem. It relied on a patchwork of a few hundred sewers, of brick and wood, and hundreds of thousands of cesspits. The Thames — Londoners’ main source of drinking water — was near-opaque with waste. Here is Michael Faraday in an 1855 letter to The Times:
"Near the bridges the feculence rolled up in clouds so dense that they were visible at the surface even in water of this kind […] The smell was very bad, and common to the whole of the water. It was the same as that which now comes up from the gully holes in the streets. The whole river was for the time a real sewer […] If we neglect this subject, we cannot expect to do so with impunity; nor ought we to be surprised if, ere many years are over, a season give us sad proof of the folly of our carelessness."
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WLok4YuJ4kfFpDRTi/first-clean-water-now-clean-air
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
27 April 2023
This is a linkpost for a new 80,000 hours episode focused on how to engage in climate from an effective altruist perspective.
- The podcast lives here, including a selection of highlights as well as a full transcript and lots of additional links. Thanks to 80,000hours’ new feature rolled out on April 1st you can even listen to it!
- My Twitter thread is here.
Rob and I are having a pretty wide-ranging conversation, here are the things we cover which I find most interesting for different audiences:
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/A3ZLLanDZZt9sgGQ9/new-80-000-hours-podcast-on-high-impact-climate-philanthropy
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
22 April 2023
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/o3Gaoizs2So6SpgLH/summaries-of-top-forum-posts-27th-march-to-16th-april
This podcast has just passed the 6-month mark! Please give us your feedback and suggestions so we can continue to improve — the survey should take no more than 10 minutes, and we really appreciate your input!
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
19 April 2023
I recently spent some time reflecting on my career and my life, for a few reasons:
- It was my 29th birthday, an occasion which felt like a particularly natural time to think through what I wanted to accomplish over the course of the next year 🙂.
- It seems like AI progress is heating up.
- It felt like a good time to reflect on how Redwood has been going, because we’ve been having conversations with funders about getting more funding.
I wanted to have a better answer to these questions:
- What’s the default trajectory that I should plan for my career to follow? And what does this imply for what I should be doing right now?
- How much urgency should I feel in my life?
- How hard should I work?
- How much should I be trying to do the most valuable-seeming thing, vs engaging in more playful exploration and learning?
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2DzLY6YP2z5zRDAGA/a-freshman-year-during-the-ai-midgame-my-approach-to-the
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
14 April 2023
This is a linkpost for https://www.forourposterity.com/want-to-win-the-agi-race-solve-alignment/
Society really cares about safety. Practically speaking, the binding constraint on deploying your AGI could well be your ability to align your AGI. Solving (scalable) alignment might be worth lots of $$$ and key to beating China.
Look, I really don't want Xi Jinping Thought to rule the world. If China gets AGI first, the ensuing rapid AI-powered scientific and technological progress could well give it a decisive advantage (cf potential for >30%/year economic growth with AGI). I think there's a very real specter of global authoritarianism here.
Or hey, maybe you just think AGI is cool. You want to go build amazing products and enable breakthrough science and solve the world’s problems.
So, race to AGI with reckless abandon then? At this point, people get into agonizing discussions about safety tradeoffs. And many people just mood affiliate their way to an answer: "accelerate, progress go brrrr," or "AI scary, slow it down."
I see this much more practically. And, practically, society cares about safety, a lot. Do you actually think that you’ll be able to and allowed to deploy an AI system that has, say, a 10% chance of destroying all of humanity?
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Ackzs8Wbk7isDzs2n/want-to-win-the-agi-race-solve-alignment
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
5 April 2023
Far fewer people are working on it than you might think, and even the alignment research that is happening is very much not on track. (But it’s a solvable problem, if we get our act together.)
Original article:
This is a linkpost for https://www.forourposterity.com/nobodys-on-the-ball-on-agi-alignment/
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5LNxeWFdoynvgZeik/nobody-s-on-the-ball-on-agi-alignment
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
30 March 2023
In my last essay, I looked at two stories (brute preference for systematic-ness, and money-pumps) about why ethical anti-realists should still be interested in ethics – two stories about why the “philosophy game” is worth playing, even if there are no objective normative truths, and you’re free to do whatever you want. I think some versions of these stories might well have a role to play; but I find that on their own, they don’t fully capture what feels alive to me about ethics. Here I try to say something that gets closer.
