All of Halstead's Comments + Replies
Hi there
On your first question - what am I proposing?
The main thing I am proposing is quite weak - I am proposing that there be some public discussion of the arguments. Hauke and I published our piece summarising Pritchett's argument two years ago. It is the second most upvoted post in EA Forum history, which suggests that lots of people in the community found the post persuasive. On the face of it, Lant is worth taking seriously: he has a PhD in economics from MIT, has been a professor of development at Harvard and Oxford, and worked at the World Ba... (read more)
Thanks for the reply. I'll have to answer it... it was supposed to be short, I really didn't have the time, but then I started enjoying it. But I have a TL;DR.
TL;DR: I guess we’re not understanding each other very well, as you seem to be responding to other people (unfortunately, because I’m a big fan). I don’t see why you categorize me as a skeptic. I think we actually agree (i) RCT shouldn’t be the main path for dev-eco researchers, and (ii) there should be more research focused on developing countries. But: (iii) development economics is more complex th... (read more)
I do think it is important to distinguish these moral uncertainty reasons from moral trade and cooperation and strategic considerations for hedging. My argument for putting some focus on near-termist causes would be of this latter kind; the putative moral uncertainty/worldview diversification arguments for hedging carry little weight with me.
As an example, Greaves and Ord argue that under the expected choiceworthiness approach, our metanormative ought is practically the same as the total utilitarian ought.
It's tricky because the paper on strong longt... (read more)
I agree that it would be good to have a name for a less contentious form of longtermism similar to the one you propose, which says something like: the longterm deserves a seat at the top table with other commonly accept near-term priorities.
I suspect one common response might be that due to normative uncertainty, we don't put all of our weight on longtermism but instead hedge across different plausible views. I haven't yet seen a defence of that view that I would view as compelling, so I think it would be valuable to have a less contentious version that we would be willing to stand behind in public
I do think it is a key pillar of EA that there is open public discussion of arguments for and against different positions. I haven't seen much engagement with the case for focusing on economic growth.
On the last point, during the early Pliocene, early hominids with much worse technology than us lived in a world in which temperatures were 4.5C warmer than pre-industrial. It would be a surprise to me if this level of warming would kill off everyone, including people in temperate regions. There's more to come from me on this topic, but I will leave it at that for now
Hello! I will attempt to clarify, let me know whether this helps
- Yes you're right that it is the percentage increase that matters for welfare - roughly each doubling of income produces the same amount of welfare, according to GiveWell. Let me put it another way. You can actually donate to Americans through GiveDirectly. Open Philanthropy currently doesn't do this, but it does donate to US policy work. This must be because of leverage. Exactly the same arguments apply in Kenya.
- Immigration reform and housing reform in SF seem pretty intractable to me! The former is the most controversial policy issue in contemporary US politics.
To push further on this... a natural response is to say "it only seems implausible that Bezos' liver could have this economic value because you're considering an organ in the abstract. But once his liver is combined with the rest of his Bezos and the influence he can have on the rest of the world, it stops being implausible". This is true but then the same point applies to collections of atoms. I don't know of a non-question begging way round this.
i was just referring to the last bullet re climate change. eg in the last IPCC report, it would have been reasonable for govts to believe that there was a >10% chance of >6C of warming and that has been true since the 1970s, without having any impact. The political response to climate change seems to be influenced by most mainstream media coverage and public opinion in some circles which it would be fair to characterise as 'very concerned' about climate change. An opinion poll suggests that 54% of British people think that climate change threat... (read more)
I don't climate research as very valuable. The value of information would only be high if this research would change how people act. Climate inaction seems to be mainly political inertia, not lack of information about potential catastrophe.
Fair cop on the access to atoms numbers.
(thinking aloud a bit here) An analogy might be that Jeff Bezos has 78 organs. His net worth is $200bn. So there is $3bn of output for each of his organs. I just don't know at what number it becomes implausible that his average organ could sustain a certain level of output. And this generally seems like a weird way to think about the limits on Bezos' output. This seems structurally similar to the atoms point.
