Update on Amplify Creative Grants: We’ve been really impressed by the number of high-quality applications we’ve received already, so we are likely to spend the majority of the funds we have to disperse in this first round.
As such, if you have an idea for a creative media project that you want to start soon, it would be best for you to apply by Wednesday the 19th of October.
That said, Amplify is likely to continue to consider applications beyond this point, so it is still worth your time to apply with non-urgent projects, through the same link.
As always, email grants [at] hearthisidea.com with any questions.
Yep- I was going to have a 'what we should do' section and then realised that I had nothing very helpful to say. Thanks for those resources, I'll check them out.
Thanks for flagging- yes I have definitely taken more of the MacAskill-Ord-Greaves party line in this post. Personally, I'm pretty uncertain on total utilitarianism so this should reflect that a little more.
Hi Finn, I'd be happy to help out with these (on recording voice especially, I don't think I can commit time for audio editing at the moment). I've already got a mic for my podcast (Samsung Q2U) so if that was good enough, I wouldn't need as much set-up time.
Framing my proposal as "hiding criticism" is perhaps unduly emotive here. I think that it makes sense to be careful and purposive about what types of content you broadcast to a wider audience which is unlikely to do further research or read particularly critically. I agree with Aaron's comment further down the page where he says that the effect of Torres's piece is to make people feel "icky" about longtermism. Therefore to achieve the ends which I take as implicit in evelynciara's comment (counteract some of the effects of Torres's article and produce a piece of work which could be referenced on wikipedia), I think it makes more sense to just aim to write a fairer piece about longtermism, than to draw more attention to Torres's piece. I'm all for criticism of longtermism and I think such an article would be incomplete without including some, I just don't think Torres's piece offers usable criticism.
Not sure how much to weight this, but perhaps it would be better to have a straightforwardly pro-longtermism piece in one of these outlets, rather than a response to Torres. If edited for Aeon or Current Affairs as a response piece this would need to offer detailed exposition of Torres's arguments, and might just result in getting more people to read the original.
I don't know if either outlet publishes a "letter to the editor" style post. If they did, that might be a better short format which would mostly reach readers of Torres's article, rather than a full article which would likely just expand the reach of the original.
Hi! I'm Toby. I do a bit of writing and podcasting but would love to do some more. I'm particularly flexible at the moment for more EA projects, so I'd be very interested in joining the slack. (The idea is that you would message me with a link right? I'm not very familiar with slack).
The way I see this argument in this post is that you pick out a value/ capacity which you think would be especially desirable for the future to hold- in this case "good decision-making"- and then track back to the individual acts which might help propagate it.
If this is the correct model of the argument, might it be the case that more narrowly defined values/capacities are more memetically strong and morally robust? In my opinion many aspects of "good decision-making" might lead to worse outcomes- for example the focus on character in politicians mentioned above might be present in the best possible worlds but in many nearer possible worlds it is a failed proxy which leads to politicians selected because they seem reliable rather than because they have the best policies. Or perhaps many people who learn a few decision-making skills become over confident and stray into a naive version of the goal. In contrast, more finite goals such as "abolish factory farming", "promote anti-racism" are (in my opinion) less likely to lead to false proxies and clearly propagate along social networks because they incorporate their own ends. Not every aspect of an imperfect decision-making practice is bad or leads to bad outcomes, but with more narrow goals like those mentioned above, falling short of the goals is always bad. My impression is that this is a sign of a better proxy for what is good.
I'd love to know whether people think this is on the right track- I don't know very much about the strength of the "good decision-making" goal so it would be great to hear more about its strengths.
Thanks for the post and the response David, that helpfully clarifies where you are coming from. What I was trying to get at is that if you want to say that strong longtermism isn't the correct conclusion for an impartial altruist who wants to know what to do with their resources, then that would call for more argument as to where the strong longtermist's mistake lies or where the uncertainty should be. On the other hand, it would be perfectly possible to say that the impartial altruist should end up endorsing strong longtermism, while recognising that you yourself are not entirely impartial (and have done with the issue). Personally I also think that strong longtermism relies on very debatable grounds, and I would also put some uncertainty on the claim "the impartial altruist should be a strong longtermist"- the tricky and interesting thing is working out where we disagree with the longtermist.
(also I recognise as you said that this post is not supposed to be a final word on all these problems, I'm just pointing to where the inquiry could go next).
On the second part of your response, I think that depends on what motivates you and what your general worldview is. I don't believe in objective moral facts, but I also generally see the world as a place where each and all could do better. For some that helps motivate action, for some it causes angst- I don't think there is a correct view there.