Original article:
https://joecarlsmith.com/2023/02/17/seeing-more-whole
Narrated by Joe Carlsmith and included on the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
30 March 2023
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/idpbfmPjHFCvzj46L/ea-and-lw-forum-weekly-summary-13th-19th-march-2023
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
22 March 2023
Longtermists have argued that humanity should significantly increase its efforts to prevent catastrophes like nuclear wars, pandemics, and AI disasters. But one prominent longtermist argument overshoots this conclusion: the argument also implies that humanity should reduce the risk of existential catastrophe even at extreme cost to the present generation. This overshoot means that democratic governments cannot use the longtermist argument to guide their catastrophe policy. In this paper, we show that the case for preventing catastrophe does not depend on longtermism. Standard cost-benefit analysis implies that governments should spend much more on reducing catastrophic risk. We argue that a government catastrophe policy guided by cost-benefit analysis should be the goal of longtermists in the political sphere. This policy would be democratically acceptable, and it would reduce existential risk by almost as much as a strong longtermist policy.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DiGL5FuLgWActPBsf/how-much-should-governments-pay-to-prevent-catastrophes
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
21 March 2023
Oral rehydration therapy is now the standard treatment for dehydration. It’s saved millions of lives, and can be prepared at home in minutes. So why did it take so long to discover?
Written by Matt Reynolds for Asterisk Magazine.
Original article:
https://asteriskmag.com/issues/2/salt-sugar-water-zinc-how-scientists-learned-to-treat-the-20th-century-s-biggest-killer-of-children
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
14 March 2023
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fWGdsWbS6vtC9E7ii/ea-and-lw-forum-weekly-summary-6th-12th-march-2023
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
9 March 2023
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yCxsz9jk5iau2uvYH/ea-and-lw-forum-weekly-summary-27th-feb-5th-mar-2023
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
6 March 2023
This document looks at the predictions made by AI experts in The 2016 Expert Survey on Progress in AI, analyses the predictions on ‘Narrow tasks’, and gives a Brier score to the median of the experts’ predictions.
My analysis suggests that the experts did a fairly good job of forecasting (Brier score = 0.21), and would have been less accurate if they had predicted each development in AI to generally come, by a factor of 1.5, later (Brier score = 0.26) or sooner (Brier score = 0.29) than they actually predicted.
Original article:
3 March 2023
I don’t think the existing evidence justifies HLI's estimate of 50% household spillovers.
My main disagreements are:
- Two of the three RCTs HLI relies on to estimate spillovers are on interventions specifically intended to benefit household members (unlike StrongMinds’ program, which targets women and adolescents living with depression).
- Those RCTs only measure the wellbeing of a subset of household members most likely to benefit from the intervention.
- The results of the third RCT are inconsistent with HLI’s estimate.
Original article:
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
3 March 2023
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bEJ6SyrkSF45B2LWZ/ea-and-lw-forum-weekly-summary-20th-26th-feb-2023
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
26 February 2023
Ethical philosophy often tries to systematize. That is, it seeks general principles that will explain, unify, and revise our more particular intuitions. And sometimes, this can lead to strange and uncomfortable places.
So why do it? If you believe in an objective ethical truth, you might talk about getting closer to that truth. But suppose that you don’t. Suppose you think that you’re “free to do whatever you want.” In that case, if “systematizing” starts getting tough and uncomfortable, why not just … stop? After all, you can always just do whatever’s most intuitive or common-sensical in a given case – and often, this is the choice the “ethics game” was trying so hard to validate, anyway. So why play?
I think it’s a reasonable question. And I’ve found it showing up in my life in various ways. So I wrote a set of two essays explaining part of my current take. This is the first essay. Here I describe the question in more detail, give some examples of where it shows up, and describe my dissatisfaction with two places anti-realists often look for answers.
Original article:
https://joecarlsmith.com/2023/02/16/why-should-ethical-anti-realists-do-ethics
Original article:
https://joecarlsmith.com/2023/02/16/why-should-ethical-anti-realists-do-ethics
23 February 2023
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fAWotZTEnyycJnuxz/ea-and-lw-forum-weekly-summary-6th-19th-feb-2023
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
18 February 2023
This is the story of how I came to see Wild Animal Welfare (WAW) as a less promising cause than I did initially. I summarise three articles I wrote on WAW: ‘Why it’s difficult to find cost-effective WAW interventions we could do now’, ‘Lobbying governments to improve WAW’, and ‘WAW in the far future’. I then draw some more general conclusions. The articles assume some familiarity with WAW ideas. See here or here for an intro to WAW ideas.