Yeah I would think with VR and digital minds, it's a lot less clear whether there are diminishing returns from matter to subjective wellbeing.
Very interesting post. I'm interested in this argument about atoms and growth.
- "Let's say the world economy is currently getting 2% bigger each year.5 This implies that the economy would be doubling in size about every 35 years.6
- If this holds up, then 8200 years from now, the economy would be about 3*1070 times its current size.
- There are likely fewer than 1070 atoms in our galaxy,7 which we would not be able to travel beyond within the 8200-year time frame.8
- So if the economy were 3*1070 times as big as today's, and could only make use of 1070 (or fewer) ato
Yeah I crunched the numbers on this and the majority of human life years came after about 1300 (obviously very roughly)
Yep - that's a key argument and I think he is right. Offsetting is likely harmful in my view.
One important thing he argues for is the political economy barriers to carbon pricing. Jaccard himself worked to set up carbon pricing in Canada, but is very sceptical that it is the best thing to advocate for given political economy constraints. I think EAs sometimes miss this point and advocate for carbon pricing as the first best solution. Unfortunately, we are in the nth best world .
Agree this is a great book!
It is clear that energy consumption cannot continue to grow exponentially for much more than 1000 years. But it might be argued that we can continue to extract ever more economic value from less and less energy, especially with VR. This is discussed in the debate between Robin Hanson and Bryan Caplan, and Toby Ord in the comments.
See the comment here by Max Daniel:
"there are limits in how much value (whether in an economic or moral sense) we can produce per unit of available energy, and (ii) we will eventually only be able to expand the total amount ... (read more)
I agree that this is a problem and had previously raised the question in a post on the Forum, (though it is my lowest scoring post ever so evidently lots of people disagree with my argument!)
This issue became especially clear in early attempts by economists to put a value on the life of people across countries. Since people in poor countries took on greater risk for less money, their lives were valued at a fraction of those in rich countries.
Another example is tickets. Suppose that we are selling tickets to the final of Euro 2020 and that Warre... (read more)
Victor and Cullenward - Making Climate Policy Work is good.
On the science side, for an overview, I would recommend just reading the summary for policymakers or technical summary of the IPCC 2013 Physical science basis report.
For long-termist/ex-risk takes the following are good
King et al Climate Change a Risk Assessment
Hansen et al, Climate Sensitivity, sea level and atmospheric CO2
Clark et al, Consequences of twenty-first-century policy for multi-millennial climate and sea-level change
Hello!
I agree that climate change is not neglected but I view that as a bit of a weak steer when deciding whether to work on it, for reasons I outline here. Neglectedness is one determinant of how cost-effective it is to work on a problem, but there are many others. Taking the example of AI safety - it is more neglected than climate change, but I have almost no idea how to make progress on this problem, whereas with climate change there is quite a clear path to making a difference. It also might be true that certain solutions within climate are less neglec... (read more)
Hi Aaron, I appreciate this and understand the thought process behind the decision. I do generally agree that it is important to provide evidence for this kind of thing, but there were reasons not to do so in this case, which made it a bit unusual.
I have written up the instructions for CBT-i here for those interested - https://johnhalstead.org/index.php/2020/10/11/how-to-cure-your-insomnia/
Simon Beard is providing the foreword for his forthcoming book, and Luke Kemp has provided a supporting quote for it.
I'm pretty surprised and disappointed by this warning. I made 3 claims about ways that Phil has interacted with me.
- I didn't share the facebook messages because I thought it would be a breach of privacy to share a private message thread without Phil's permission, and I don't want to talk to him, so I can't get his permission.
- I also don't especially want to link to the piece calling me a racist, which anyone familiar with Phil's output would already know about, in any case.
- There is a reason I didn't share the screenshot of the the paedophilia/rape accu
(Since I drafted the original message, and it was only reviewed and approved by other moderators, I’ll use “I” in some parts of this thread.)
I owe you an apology for a lack of clarity in this message, and for not discussing my concerns with you in private before posting it (given that we’d already been discussing other aspects of the situation).