Separately I do actually worry that strong longtermism only works for consequentialists (though you don't have to believe in objective morality). The recent paper attempts to make the foundations more robust but the work there is still in its infancy. I guess we will see where it goes.
Yep- I was going to have a 'what we should do' section and then realised that I had nothing very helpful to say. Thanks for those resources, I'll check them out.
Thanks for flagging- yes I have definitely taken more of the MacAskill-Ord-Greaves party line in this post. Personally, I'm pretty uncertain on total utilitarianism so this should reflect that a little more.
Hi Finn, I'd be happy to help out with these (on recording voice especially, I don't think I can commit time for audio editing at the moment). I've already got a mic for my podcast (Samsung Q2U) so if that was good enough, I wouldn't need as much set-up time.
Framing my proposal as "hiding criticism" is perhaps unduly emotive here. I think that it makes sense to be careful and purposive about what types of content you broadcast to a wider audience which is unlikely to do further research or read particularly critically. I agree with Aaron's comment further down the page where he says that the effect of Torres's piece is to make people feel "icky" about longtermism. Therefore to achieve the ends which I take as implicit in evelynciara's comment (counteract some of the effects of Torres's article and produce a piece of work which could be referenced on wikipedia), I think it makes more sense to just aim to write a fairer piece about longtermism, than to draw more attention to Torres's piece. I'm all for criticism of longtermism and I think such an article would be incomplete without including some, I just don't think Torres's piece offers usable criticism.
Not sure how much to weight this, but perhaps it would be better to have a straightforwardly pro-longtermism piece in one of these outlets, rather than a response to Torres. If edited for Aeon or Current Affairs as a response piece this would need to offer detailed exposition of Torres's arguments, and might just result in getting more people to read the original.
I don't know if either outlet publishes a "letter to the editor" style post. If they did, that might be a better short format which would mostly reach readers of Torres's article, rather than a full article which would likely just expand the reach of the original.
Hi! I'm Toby. I do a bit of writing and podcasting but would love to do some more. I'm particularly flexible at the moment for more EA projects, so I'd be very interested in joining the slack. (The idea is that you would message me with a link right? I'm not very familiar with slack).
The way I see this argument in this post is that you pick out a value/ capacity which you think would be especially desirable for the future to hold- in this case "good decision-making"- and then track back to the individual acts which might help propagate it.
If this is the correct model of the argument, might it be the case that more narrowly defined values/capacities are more memetically strong and morally robust? In my opinion many aspects of "good decision-making" might lead to worse outcomes- for example the focus on character in politicians mentioned above might be present in the best possible worlds but in many nearer possible worlds it is a failed proxy which leads to politicians selected because they seem reliable rather than because they have the best policies. Or perhaps many people who learn a few decision-making skills become over confident and stray into a naive version of the goal. In contrast, more finite goals such as "abolish factory farming", "promote anti-racism" are (in my opinion) less likely to lead to false proxies and clearly propagate along social networks because they incorporate their own ends. Not every aspect of an imperfect decision-making practice is bad or leads to bad outcomes, but with more narrow goals like those mentioned above, falling short of the goals is always bad. My impression is that this is a sign of a better proxy for what is good.
I'd love to know whether people think this is on the right track- I don't know very much about the strength of the "good decision-making" goal so it would be great to hear more about its strengths.
Definitely, cheers!
Thanks for the post and the response David, that helpfully clarifies where you are coming from. What I was trying to get at is that if you want to say that strong longtermism isn't the correct conclusion for an impartial altruist who wants to know what to do with their resources, then that would call for more argument as to where the strong longtermist's mistake lies or where the uncertainty should be. On the other hand, it would be perfectly possible to say that the impartial altruist should end up endorsing strong longtermism, while recognising that you yourself are not entirely impartial (and have done with the issue). Personally I also think that strong longtermism relies on very debatable grounds, and I would also put some uncertainty on the claim "the impartial altruist should be a strong longtermist"- the tricky and interesting thing is working out where we disagree with the longtermist.
(also I recognise as you said that this post is not supposed to be a final word on all these problems, I'm just pointing to where the inquiry could go next).
On the second part of your response, I think that depends on what motivates you and what your general worldview is. I don't believe in objective moral facts, but I also generally see the world as a place where each and all could do better. For some that helps motivate action, for some it causes angst- I don't think there is a correct view there.
Separately I do actually worry that strong longtermism only works for consequentialists (though you don't have to believe in objective morality). The recent paper attempts to make the foundations more robust but the work there is still in its infancy. I guess we will see where it goes.