Original article:
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
16 February 2023
Apply now to start a nonprofit in Biosecurity or Large-Scale Global Health
In this post we introduce our top five charity ideas for launch in 2023, in the areas of Biosecurity and Large-Scale Global Health. These are the result of five months’ work from our research team, and a six-stage iterative process that includes collaboration with partners and ideas from within and outside of the EA community.
We’re looking for people to launch these ideas through our July - August 2023 Incubation Program. The deadline for applications is March 12, 2023.
We provide cost-covered two-month training, stipends, ongoing mentorship, and grants up to $200,000 per project. You can learn more on our website. We also invite you to join our event on February 20, 6PM UK Time. Sam Hilton, our Director of Research, will introduce the ideas and answer your questions. Sign up here.
Original article:
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
13 February 2023
Hi everyone,
I've been reading up on H5N1 this weekend, and I'm pretty concerned. Right now my hunch is that there is a non-zero chance that it will cost more than 10,000 people their lives.
To be clear, I think it is unlikely that H5N1 will become a pandemic anywhere close to the size of covid.
Nevertheless, I think our community should be actively following the news and start thinking about ways to be helpful if the probability increases. I am creating this thread as a place where people can discuss and share information about H5N1. We have a lot of pandemic experts in this community, do chime in!
Original article:
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
10 February 2023
This is a linkpost for https://epochai.org/blog/literature-review-of-transformative-artificial-intelligence-timelines
We summarize and compare several models and forecasts predicting when transformative AI will be developed.
Highlights
- The review includes quantitative models, including both outside and inside view, and judgment-based forecasts by (teams of) experts.
- While we do not necessarily endorse their conclusions, the inside-view model the Epoch team found most compelling is Ajeya Cotra’s “Forecasting TAI with biological anchors”, the best-rated outside-view model was Tom Davidson’s “Semi-informative priors over AI timelines”, and the best-rated judgment-based forecast was Samotsvety’s AGI Timelines Forecast.
- The inside-view models we reviewed predicted shorter timelines (e.g. bioanchors has a median of 2052) while the outside-view models predicted longer timelines (e.g. semi-informative priors has a median over 2100). The judgment-based forecasts are skewed towards agreement with the inside-view models, and are often more aggressive (e.g. Samotsvety assigned a median of 2043).
Original article:
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
9 February 2023
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Qzfew7EBPgdCzsxED/ea-and-lw-forum-weekly-summary-30th-jan-5th-feb-2023
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
3 February 2023
This post outlines the capability approach to thinking about human welfare. I think that this approach, while very popular in international development, is neglected in EA. While the capability approach has problems, I think that it provides a better approach to thinking about improving human welfare than approaches based on measuring happiness or subjective wellbeing (SWB) or approaches based on preference satisfaction. Finally, even if you disagree that the capability approach is best, I think this post will be useful to you because it may clarify why many people and organizations in the international development or global health space take the positions that they do. I will be drawing heavily on the work of Amartya Sen, but I will often not be citing specific texts because I’m an academic and getting to write without careful citations is thrilling.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zy6jGPeFKHaoxKEfT/the-capability-approach
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
2 February 2023
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hzc26vGa4RLns7TvK/ea-and-lw-forum-weekly-summary-23rd-29th-jan-23
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
28 January 2023
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6Ezg8HgHib9bpWCFr/ea-and-lw-forum-weekly-summary-16th-22nd-jan-23
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
26 January 2023
- We offer welfare range estimates for 11 farmed species: pigs, chickens, carp, salmon, octopuses, shrimp, crayfish, crabs, bees, black soldier flies, and silkworms.
- These estimates are, essentially, estimates of the differences in the possible intensities of these animals' pleasures and pains relative to humans' pleasures and pains. Then, we add a number of controversial (albeit plausible) philosophical assumptions (including hedonism, valence symmetry, and others discussed here) to reach conclusions about animals' welfare ranges relative to human's welfare range.
- Given hedonism and conditional on sentience, we think (credence: 0.7) that none of the vertebrate nonhuman animals of interest have a welfare range that’s more than double the size of any of the others. While carp and salmon have lower scores than pigs and chickens, we suspect that’s largely due to a lack of research.
- Given hedonism and conditional on sentience, we think (credence: 0.65) that the welfare ranges of humans and the vertebrate animals of interest are within an order of magnitude of one another.
- Given hedonism and conditional on sentience, we think (credence 0.6) that all the invertebrates of interest have welfare ranges within two orders of magnitude of the vertebrate nonhuman animals of interest. Invertebrates are so diverse and we know so little about them; hence, our caution.