“Warning” was the wrong word to use. The thing we were trying to convey wasn’t “this is the kind of content that could easily lead to a ban”, but instead “this goes against a norm we want to promote on the Forum, an... (read more)
I appreciate that these kinds of moderation decisions can be difficult, but I also don't agree with the warning to Halstead. And if it is to be given, then I am uncomfortable that Halstead has been singled out - it would seem consistent to apply the same warning to me, as I supported Halstead's claims, and added my own, both without providing evidence.
Echoing what Max says, I think this paper comes from the assumption that a lot of population ethics is just off down the wrong track of trying to craft theories in a somewhat ad hoc manner that avoid the repugnant conclusion. It is difficult to think of how else these people could try and make this point given that making the same points that others have made before, in some cases several decades ago, would not be publishable because they are not novel. This strikes me as something of a (frustrated?) last resort to try and make the discipline acknowledge t... (read more)
I think a key point is that bioethics usually involves applying particular moral theories, which is not that interesting an exercise from a philosophical point of view. That's why the best philosophers are often drawn to higher level theoretical questions such as about the truth of otherwise of consequentialism or rights-based theories or whether and how we should respond to moral uncertainty. Consequently, the true ethics experts (if they really exist) are not likely to be studying bioethics. as they say in the podcast it is also weird that bioethics has ... (read more)
If you agree it is a serious and baseless allegation, why do you keep engaging with him? The time to stop engaging with him was several years ago. You had sufficient evidence to do so at least two years ago, and I know that because I presented you with it, e.g. when he started casually throwing around rape allegations about celebrities on facebook and tagging me in the comments, and then calling me and others nazis. Why do you and your colleagues continue to extensively collaborate with him?
To reiterate, the arguments he makes are not sincere: he only makes them because he thinks the people in question have wronged him.
[disclaimer: I am co-Director at CSER. While much of what I will write intersects with professional responsibilities, it is primarily written from a personal perspective, as this is a deeply personal matter for me. Apologies in advance if that's confusing, this is a distressing and difficult topic for me, and I may come back and edit. I may also delete my comment, for professional or personal/emotional reasons].
I am sympathetic to Halstead's position here, and feel I need to write my own perspective. Clearly to the extent that CSER has - whether directly o... (read more)
I don't have any comment to make about Torres or his motives (I think I was in a room with him once). However, as a more general point, I think it can still make sense to engage with someone's arguments, whatever their motivation, at least if there are other people who take them seriously. I also don't have a view on whether others in the longtermism/X-risk world do take Torres's concern seriously, it's not really my patch.
It is very generous to characterise Torres' post as insightful and thought provoking. He characterises various long-termists as white supremacists on the flimsiest grounds imaginable. This is a very serious accusation and one that he very obviously throws around due to his own personal vendettas against certain people. e.g. despite many of his former colleagues at CSER also being long-termists he doesn't call them nazis because he doesn't believe they have slighted him. Because I made the mistake of once criticising him, he spent much of the last two years calling me a white supremacist, even though the piece of mine he cited did not even avow belief in long-termism.
Despite disagreeing with most of it, including but not limited to the things highlighted in this post, I think that Torres's post is fairly characterised as thought-provoking. I'm glad Joshua included it in the syllabus, also glad he caveated its inclusion, and think this response by Hayden is useful.
I haven't interacted with Phil much at all, so this is a comment purely on the essay, and not a defense of other claims he's made or how he's interacted with you.
A quick point of clarification that Phil Torres was never staff at CSER; he was a visitor for a couple of months a few years ago. He has unfortunately misrepresented himself as working at CSER on various media (unclear if deliberate or not). (And FWIW he has made similar allusions, albeit thinly veiled, about me).
On species extinctions, you cite the Thomas et al estimate that climate change would cause "15-37% of all species to become ‘committed to extinction’ by mid-century". This paper has been subject to an avalanche of criticism. For example, there is a good review here, and strong counter-evidence discussed at length here. I think it would be useful to the reader to provide this context.
