Posts tagged community
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1. Will all-gender bathrooms exist at EAG London?
As I understand it, the UK government has mandated that new buildings be constructed with bathrooms that are either multi-stall and single-gender or single-stall and all-gender. In the past, CEA has rented event spaces with...
I recently wrote a post on the EA forum about turning animal suffering to animal bliss using genetic enhancement. Titotal raised an thoughtful concern: "How do you check that your intervention is working? For example, suppose your original raccoons screech when you poke them, but the genetically engineered racoons don't. Is that because they are experiencing less pain, or have they merely evolved not to screech?"
This is a very good point. I was recently considering how we could be sure to not just change the expressions of suffering and I believe that I have determined a means of doing so. In psychology, it is common to use factor analysis to study a latent variables--the variables that we cannot measure directly. It seems extremely reasonable to think that animal pain is real, but the trouble is measuring it. We could try to get at pain by getting a huge array of behaviors and measures that are associated with pain (heart rate, cortisol levels, facial expressions, vocalizations, etc.) and find a latent factor of suffering that accounts for some of these behaviors.
To determine if an intervention is successful at changing the latent factor of suffering for the better, we could test for measurement invariance which is an important step in making a relevant comparison between two groups. This basically tests whether the nature of the factor loadings remains the same between groups. This would mean a reduction in all of the traits associated with suffering. This would also seem relevant for environmental interventions as well.
As an illustration: imagine that I measure wefare of a raccoon by the amount of screeching it does. A bad intervention would be taping the raccoons mouth shut. This would reduce screeching, but there is no good reason to think that would alleviate...
Author’s Note: This post is part of a larger sequence on addiction, and sampled from an appendix post of mine. For more background on the appendix format I used, read this.
If you are in, suspect you are in, or have struggled in the past with some sort of addiction, feel free to join this Discord server. It is a recovery group I set up focused on helping EAs struggling, in case they think they would benefit from having a space where they can discuss more unique struggles with a group of people who are more likely to understand them. It is currently relatively inactive, but I am trying to change this. If you are uncomfortable with this for any reason, but still want help, feel free to get in touch via DMs, and I can try to help you in some other way.
Image from painting “Autumnal Cannibalism” by Salvador Dali
While working on this other post, one of my favorite bloggers released a quite relevant...
Author’s Note: This post is part of a larger sequence on addiction, and sampled from an appendix post of mine. For more background on the appendix format I used, read this.
If you are in, suspect you are in, or have struggled in the past with some sort of addiction, feel free to join this Discord server. It is a recovery group I set up focused on helping EAs struggling, in case they think they would benefit from having a space where they can discuss more unique struggles with a group of people who are more likely to understand them. It is currently relatively inactive, but I am trying to change this. If you are uncomfortable with this for any reason, but still want help, feel free to get in touch via DMs, and I can try to help you in some other way.
Image from the painting “The Poet Max Herrmann-Neisse” by George Grosz
In my first blog post, I gave my quick review of the idea that we should...
Three recent posts that may be of interest:
- Moral Misdirection (introducing the general concept: public communicators should aim to improve the importance-weighted accuracy of their audience's beliefs)
- What "Effective Altruism" Means to Me (sets out 42 claims that I think
Richard I really love your writing, but as a parent I find it so hard to just sit and read stuff. 95% of the forum's content I get via the podcast feeds. Now, I don't expect everyone to go full Experimental History or Joe Carlsmith and audio narrate each post, but unless you're wanting to keep things on Substack turf, you might consider cross-posting the full thing here (like Bentham's Bulldog did for the critique of the wired article). I don't ask this of everyone, so please consider this a compliment: I love your work and want it in my ears.[1]
- ^
Tha
Author: Leonard Dung
Abstract: Many researchers and intellectuals warn about extreme risks from artificial intelligence. However, these warnings typically came without systematic arguments in support. This paper provides an argument that AI will lead to the permanent disempowerment of humanity, e.g. human extinction, by 2100. It rests on four substantive premises which it motivates and defends: first, the speed of advances in AI capability, as well as the capability level current systems have already reached, suggest that it is practically possible to build AI systems capable of disempowering humanity by 2100. Second, due to incentives and coordination problems, if it is possible to build such AI, it will be built. Third, since it appears to be a hard technical problem to build AI which is aligned with the goals of its designers, and many actors might build powerful AI, misaligned powerful...
Use this thread to share information about EA-related roles you are looking to fill!
We’d like to help applicants and hiring managers coordinate, so we’ve set up this thread, and another called Who wants to be hired? (we did this last in 2022[1]).
To add your ...
FutureSearch is hiring! We're seeking Full-Stack Software Engineers, Research Engineers, and Research Scientists to help us build an AI system that can answer hard questions, including the forecasting and research questions critical for effective allocation of resources. You can read more our motivations, and how it works.
Salary and benefits: $70k - $120k, location and seniority depending. We aim to offer higher equity than startups at our size (6 people) typically do.
Location: Full remote. We pay for travel every few months to work together around the US ...
This is mostly a linkpost to a Gdoc which itself links to notes on 20 EA-relevant books (to be updated on an ongoing basis). I hope you'll find it useful! Here is the list, with links included for convenience:
Communication
Chip and Dan Heath (2007) Made to Stick: Why Some...
Hi Cam, I'm glad you found the notes useful! Most of these (with The Precipice being an exception) were notes taken from audiobooks. As I was listening, I'd write down brief notes (sometimes as short as a key word or phrase) on the Notes app on iPhone. Then, once a day/once every couple days, I'd reference the Notes app to jog my memory, and write down the longer item of information in a Gdoc. Then, when I'd finished the book, I'd organize/synthesize the Gdoc into a coherent set of notes with sections etc.
These days I follow a similar system, but use...
High-decoupling vs low-decoupling or decoupling vs contextualizing refers to two different cultural norms, cognitive skills, or personal dispositions that change the way people approach ideas.
...High-decouplers isolate ideas from each other and the surrounding context. This
not an answer but what the hell is going on over there