- Our view is that the estimates we’ve provided should be seen as placeholders—albeit, we submit, the best such placeholders available. We’re providing a starting point for more rigorous, empirically-driven research into animals’ welfare ranges. At the same time, we’re offering guidance for decisions that have to be made long before that research is finished
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Qk3hd6PrFManj8K6o/rethink-priorities-welfare-range-estimates
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
25 January 2023
For many years, I've actively lived in avoidance of idolizing behavior and in pursuit of a nuanced view of even those I respect most deeply. I think this has helped me in numerous ways and has been of particular help in weathering the past few months within the EA community. Below, I discuss how I think about the act of idolizing behavior, some of my personal experiences, and how this mentality can be of use to others.
Note: I want more people to post on the EA Forum and have their ideas taken seriously regardless of whether they conform to Forum stylistic norms. I'm perfectly capable of writing a version of this post in the style typical to the Forum, but this post is written the way I actually like to write. If this style doesn’t work for you, you might want to read the first section “Anarchists have no idols” and then skip ahead to the section “Living without idols, Pt. 1” toward the end. You’ll lose some of the insights contained in my anecdotes, but still get most of the core ideas I want to convey here.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jgspXC8GKA7RtxMRE/on-living-without-idols
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
18 January 2023
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DNWpFLrtrJXe4mted/ea-and-lw-forum-summaries-9th-jan-to-15th-jan-23
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
18 January 2023
I previously wrote an entry for the Open Philanthropy Cause Exploration Prize on why preventing violence against women and girls is a global priority. For an introduction to the area, I have written a brief summary below. In this post, I will extend that work, diving deeper into the literature and the landscape of organisations in the field, as well as creating a cost-effectiveness model for some of the most promising preventative interventions. Based on this, I will offer some concrete recommendations that different stakeholders should take - from individuals looking to donate, to funders, to charity evaluators and incubators.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uH9akQzJkzpBD5Duw/what-you-can-do-to-help-stop-violence-against-women-and
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
16 January 2023
In this post, we point out that short AI timelines would cause real interest rates to be high, and would do so under expectations of either unaligned or aligned AI. However, 30- to 50-year real interest rates are low. We argue that this suggests one of two possibilities:
- Long(er) timelines. Financial markets are often highly effective information aggregators (the “efficient market hypothesis”), and therefore real interest rates accurately reflect that transformative AI is unlikely to be developed in the next 30-50 years.
- Market inefficiency. Markets are radically underestimating how soon advanced AI technology will be developed, and real interest rates are therefore too low. There is thus an opportunity for philanthropists to borrow while real rates are low to cheaply do good today; and/or an opportunity for anyone to earn excess returns by betting that real rates will rise.
In the rest of this post we flesh out this argument.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8c7LycgtkypkgYjZx/agi-and-the-emh-markets-are-not-expecting-aligned-or
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
16 January 2023
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JZuCg7TtfzzaX9bBY/ea-and-lw-forum-summaries-holiday-edition-19th-dec-8th-jan
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
11 January 2023
At Anima International, we recently decided to suspend our campaign against live fish sales in Poland indefinitely. After a few years of running the campaign, we are now concerned about the effects of our efforts, specifically the possibility of a net negative result for the lives of animals. We believe that by writing about it openly we can help foster a culture of intellectual honesty, information sharing and accountability. Ideally, our case can serve as a good example on reflecting on potential unintended consequences of advocacy interventions.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/snnfmepzrwpAsAoDT/why-anima-international-suspended-the-campaign-to-end-live
This is a linkpost for https://animainternational.org/blog/why-anima-international-suspended-the-campaign-to-end-live-fish-sales-in-poland
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
9 January 2023
This is a linkpost for https://simonm.substack.com/p/strongminds-should-not-be-a-top-rated
GWWC lists StrongMinds as a “top-rated” charity. Their reason for doing so is because Founders Pledge has determined they are cost-effective in their report into mental health.
I could say here, “and that report was written in 2019 - either they should update the report or remove the top rating” and we could all go home. In fact, most of what I’m about to say does consist of “the data really isn’t that clear yet”.
I think the strongest statement I can make (which I doubt StrongMinds would disagree with) is:
“StrongMinds have made limited effort to be quantitative in their self-evaluation, haven’t continued monitoring impact after intervention, haven’t done the research they once claimed they would. They have not been vetted sufficiently to be considered a top charity, and only one independent group has done the work to look into them.”