Also, this is just one study (also the most pessimistic), and I think one would get a better view by providing an overview of the literature. The IPBES report that ... (read more)
The factors you mention therefore seem to increase vulnerability, but merely in the following sense
- Some of the factors don't seem relevant at all (phosphorous depletion)
- The food system will be much less vulnerable in the future vs today despite these factors.
- Some other event would have to do 99% of the work in bringing about a global food catastrophe
thanks for taking the time to do this!
I think I would find it very hard to update on the view that the minimum wage reduces demand for labour. Maybe if there were an extremely well done RCT showing no effect from a large minimum wage increase of $10, I would update. Incidentally, here is discussion of an RCT on the minimum wage which illustrates where the observational studies might be going wrong. The RCT shows that employers reduced hours worked, which wouldn't show up in observational studies, which mainly study disemployment effects
I am very conscious of the fact that almost everyone I hav... (read more)
I would agree with that - climate change seems like it could have very bad humanitarian costs for poor agrarian societies that look set to experience low economic growth this century. I do though find it very difficult to see how it could lead to a collapse of the global food system
Thanks for sharing this.
Regarding food, you suggest that due to climate change, soil erosion, water scarcity, and phosphorus depletion, there are risks to the global food supply that could constitute a global catastrophe. What do you think is the probability of this occurring in the next 30 or 80 years?
I am sceptical of this. Crop yields for almost all crops have increased by 200% since 1980, despite warming of about 0.8 degrees since then. The crop effects of climate change you outline, which are typically on the order of up to 20% ... (read more)
I was researching the food security -- climate link a couple of years ago for German policy-makers. Two findings stood out:
1. While climate has an effect on agricultural productivity, the effects of increasing yields and a decreasing rate of population growth will very likely lead to a less food-insecure future in terms of global food supply (in line with Halstead's comment).
2. Obviously, this does not mean that climate change will not lead to famines in some places, but this will not be an issue of global insufficiency, but of unequal vulnerability and ac... (read more)
As I mention in the post, it's not just theory and common sense, but also evidence from other domains. If the demand curve for labour low skilled labour is vertical, then it is all but impossible that a massive influx of Cuban workers during the Mariel boatlift had close to zero effect on native US wages. Nevertheless, that is what the evidence suggests.
I am happy to be told of other theoretical explanations of why minimum wages don't reduce demand for labour. The ones I am aware of in the literature are monopsonistic buyer of labour (clearly not the... (read more)
2. I would disagree on economics. I view the turn of economics towards high causal identification and complete neglect of theory as a major error, for reasons I touch on here. The discipline has moved from investigating important things to trivial things with high causal identification. The trend towards empirical behavioural economics is also in my view a fad with almost no practical usefulness. (To reiterate my point on the minimum wage - the negative findings are almost certainly false: it is what you would expect to find for a small treatme... (read more)
This is maybe getting too bogged down in the object-level. The general point is that if you have a confident prior, you are not going to update on uncertain observational evidence very much. My argument in the main post is that ignoring your prior entirely is clearly not correct and that is driving a lot of the mistaken opinions I outline.
Tangentially, I stand by my position on the object-level - I actually think that 98% is too low! For any randomly selected good I can think of, I would expect a price floor to reduce demand for it in >99% of cases. Com... (read more)
Hello, my argument was that there are certain groups of experts you can ignore or put less weight on because they have the wrong epistemology. I agree that the median expert might have got some of these cases right. (I'm not sure that's true in the case of nutrition however)
The point in all these cases re priors is that one should have a very strong prior, which will not be shifted much by flawed empirical research. One should have a strong prior that the efficacy of the vaccine won't drop off massively for the over 65s even before this is studied.
O... (read more)
As a matter of interest, where do papers such as this usually get discussed? Is it in personal conversation or in some particular online location?
Thanks for writing this. I disagree that EAs should prioritise this cause area and I disagree with the analysis of the cause-specific arguments.
Firstly, I think it is good for happy people to come into existence, but this is ignored here.
