Bostrom’s new book is out today in hardcover and Kindle in the USA, and on Kindle in the UK.
Description:
A greyhound catching the mechanical lure—what would he actually do with it? Has he given this any thought?
Bostrom’s previous book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, ...
If anyone wants to see what making EA enormous might look like, check out Rutger Bregmans' School for Moral Ambition (SMA).
It isn't an EA project (and his accompanying book has a chapter on EA that is quite critical), but the inspiration is clear and I'm sure there...
Thanks! IIRC, we focused on it substantially because a lot of the sign ups for our programmes (e.g. online course) were coming from LinkedIn even when we hadn't put much effort into it. The number of sign ups and the proportion attributed to LinkedIn grew as we put more effort into it. This was mostly the work of our wonderful Marketing Manager, Ana. I don't have access to recent data or information about how it's gone to make much of a call on whether it was worth it, relative to other possible uses of our/Ana's time.
Very interesting! We have made exactly the same observation so we’ve started investing in it more, but we’re still learning how best to go about this.
Manifold is hosting a festival for prediction markets: Manifest 2024! We’ll have serious talks, attendee-run workshops, and fun side events over the weekend. Chat with special guests like Nate Silver, Scott Alexander, Robin Hanson, Dwarkesh Patel, Cate Hall, and...
I'd like to second Ben and make explicit the concern about platforming ideologues whose public reputation is seen as pro-eugenics.
TLDR: If you're an EA-minded animal funder donating $200K/year or more, we'd love to connect with you about several exciting initiatives that AIM is launching over the next several months.
AIM (formerly Charity Entrepreneurship) has a history of incubating and supporting...
I went though the old emails today and I am happy that my description accurately captured what happened and that everything I said can be backed up.
Welcome! Use this thread to introduce yourself or ask questions about anything that confuses you.
PS- this thread is usually entitled "Open thread", but I'm experimenting with a more descriptive title this time.
The "Guide to norms on the Forum" shares more about the kind of discussions we'd like to see on the Forum, and when the moderation team intervenes. For resources that can help you learn about effective altruism, check this list of links.
If you'd like, share how you became interested in effective altruism, what causes you work on and prioritize, and other fun facts about yourself, in the comments below (For inspiration, you can see the last open thread here). You can also add this information to your Forum bio to help other Forum users get to know you.
...This post was cross-posted by the Forum team with the permission of the author. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.
Greetings from Shrimp Welfare Project!
Our team is excited to announce the launch of our new webpage dedicated to the Humane Slaughter Initiative! This initiative aims to revolutionise the way shrimps are stunned prior to slaughter and pave the way for the future of ethical shrimp production. Learn more about this new page below.
In a newly published article on our website highlighting the urgency of responsible pond management, findings revealed alarmingly toxic hydrogen sulphide levels in shrimp ponds in India's Serepalem village, prompting a successful sludge removal intervention that significantly improved conditions - underscoring the imperative of sustainable practices for shrimp welfare and farm productivity.
Tamar Stelling wrote a piece for De Correspondent...
Gathering some notes on private COVID vaccine availability in the UK.
News coverage:
It sounds like there's been a licensing change allowing provision of the vaccine outside the NHS as of March 2024 (ish). Pharmadoctor is a company that supplies pharmacies and has been putting about the word that they'll soon be able to supply them with vaccine doses for private sale -- most media coverage I found names them specifically. However, the pharmacies themselves are responsible for setting the price and managing bookings or whatever. All Pharmadoctor does for the end user is tell you which pharmacies they are supplying and give you the following pricing guidance:
Comirnaty Omicron XBB.1.5 (Pfizer/BioNTech) £75-£85
Nuvaxovid XBB.1.5 (Novavax) £45-£55 (update: estimated availability from w/c 22/04/2024)
Some places offering bookings:
I've been linked to The benefits of Novavax explained which is optimistic about the strengths of Novavax, suggesting it has the potential to offer longer-term protection, and protection against variants as well.
I think the things the article says or implies about pushback from mRNA vaccine supporters seem unlikely to me -- my guess is that in aggregate Wall Street benefits much more from eliminating COVID than it does from selling COVID treatments, though individual pharma companies might feel differently -- but they seem like the sort of unlikely thing that someone who had reasonable beliefs about the science but spent too much time arguing on Twitter might end up believing. Regardless, I'm left unsure how to feel about its overall reliability, and would welcome thoughts one way or the other.
If you've read Leif's WIRED article or Poverty is No Pond & have questions for him, I'd love to share them with him & in turn share his answers here.
Thank you, M, for sharing this with me & encouraging me to connect.
I am a GiveWell donor because I want to spend money to improve the world. Should I do something else with that money instead? If so, what?
This post was cross-posted from the substack Thing of Things with the permission of the author.
In defense of trying things out
The Economist recently published an article, “How poor Kenyans became economists’ guinea pigs,” which critiques development economists’ use of randomized controlled trials. I think it exemplifies the profoundly weird way people think about experiments.
The article says:
...In 2018, an RCT run by two development economists, in partnership with the World Bank and the water authority in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, tracked what happened when water supply was cut off to households in several slum settlements where bills hadn’t been paid. Researchers wanted to test whether landlords, who are responsible for settling the accounts, would become more likely to pay as a result, and whether residents would protest.
Hundreds of residents in slum settlements in Nairobi were left without
I'm wondering what Nick Bostrom's p(doom) currently is, given the subject of this book. He said 9 years ago in his lecture on his book Superintelligence "less than 50% risk of doom". In this interview 4 months ago he said that it's good there has been more focus on risks in recent times, but there's still slightly less focus on the risks than what is optimal, but he wants to focus on the upsides because he fears we might "overshoot" and not build AGI at all which would be tragic in his opinion. So it seems he thinks the risk is less than it used to be beca... (read more)