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ffmbLCzJctLac3rDu/strongminds-should-not-be-a-top-rated-charity-yet
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
5 January 2023
If you fear that someone will build a machine that will seize control of the world and annihilate humanity, then one kind of response is to try to build further machines that will seize control of the world even earlier without destroying it, forestalling the ruinous machine’s conquest. An alternative or complementary kind of response is to try to avert such machines being built at all, at least while the degree of their apocalyptic tendencies is ambiguous.
The latter approach seems to me like the kind of basic and obvious thing worthy of at least consideration, and also in its favor, fits nicely in the genre ‘stuff that it isn’t that hard to imagine happening in the real world’. Yet my impression is that for people worried about extinction risk from artificial intelligence, strategies under the heading ‘actively slow down AI progress’ have historically been dismissed and ignored (though ‘don’t actively speed up AI progress’ is popular).
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vwK3v3Mekf6Jjpeep/let-s-think-about-slowing-down-ai-1
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
22 December 2022
In previous pieces, I argued that there's a real and large risk of AI systems' aiming to defeat all of humanity combined - and succeeding.
I first argued that this sort of catastrophe would be likely without specific countermeasures to prevent it. I then argued that countermeasures could be challenging, due to some key difficulties of AI safety research.
But while I think misalignment risk is serious and presents major challenges, I don’t agree with sentiments along the lines of “We haven’t figured out how to align an AI, so if transformative AI comes soon, we’re doomed.” Here I’m going to talk about some of my high-level hopes for how we might end up avoiding this risk.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rJRw78oihoT5paFGd/high-level-hopes-for-ai-alignment
Narrated by Holden Karnofsky for the Cold Takes blog.
17 December 2022
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8bcPkqdLYG78YbnTh/ea-and-lw-forums-weekly-summary-5th-dec-11th-dec-22
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
13 December 2022
Key Takeaways
- Our objective: estimate the welfare ranges of 11 farmed species.
- Given hedonism, an individual’s welfare range is the difference between the welfare level associated with the most intense positively valenced state that the individual can realize and the welfare level associated with the most intense negatively valenced state that the individual can realize.
- Given some prominent theories about the functions of valenced states, we identified over 90 empirical proxies that might provide evidence of variation in the potential intensities of those states.
- There are many unknowns across many species.
- It’s rare to have evidence that animals lack a given trait.
- We know less about the presence or absence of traits as we move from terrestrial vertebrates to most invertebrates.
- Many of the traits about which we know the least are affective traits.
- We do have information about some significant traits for many animals.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tnSg6o7crcHFLc395/the-welfare-range-table
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
12 December 2022
Hiya folks! I'm Patrick McKenzie, better known on the Internets as patio11. (Proof.) Long-time-listener, first-time-caller; I don't think I would consider myself an EA but I've been reading y'all, and adjacent intellectual spaces, for some time now.
Epistemic status: Arbitrarily high confidence with regards to facts of the VaccinateCA experience (though speaking only for myself), moderately high confidence with respect to inferences made about vaccine policy and mechanisms for impact last year, one geek's opinion with respect to implicit advice to you all going forward.
A Thing That Happened Last Year
As some of the California-based EAs may remember, the rollout of the covid-19 vaccines in California and across the U.S. was... not optimal. I accidentally ended up founding a charity, VaccinateCA, which ran the national shadow vaccine location information infrastructure for 6 months.
The core product at the start of the sprint, which some of you may be familiar with, was a site which listed places to get the vaccine in California, sourced by a volunteer-driven operation to conduct an ongoing census of medical providers by calling them. Importantly, that was not our primary vector for impact, though it was very important to our trajectory.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NkPghabDd54nkG3kX/some-observations-from-an-ea-adjacent-charitable-effort
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
9 December 2022
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LdEPDqyZvucQkxhWH/ea-and-lw-forums-weekly-summary-28th-nov-4th-dec-22
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
2 December 2022
Key Takeaways:
- Several influential EAs have suggested using neuron counts as rough proxies for animals’ relative moral weights. We challenge this suggestion.
- We take the following ideas to be the strongest reasons in favor of a neuron count proxy:
- neuron counts are correlated with intelligence and intelligence is correlated with moral weight,
- additional neurons result in “more consciousness” or “more valenced consciousness,” and
- increasing numbers of neurons are required to reach thresholds of minimal information capacity required for morally relevant cognitive abilities.
