RogerAckroyd's Quick takes

Yay for me: I have found that I can increase my donations in way that seems long-term sustainable in terms of finances and emotional engagement. I have also found that a moderate engagement with the movement is the best way for me to maintain an interest, while avoiding getting depressed by the state of the world.  

Sometimes when I see people writing about opposition to the death penalty I get the urge to mention Effective Altruism to them, and suggest it is borderline insane to think opposition to capital punishment in the US is where a humanitarian should focus their energies. (Other political causes don't cause me to react in the same way because people's desire to campaign for things like lower taxes, feminism or more school spending seems tied up with self-interest to a much larger degree, so the question if it is the most pressing issue seems irrelevant.) I always refrain from mentioning EA because I think it would do more harm then good, so I will just vent my irrational frustation here. 

 

Sometimes the concern is raised that caring about wild animal welfare is seen as unituitive and will bring conflict with the environmental movement. I do not think large-scale efforts to help wild animals should be an EA cause at the moment, but in the long-term I don't think environmentalist concerns will be a limiting factor. Rather, I think environmentalist concerns are partially taken as seriously as they are because people see it as helping wild animals as well. (In some perhaps not fully thought out way.) I do not think it is a coindince that the extinction of animals gets more press than the extinction of plants. 

I also note that bird-feeding is common and attracts little criticism from environmental groups. Indeed, during a cold spell this winter I saw recommendations from environmental groups to do it. 

The current conflict with Russia has increased my estimate of the importance of democratization. I think a democratic Russia would be unlikely to go to war with brother country like Ukraine.  Many efforts to spread democracy seem pretty unsuccesful. 

I wonder whether democratic countries sometimes could make deals with dictators to allow a gradual change to democracy, only finishing when the dictator dies or decides to retire. Assuming the dicator cares somewhat about his country's long-term future he might be persuaded that democracy is best way of ensuring peace and prosperity for it long-term. 

Scott Aaronsson has received a grant to redistribute and is asking for charity recommendations. https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6232 Note that he indicates AI-risk and other rationalist-flavored organisations are disfavored, but the blog post might still be of some interest. 

There is a lot of EA content on Twitter. It can't replace this forum for serious debate, but for someone like me who mainly consumes EA content to maintain motivation long-term it does well enough. 

Definitely worrying about WW3 or nuclear holocaust at the moment. I gave an extra donation to long-terminst causes this month. Don't usually donate to them, but the argument that some long-term thinking should be promoted seemed convincing now. 

I hope, but have no real reason to believe, that western leaders know how far they can support Ukraine without causing the war to spread. 

I wish Giving What We Can's donation page had my credit card number saved. Would remove a slight moment of annoyance each month. 

I was recently looking for a page with donation advice to link to. I found one, but it struck me that some general EA-organisations could start their homepages more focused on effective donation. (As opposed to getting people involved in other ways.) Most people are not looking to join an organistion or change jobs to more altruistically effective ones, but probably donate something to charity and could repriotize those donations. Having a "hook" which is about what to donate to might be more helpful. 

From animal EAs in the US there is talk about upcoming Supreme court case where California import restrictions on pork produced to lower standards are likely to be overturned. A sad turn of events if it happens. Also find it annoying that some activists are trying to ally it with larger left-wing cause, and warn it will lead to general race to bottom when it comes to regulations. As someone who is more right-wing on many issues I am not very worried about race to bottom when it comes to labor market regulation. I also don't see how it is tactically smart to tie defense of animal welfare standards to larger project of ending domestic free trade in US. SC is never going to write an opinion that would allow Californa to ban import from states with lower minimum wage, and that would also be a step much too far for the Biden adminstration and most Democrats, yet animal-friendly lawyers on Twitter seem completely unconcerned to suggest that this is the principle they want. 

Been reading about cryptocurrencies and block-chain. Cool technologies, but the valuation of current cryptocurrencies seems like a bubble that must crash, and the people who are "investing" in crypto right now are gambling, and I worry they do not know they are gambling. 

I hope current EA-aligned people in crypto manage to cash out, and that there is no reputational harm for the movement from the fact that some well-known proponents work in the field. 

Professor Abigail Marsh writes in NYT that individualism promotes altruism: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/26/opinion/individualism-united-states-altruism.html?smid=tw-share

I have not made any attempt to vet the study, and for studies of this kind you don't expect one study to be more than a small piece of evidence but it is clearly an interesting research question. 

There is a well-known argument that rule utilatarianism actually collapses into act utilatarianism. I wonder if rule utilitarians are not getting at the notion of dynamic inconsistency. If might be better if utilitarians can pre-commit to following certain rules, because of the effect that has on society, even if after one has adopted the rules there are circumstances where a utilitarian would be tempted to make exceptions. 

Gresham College is hosting an event with the title "Does Philanthropy do the Public Good?" by Professor David King. It can be watched afterwards here https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/good-philanthropy. 

It might be interesting, or alternatively it might be terrible but relevant for EAs to know what views are put out in the public debate. 

I think there might be some interest among the EA community in recent social media discussions about Scott Alexander and SlateStarCodex. My impression is that among some committed leftists the movement will face suspiscion rooted in its support from rich people, its current demographic profile, because some leftists are suspiscious of rationality itself and because the movement might detract from the idea that the causes popular now among leftists are also objectively the most important issues facing the world. 

Merry Christmas! I hope you all have great holidays, and are able to draw inspiration from them, even if Christmas presents are often an example of the most inefficient altruism there is. 

On 80000 hours webpage they have a profile on factory farming, where they say they estimate ending factory farming would increase the expected value of the future of humanity by between 0.01% and 0.1%. I realize one cannot hope for precision in these things but I am still curious if anyone knows anything more about the reasoning process that went into making that estimate.  

I would be careful about psycholigical explanations for followers of the EA movement committing fraud. It might be due to ends-justify-the-means thinking, but other possibilities, such as EA alignment being a useful tool to faciliate fraud, are also possible.