this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.
AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)
This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.
[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]
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Do you have a source for this 'majority' claim? I tried searching for more up to date data but this less comprehensive 2020 data is even more skewed towards Global development (62%) and animal welfare (27.3%) with 18.2% for long term and AI charities (which is not equivalent to simulated humans, because it also includes climate change, nearterm AI problems, pandemics etc). Utility of existential risk reduction is basically always based on population growth/ future generations (aka humans) and not simulations. 'digital person' only has 25 posts on the EA forum (by comparison, global health and development has 2097 post). It seems unlikely to me that this is a majority belief.
Short answer: "majority" is hyperbolic, sure. But it is an elite conviction espoused by leading lights like Nick Beckstead. You say the math is "basically always" based on flesh and blood humans but when the exception is the ur-texts of the philosophy, counting statistics may be insufficient. You can't really get more inner sanctum than Beckstead.
Hell, even 80000 hours (an org meant to be a legible and appealing gateway to EA) has openly grappled with whether global health should be deprioritized in favor of so-called suffering-risks, exemplified by that episode of Black Mirror where Don Draper indefinitely tortures a digital clone of a woman into subjugation. I can't find the original post, formerly linked to from their home page, but they do still link to this talk presenting that original scenario as a grave issue demanding present-day attention.
Calling it a majority might be unwarranted. EAs have bought a lot of mosquito nets, and most of those donations were probably not made with the thinking "can't lift-and-shift this old brain of mine into the cloud if everyone dies of malaria".
That said, the data presented on that page is incredibly noisy, with a very small sample size for the individual respondents who specified the cause they were donating to and numbers easy to skew with a few big donations. There's also not much in there about the specific charities being donated to. For all I can tell they could just be spinning some AI bullshit as anything from public health to criminal justice reform. Speaking of which,
AI is to climate change as indoor smoking is to fire safety, nearterm AI problems is an incredibly vague and broad category and I would need someone to explain to me why they believe AI has anything to do with pandemics. Any answer I can think of would reflect poorly on the one holding such belief.
Yes, that's why I said it's "less comprehensive" and why I first gave the better 2019 source which also points in the same direction. If there is a better source, or really any source, for the majority claim I would be interested in seeing it.
You misread, it's 18.2% for long term and AI charities [emphasis added]
18.2% is not a majority, but it's 18.2% higher than it would be in a movement that didn't have a serious fucking problem
The way this is categorized, this 18.2% is also about things like climate change and pandemics.
What benefits did the Longtermist stuff on pandemics do in the actual pandemic?
If, as I suspect, it was of no benefit, it belongs in the same pile as hindering the acasualrobotgod.
I don't know, when I googled it this 80000 hours article is one of the first results. It seems reasonable at first glance but I haven't looked into it.