- However:
- in regards to intelligence, we can question both the extent to which more neurons are correlated with intelligence and whether more intelligence in fact predicts greater moral weight;
- many ways of arguing that more neurons results in more valenced consciousness seem incompatible with our current understanding of how the brain is likely to work; and
- there is no straightforward empirical evidence or compelling conceptual arguments indicating that relative differences in neuron counts within or between species reliably predicts welfare relevant functional capacities.
- Overall, we suggest that neuron counts should not be used as a sole proxy for moral weight, but cannot be dismissed entirely. Rather, neuron counts should be combined with other metrics in an overall weighted score that includes information about whether different species have welfare-relevant capacities.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Mfq7KxQRvkeLnJvoB/why-neuron-counts-shouldn-t-be-used-as-proxies-for-moral
This is a linkpost for https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p50vw84-ry2taYmyOIl4B91j7wkCurlB/edit?rtpof=true&sd=true
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
30 November 2022
Long and rough notes on Effective Altruism (EA). Written to help me get to the bottom of several questions: what do I like and think is important about EA? Why do I find the mindset so foreign? Why am I not an EA? And to start me thinking about: what do alternatives to EA look like? The notes are not aimed at effective altruists, though they may perhaps be of interest to EA-adjacent people. Thoughtful, informed comments and corrections welcome (especially detailed, specific corrections!) - see the comment area at the bottom.
"Using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis": that's the idea at the foundation of the Effective Altruism (EA) ideology and movement. Over the past two decades it has gone from being an idea batted about by a few moral philosophers to being a core part of the life philosophy of thousands or tens of thousands of people, including several of the world's most powerful and wealthy individuals. These are my rough working notes on EA. The notes are long and quickly written: disorganized rough thinking, not a polished essay.
Original article:
https://michaelnotebook.com/eanotes/
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
30 November 2022
This post introduces a framework for thinking about population ethics: “population ethics without axiology.” In its last section, I sketch the implications of adopting my framework for evaluating the thesis of longtermism. Before explaining what’s different about my proposal, I’ll describe what I understand to be the standard approach it seeks to replace, which I call “axiology-focused.”
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dQvDxDMyueLyydHw4/population-ethics-without-axiology-a-framework
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
30 November 2022
In “How Likely is World War III?”, Stephen suggested the chance of an extinction-level war occurring sometime this century is just under 1%. This was a simple, rough estimate, made in the following steps:
- Assume that wars, i.e. conflicts that cause at least 1000 battle deaths, continue to break out at their historical average rate of one about every two years.
- Assume that the distribution of battle deaths in wars follows a power law.
- Use parameters for the power law distribution estimated by Bear Braumoeller in Only the Dead to calculate the chance that any given war escalates to 8 billion battle deaths
- Work out the likelihood of such a war given the expected number of wars between now and 2100.
Not everybody was convinced. I (Stephen) have to admit that some skepticism is justified. An extinction-level war would be 30-to-100 times larger than World War II, the most severe war humanity has experienced so far. Is it reasonable to just assume number go up? Would the same escalatory dynamics that shape smaller wars apply at this scale?
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PyZCqLrDTJrQofEf7/how-bad-could-a-war-get
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PyZCqLrDTJrQofEf7/how-bad-could-a-war-get
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
30 November 2022
In both the 1940s and 1950s, well-meaning and good people – the brightest of their generation – were convinced they were in an existential race with an expansionary, totalitarian regime. Because of this belief, they advocated for and participated in a ‘sprint’ race: the Manhattan Project to develop a US atomic bomb (1939-1945); and the ‘missile gap’ project to build up a US ICBM capability (1957-1962). These were both based on a mistake, however - the Nazis decided against a Manhattan Project in 1942, and the Soviets decided against an ICBM build-up in 1958. The main consequence of both was to unilaterally speed up dangerous developments and increase existential risk. Key participants, such as Albert Einstein and Daniel Ellsberg, described their involvement as the greatest mistake of their life.
Our current situation with AGI shares certain striking similarities and certain lessons suggest themselves: make sure you’re actually in a race (information on whether you are is very valuable), be careful when secrecy is emphasised, and don’t give up your power as an expert too easily.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cXBznkfoPJAjacFoT/are-you-really-in-a-race-the-cautionary-tales-of-szilard-and
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
29 November 2022
What We Owe The Future (WWOTF) by Will MacAskill has recently been released with much fanfare. While I strongly agree that future people matter morally and we should act based on this, I think the book isn’t clear enough about MacAskill’s views on longtermist priorities, and to the extent it is it presents a mistaken view of the most promising longtermist interventions.
