"Respondents low in engagement were also slightly more likely to have heard of EA via the Slate Star Codex / Astral Codex Ten blog and via podcasts. (...) As we have discussed in previous reports, these differences are likely, in large part, explained by which sources have recruited more EAs more or less recently, since these newer EAs are less likely to be highly engaged."
Is this statement not contradicted by the fact that SSC/ACX has decreased in importance with regards to attracting new members?
i.e. shouldn't we expect these people to be more involved since they have been, on average, part of the movement for longer?
It's a bit more complicated, as I understand (from Wikipedia):
"In 1998, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2009, the United States Congress voted whether to ban all human cloning, both reproductive and therapeutic (Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act). Divisions in the Senate, or an eventual veto from the sitting President (George W. Bush in 2005 and 2007), over therapeutic cloning prevented either competing proposal (a ban on both forms or on reproductive cloning only) from being passed into law. On 10 March 2010, a bill (HR 4808) was introduced with a section banning federal funding for human cloning. Such a law, if passed, would not have prevented research from occurring in private institutions (such as universities) that have both private and federal funding. However, the 2010 law was not passed.
There are currently no federal laws in the United States which ban cloning completely. Fifteen American states (Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, North Dakota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Virginia) ban reproductive cloning and three states (Arizona, Maryland and Missouri) prohibit use of public funds for such activities.
Ten states, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey and Rhode Island, have "clone and kill" laws that prevent cloned embryo implantation for childbirth, but allow embryos to be destroyed."
Hi mikbp!
While it's possible that some people downvoted because of the spelling mistake (which I think shouldn't happen), I was inclined to downvote, too, mainly because when I clicked on the post I was hoping to find some details on why this is an important problem, how long my hair needs to be, how long a donation takes, what good my hair donation could do, upsides and downsides etc. Your post seems more like a call to action and maybe could have been a shortform instead! 😉
Also, from a fellow non-native speaker to another: There are many Websites and online Tools that will proofread your texts (grammar, spelling, etc.), maybe you want to play around with them a bit? I think this could really help to improve your writing and make it more appealing and understandable to other forum users! :)
I think this does a great job of introducing the concept of a charter city to audiences with little prior exposure to these ideas.
That said: I know this is for a YouTube video and I might just be too immersed in academic/research culture and hedging, but this feels a little too much like an advertisement to me.
As a report by RethinkPriorities points out, there's a number of reasons to think Charter Cities are not the most effective way to alleviate poverty:
Lack of tractability, mostly caused by difficulties of coordination between many stakeholders
Indirect effects might be huge, but are hard to measure: "We could not find a comprehensive argument for the value of these indirect benefits being large."[1]
Nearest empirical analogue (SEZs) seem to only marginally outperform host countries
Large development cost
You choose one example of a Charter city that could be deemed to be a success, but omit mentioning those that are widely considered "failures". According to the aforementioned RP report, Paul Romer - who you mention - turned away from the idea because of these failures in Honduras and Madagascar (a conclusion you may agree or disagree with, but that maybe deserves to be mentioned).
I will happily concede that some of these failures can be explained away by certain political circumstances rather than by flaws inherent to the concept of charter cities, but if the goal of this is to inform, not to persuade, I would love to see some of those limitations mentioned in the video. I say this less as an argument against charter cities, but as an argument for carefully considering the circumstances under which charter cities do or don't work.
Furthermore, there are many debates about whether charter cities will end poverty[2] or exacerbate social inequality and threaten social cohesion[3], but they are absent from this video, which mostly seems to rely on the perspective of advocates for charter cities.
Hi Ben!
With the benefit of hindsight, I realise we could've been more clear on what "leakage" means in this context, given that the topic matter might suggests we are talking about lab leaks.
We're not! In our model, lab leak rates would only factor into our estimate of how many deaths will be caused by DURC in the future.
Leakage in the CEA refers to the risk that new guidelines in academic communities might be "leaky" in that researchers might choose to migrate to other jurisdictions, countries or privately owned labs (though few of these exist on the BSL levels we are most concerned with) or worse yet, move their research underground. Hence, our CEA discounts the estimate of how many lives could be saved by including this possibility.
I can see this work extremely well for some tasks like reading and meetings, but significantly less so for stuff like typing. What's your experience with those types of tasks? Is walking on a treadmill disrupting these a lot or make them substantially more difficult?
Or do you exclusively write and respond to emails when you're sitting down?
You're right - my comment is addressing an additional problem. (So I maybe should've made it a standalone comment)
As far as your second point is concerned - that's true, unless we will face risk (again, and possibly more) at a later point. I agree with you that "crying wolf-effects" matter less or not at all under conditions where a problem is solved once and for all (unless it affects the credibility of a community which simultaneously works on other problems which remain unsolved, as is probably true of the EA community).
There's an additional problem that people who sound the alarms will likely be accused by some of "crying wolf" regardless of the outcome:
World A) Group X cries wolf. AI was not actually dangerous, nothing bad happens. Group X (rightly) gets accused of crying wolf and loses credibility, even if AI gets dangerous at some future point.
World B) Group X cries wolf. AI is actually dangerous, but because they cried wolf, we manage the risk and there is no catastrophe. Seeing the absence of a catastrophe, some people will accuse group X of crying wolf and they lose credibility.