On climate change, I generally think Drawdown is not a reliable source. The only place where births per woman are not close to 2 is sub-saharan Africa. Thus, the only place where family planning could reduce emissions is sub-saharan Africa, which is currently a tiny fraction of emissions. Working on low carbon ... (read more)
Thanks for sharing that piece, it's a great counterpoint. I have a few thoughts in response.
Strevens argues that myopic empiricism drives people to do useful experiments which they perhaps might not have done if they stuck to theory. This seems to have been true in the case of physics. However, there are also a mountain of cases of wasted research effort, some of them discussed in my post. The value of information from eg most studies on the minimum wage and observational nutritional epidemiology is miniscule in my opinion. Indeed, it's plausib... (read more)
Thanks for this. I don't agree for scientists, at least in their published work, but I do agree that to an extent it's of course inevitable to bring in various other forms of reasoning to make subjective assessments that allow for inferences. So I think we're mostly arguing over extent.
My argument would basically be:
- Science made great progress when it agreed to focus its argument on empirical evidence and explanations of that evidence.
- Economics has (in my opinion) made great progress in moving from a focus on pure deduction and theory (akin to the Natur
Hi, thanks for this.
I'm not making a claim that rationalists are more accurate than the standard experts. I actually don't think that is true .eg rationalists think you obviously should one-box in Newcomb's problem (which I think is wrong, as do most decision theorists). The comments of Greg Lewis' post discuss the track record of the rationalists, and I largely agree with the pessimistic view there. I also largely agree with the direction and spirit of Greg's main post.
My post is about what someone who accepts the tenets of Bayesianism w... (read more)
I also largely agree with the direction and spirit of Greg's main post.
Personally, I broadly agreed with the spirit of the post before 2020. I'm somewhat more reticent now. But this is maybe a distraction so let's set it aside for now.
At a high level, I think I agree with the core of your argument. However, some of the subcomponents/implications seem "slippery" to me. In particular, I think readers (or at least, one particularly thick-skulled reader that I irrational have undue concern about) may read into it connotations that are potentially quite c... (read more)
Thanks for outlining the tests.
I'm not really sure what he thinks the probability of the singularity before 2100 is. My reading was that he probably doesn't think that given his tests, the singularity is (eg) >10% likely before 2100. 2 of the 7 tests suggest the singularity after 100 years and 5 of them fail. It might be worth someone asking him for his view on that
There's also Effective Giving Netherlands
For what it's worth, as someone who has thought about climate policy and philanthropy on and off for the last 3 years, I would also agree with this critique, and for the reasons Johannes (jackva) gives, I don't think the responses succeed. It's good to see these issues being discussed openly and constructively by both sides.
I don't think there's any need to apologise! I was trying to make the case that I don't think you showed how we could distinguish reasonable and unreasonable uses of normative claims
What do you think the next 4 years has in store for the US, especially concerning the probability of a major change in institutions and order there.
Hi, thanks for the reply!
The argument now has a bit of a motte and bailey feel, in that case. In various places you make claims such as
- "The Folly of "EAs Should"
- "One consequence of this is that if there are no normative claims, any supposition about what ought to happen based on EA ideas is invalid";
- "So I think we should discuss why Effective Altruism implying that there are specific and clear preferable options for Effective Altruists is often harmful";
- "Claiming something normative given moral uncertainty, i.e. that we may be incorrect,
I think this is consistent with Will's definition because you can view the 'should' claims as what we should do conditional on us accepting the goal of doing the most good using reason and evidence.
Thanks for engaging with me so deeply on this. To avoid misunderstandings, the comments about my desire for a debate were not meant as a criticism of you. I suppose I am a bit disappointed that no-one from GiveWell or Open Philanthropy has responded to Lant's arguments. When I mentioned the upvotes mine and Hauke's post got, I wasn't trying to blow my own horn (much as I like doing that), I was just trying to say that there is at least a case to answer. But two years on, no-one has engaged with the post. A lot is at stake here - I think we're leaving an aw... (read more)