I argue that MacAskill:
- Underestimates risk of misaligned AI takeover.
- Overestimates risk from stagnation.
- Isn’t clear enough about longtermist priorities.
I highlight and expand on these disagreements in part to contribute to the debate on these topics, but also make a practical recommendation.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9Y6Y6qoAigRC7A8eX/my-take-on-what-we-owe-the-future
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9Y6Y6qoAigRC7A8eX/my-take-on-what-we-owe-the-future
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
29 November 2022
This essay is a reconciliation of moral commitment and the good life. Here is its essence in two paragraphs:
Totalized by an ought, I sought its source outside myself. I found nothing. The ought came from me, an internal whip toward a thing which, confusingly, I already wanted – to see others flourish. I dropped the whip. My want now rested, commensurate, amidst others of its kind – terminal wants for ends-in-themselves: loving, dancing, and the other spiritual requirements of my particular life. To say that these were lesser seemed to say, “It is more vital and urgent to eat well than to drink or sleep well.” No – I will eat, sleep, and drink well to feel alive; so too will I love and dance as well as help.
Once, the material requirements of life were in competition: If we spent time building shelter it might jeopardize daylight that could have been spent hunting. We built communities to take the material requirements of life out of competition. For many of us, the task remains to do the same for our spirits. Particularly so for those working outside of organized religion on huge, consuming causes. I suggest such a community might practice something like “fractal altruism,” taking the good life at the scale of its individuals out of competition with impact at the scale of the world.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AjxqsDmhGiW9g8ju6/effective-altruism-in-the-garden-of-ends
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
28 November 2022
Excerpt:
At EA Global: San Francisco 2022, the following organisations held a joint session to discuss their different approaches to measuring ‘good’:
At EA Global: San Francisco 2022, the following organisations held a joint session to discuss their different approaches to measuring ‘good’:
- GiveWell
- Open Philanthropy
- Happier Lives Institute
- Founders Pledge
- Innovations for Poverty Action
A representative from each organisation gave a five-minute lightning talk summarising their approach before the audience broke out into table discussions.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8whqn2GrJfvTjhov6/measuring-good-better-1
Edited for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8whqn2GrJfvTjhov6/measuring-good-better-1
Edited for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
28 November 2022
The long-term future of intelligent life is currently unpredictable and undetermined. In the linked document, we argue that the invention of artificial general intelligence (AGI) could change this by making extreme types of lock-in technologically feasible. In particular, we argue that AGI would make it technologically feasible to (i) perfectly preserve nuanced specifications of a wide variety of values or goals far into the future, and (ii) develop AGI-based institutions that would (with high probability) competently pursue any such values for at least millions, and plausibly trillions, of years.
The rest of this post contains the summary (6 pages), with links to relevant sections of the main document (40 pages) for readers who want more details.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KqCybin8rtfP3qztq/agi-and-lock-in
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
27 November 2022
This is going to be a list of holes I see in the basic argument for existential risk from superhuman AI systems.
To start, here’s an outline of what I take to be the basic case:
I. If superhuman AI systems are built, any given system is likely to be ‘goal-directed’
II. If goal-directed superhuman AI systems are built, their desired outcomes will probably be about as bad as an empty universe by human lights
III. If most goal-directed superhuman AI systems have bad goals, the future will very likely be bad
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zoWypGfXLmYsDFivk/counterarguments-to-the-basic-ai-risk-case
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
26 November 2022
Understanding the relationship between wellbeing and economic growth is a topic that is of key importance to Effective Altruism (e.g. see Hillebrandt and Hallstead, Clare and Goth). In particular, a key disagreement regards the Easterlin Paradox; the finding that happiness varies with income across countries and between individuals, but does not seem to vary significantly with a country’s income as it changes over time. Michael Plant recently wrote an excellent post summarizing this research. He ends up mostly agreeing with Richard Easterlin’s latest paper arguing that the Easterlin Paradox still holds; suggesting that we should look to approaches other than economic growth to boost happiness. I agree with Michael Plant that life satisfaction is a valid and reliable measure, that it should be a key goal of policy and philanthropy, and that boosting income does not increase it as much as we might naively expect. In fact, we at Founders Pledge highly value and regularly use Michael Plant’s and Happier Lives Institute’s (HLI) research; and we believe income is only a small part of what interventions should aim at. However, my interpretation of the practical implications of Easterlin’s research differ from Easterlin’s in three ways which I argue in this post.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/coryFCkmcMKdJb7Pz/does-economic-growth-meaningfully-improve-well-being-an
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
25 November 2022
I want to know what’s going on in the world. I’m a human; I’m interested in what other humans are up to; I value them, care about their triumphs and mourn their deaths.