"Respondents low in engagement were also slightly more likely to have heard of EA via the Slate Star Codex / Astral Codex Ten blog and via podcasts. (...) As we have discussed in previous reports, these differences are likely, in large part, explained by which sources have recruited more EAs more or less recently, since these newer EAs are less likely to be highly engaged."
Is this statement not contradicted by the fact that SSC/ACX has decreased in importance with regards to attracting new members? i.e. shouldn't we expect these people to be more involved since they have been, on average, part of the movement for longer?
It's a bit more complicated, as I understand (from Wikipedia):
"In 1998, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2009, the United States Congress voted whether to ban all human cloning, both reproductive and therapeutic (Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act). Divisions in the Senate, or an eventual veto from the sitting President (George W. Bush in 2005 and 2007), over therapeutic cloning prevented either competing proposal (a ban on both forms or on reproductive cloning only) from being passed into law. On 10 March 2010, a bill (HR 4808) was introduced with a section banning federal funding for human cloning. Such a law, if passed, would not have prevented research from occurring in private institutions (such as universities) that have both private and federal funding. However, the 2010 law was not passed.
There are currently no federal laws in the United States which ban cloning completely. Fifteen American states (Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, North Dakota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Virginia) ban reproductive cloning and three states (Arizona, Maryland and Missouri) prohibit use of public funds for such activities.
Ten states, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey and Rhode Island, have "clone and kill" laws that prevent cloned embryo implantation for childbirth, but allow embryos to be destroyed."
In global comparisons like this (https://www.ruf.rice.edu/~neal/temp/ST Policy/index/SCBooklet/World.pdf), the US is routinely classified as not having a complete ban on human cloning.
Hi mikbp! While it's possible that some people downvoted because of the spelling mistake (which I think shouldn't happen), I was inclined to downvote, too, mainly because when I clicked on the post I was hoping to find some details on why this is an important problem, how long my hair needs to be, how long a donation takes, what good my hair donation could do, upsides and downsides etc. Your post seems more like a call to action and maybe could have been a shortform instead! 😉
Also, from a fellow non-native speaker to another: There are many Websites and online Tools that will proofread your texts (grammar, spelling, etc.), maybe you want to play around with them a bit? I think this could really help to improve your writing and make it more appealing and understandable to other forum users! :)
I think this does a great job of introducing the concept of a charter city to audiences with little prior exposure to these ideas.
That said: I know this is for a YouTube video and I might just be too immersed in academic/research culture and hedging, but this feels a little too much like an advertisement to me.
As a report by RethinkPriorities points out, there's a number of reasons to think Charter Cities are not the most effective way to alleviate poverty:
You choose one example of a Charter city that could be deemed to be a success, but omit mentioning those that are widely considered "failures". According to the aforementioned RP report, Paul Romer - who you mention - turned away from the idea because of these failures in Honduras and Madagascar (a conclusion you may agree or disagree with, but that maybe deserves to be mentioned).
I will happily concede that some of these failures can be explained away by certain political circumstances rather than by flaws inherent to the concept of charter cities, but if the goal of this is to inform, not to persuade, I would love to see some of those limitations mentioned in the video. I say this less as an argument against charter cities, but as an argument for carefully considering the circumstances under which charter cities do or don't work.
Furthermore, there are many debates about whether charter cities will end poverty[2] or exacerbate social inequality and threaten social cohesion[3], but they are absent from this video, which mostly seems to rely on the perspective of advocates for charter cities.
https://rethinkpriorities.org/publications/intervention-report-charter-cities
Mark Lutter on trying to end poverty by founding well-governed 'charter' cities, ft Tamara Winter - 80,000 Hours (80000hours.org)
https://verfassungsblog.de/the-danger-zone-charter-cities-citizenship-and-social-justice/
Hi Ben! With the benefit of hindsight, I realise we could've been more clear on what "leakage" means in this context, given that the topic matter might suggests we are talking about lab leaks. We're not! In our model, lab leak rates would only factor into our estimate of how many deaths will be caused by DURC in the future. Leakage in the CEA refers to the risk that new guidelines in academic communities might be "leaky" in that researchers might choose to migrate to other jurisdictions, countries or privately owned labs (though few of these exist on the BSL levels we are most concerned with) or worse yet, move their research underground. Hence, our CEA discounts the estimate of how many lives could be saved by including this possibility.
I can see this work extremely well for some tasks like reading and meetings, but significantly less so for stuff like typing. What's your experience with those types of tasks? Is walking on a treadmill disrupting these a lot or make them substantially more difficult? Or do you exclusively write and respond to emails when you're sitting down?
https://ethical.diet/
This tool comes to mind!
I'm guessing Felix meant to say "This"
You're right - my comment is addressing an additional problem. (So I maybe should've made it a standalone comment)
As far as your second point is concerned - that's true, unless we will face risk (again, and possibly more) at a later point. I agree with you that "crying wolf-effects" matter less or not at all under conditions where a problem is solved once and for all (unless it affects the credibility of a community which simultaneously works on other problems which remain unsolved, as is probably true of the EA community).
There's an additional problem that people who sound the alarms will likely be accused by some of "crying wolf" regardless of the outcome:
World A) Group X cries wolf. AI was not actually dangerous, nothing bad happens. Group X (rightly) gets accused of crying wolf and loses credibility, even if AI gets dangerous at some future point.
World B) Group X cries wolf. AI is actually dangerous, but because they cried wolf, we manage the risk and there is no catastrophe. Seeing the absence of a catastrophe, some people will accuse group X of crying wolf and they lose credibility.