But:
- There’s far too much going on for me to keep track of all of it
- I think that some parts of what’s going are likely far more important than others
- I don’t think that regular news providers are picking the important bits to report on
I would really like there to be a scope sensitive news provider which was making a good faith attempt to report on the things which most matter in the world. But as far as I know, this doesn’t exist.
In the absence of such a provider, I’ve spent a small amount of time trying to find out some basic context on what happens in the world on the average day. I think of this as a bit like a cheat sheet: some information to have in the back of my mind when reading whatever regular news stories are coming at me, to ground me in something that feels a bit closer to what’s actually going on.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rXYW9GPsmwZYu3doX/what-happens-on-the-average-day
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
25 November 2022
We will never know their names. The first victim could not have been recorded, for there was no written language to record it. They were someone’s daughter, or son, and someone’s friend, and they were loved by those around them. And they were in pain, covered in rashes, confused, scared, not knowing why this was happening to them or what they could do about it — victims of a mad, inhuman god. There was nothing to be done — humanity was not strong enough, not aware enough, not knowledgeable enough, to fight back against a monster that could not be seen.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jk7A3NMdbxp65kcJJ/500-million-but-not-a-single-one-more
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
24 November 2022
In this note I’ll summarize the bio-anchors report, describe my initial reactions to it, and take a closer look at two disagreements that I have with background assumptions used by (readers of) the report.
This report attempts to forecast the year when the amount of compute required to train a transformative AI (TAI) model will first become available, as the year when a forecast for the amount of compute required to train TAI in a given year will intersect a forecast for the amount of compute that will be available for a training run of a single project in a given year.
Original article:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_GqOrCo29qKly1z48-mR86IV7TUDfzaEXxD3lGFQ8Wk/edit#
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
24 November 2022
So far, long-termist efforts to change the trajectory of the world focus on far-off events. This is on the assumption that we foresee some important problem and influence its outcome by working on the problem for longer. We thus start working on it sooner than others, we lay the groundwork for future research, we raise awareness, and so on.
Many longtermists propose that we now live at the “hinge of history”, usually understood on the timescale of critical centuries, or critical decades. But ”hinginess” is likely not constant: some short periods will be significantly more eventful than others. It is also possible that these periods will present even more leveraged opportunities for changing the world’s trajectory.
These “maximally hingey” moments might be best influenced by sustained efforts long before them (as described above). But it seems plausible that in many cases, the best realistic chance to influence them is “while they are happening”, via a concentrated effort at that moment.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sgcxDwyD2KL6BHH2C/case-for-emergency-response-teams
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
23 November 2022
Shrimp Welfare Project produced this report to guide our decision making on funding for further research into shrimp welfare and on which interventions to allocate our resources. We are cross-posting this on the forum because we think it may be useful to share the complexity of understanding the needs of beneficiaries who cannot communicate with us. We also hope it will be useful for other organisations working on shrimp welfare, and it’s also hopefully an interesting read!
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nGrmemHzQvBpnXkNX/what-matters-to-shrimps-factors-affecting-shrimp-welfare-in
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
13 November 2022
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/W4fhpuN26naxGCBbN/p/cwa5m5pJQh857GE7C
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
6 November 2022
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/W4fhpuN26naxGCBbN/p/tm3RMfxetLsmcwftQ
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
30 October 2022
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/W4fhpuN26naxGCBbN/p/YxiXZcddn4kEqGdr9
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
23 October 2022
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/W4fhpuN26naxGCBbN/p/Hi5z6tm9d2keHALgv
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
16 October 2022
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/W4fhpuN26naxGCBbN/p/pmJRXG3cTgrt779Ep
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
9 October 2022
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/W4fhpuN26naxGCBbN/p/qFqNaLAkMdmwKNBbs
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
25 September 2022
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tokGikSg3fSJun4Lw/ea-and-lw-forums-weekly-summary-19-25-sep-22
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
25 September 2022
Note from Coleman Snell:
Thanks for listening to the very first episode of EA Forum Summaries Weekly! Please note that this podcast will only contain summaries of EA Forum posts, and not LessWrong posts. This is to keep the episodes short & sweet for a weekly series. Other options would include raising the karma threshold on both.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5wzhWsHrZSLwXxc5q/ea-and-lw-forums-weekly-summary-12-18-sep-22
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.