Summary: A blog post circulating among EAs points out that recent presidential elections have been decided by fewer than 100,000 votes. It may be tempting to conclude that each extra vote in a swing state has a 1-in-100,000 chance of changing the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. In this post, I explain why this is not the case. I estimate the actual number to be 1-in-3 million for a vote in Pennsylvania (the most important swing state) and 1-in-6 million for a generic "swing state vote". This has important implications for people who are deciding whether to donate to efforts to change the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

Introduction

Like most readers of this forum, I want Kamala Harris to win the 2024 U.S. presidential election. I also think that electoral politics as a cause area is underrated by EAs, and in 2020 I wrote a [...]

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Outline:

(00:49) Introduction

(05:29) Part 1: The MTLA quote doesnt tell you the impact of a marginal vote

(05:36) How close should we expect the 2024 election to be?

(07:40) Knowing that 100,000 votes would swing the election isnt a game plan

(09:29) Part 2: So how valuable are swing-state votes?

(09:51) The microHarris: a unit of intervention effectiveness

(11:28) How many microHarrises is an extra vote for Harris?

(15:19) Does Nate Silvers model have too much spread?

(16:34) Conclusion

The original text contained 16 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 2 images which were described by AI.

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The EA Hub will retire on the 6th of October 2024.

In 2022 we announced that we would stop further feature development and maintain the EA Hub until it is ready to be replaced by a new platform. In July this year, the EA Forum launched its People Directory, which offers a searchable directory of people involved in the EA movement, similar to what the Hub provided in the past.

We believe the Forum has now become better positioned to fulfil the EA Hub's mission of connecting people in the EA community online. The Forum team is much better resourced and users have many reasons to visit the Forum (e.g. for posts and events), which is reflected in it having more traffic and users. The Hub's core team has also moved on to other projects.

EA Hub users will be informed of this decision via email. [...]

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In this post, we include what is most important to know when you apply to Meta Charity Funders. We expect to update this post every round.

The most common reasons for rejection

By sharing the most common reasons for rejections, we hope to support future grantees and help people make more informed decisions on whether they should apply to Meta Charity Funders.

• The suggested project is not within scope: A fair amount of applications fall outside of the areas which our donors were interested in supporting. At a high level, Meta Charity Funders exists to fund projects that fall within the “meta” category and are unlikely to be funded by other major funders in this space. See “What we mean by 'meta'” further down.
• The theory of change (ToC) is unclear, unfocused, or seemed implausible: Some applicants do not share sufficient reasoning on how their project (in [...]

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Outline:

(00:18) The most common reasons for rejection

(02:51) What we’re looking for in an application

(04:34) Transparency

(04:37) Individual donors working together

(05:00) Time committed by funders

(05:26) Feedback

(05:56) What is Meta Charity Funders (MCF)?

(07:07) What we mean by meta

(08:57) Example proposal

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By Simon Knutsson and Magnus Vinding

This text is a general introduction to suffering-focused ethics. We describe different types of suffering-focused ethical views and explain some of the reasons why we find suffering-focused views reasonable. We also bring up and discuss some common misunderstandings and objections, and briefly cover some practical implications.

1. The core of suffering-focused ethical views

In essence, suffering-focused ethical views give a foremost priority to the reduction of suffering.[1] According to such views, there is something especially important or urgent about alleviating and preventing suffering. Usually, the primary concern is severe suffering rather than discomforts.

A simple example of a clearly suffering-focused view is the view that our only moral obligation is to reduce suffering as much as we can. Yet there are many types of suffering-focused views, as we will see in the next section. For instance, there can be differences in how [...]

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Outline:

(00:29) 1. The core of suffering-focused ethical views

(01:34) 2. Different types of suffering-focused views

(02:50) 2.1 Consequentialist views

(04:06) 2.2 Views focused on consequences along with other considerations

(04:41) 2.3 Views based on categorical norms

(05:30) 2.4 Prioritising the reduction of suffering in certain domains, such as politics

(05:57) 2.5 Ideas that tend toward a focus on suffering

(06:53) 3. Why we find suffering-focused views reasonable

(07:33) 3.1 The importance of severe suffering

(09:46) 3.2 The importance of severe suffering compared to purported goods

(14:01) 3.3 The non-existence of positive final value

(17:55) 4. Misunderstandings about suffering-focused ethics

(18:01) 4.1 World destruction

(19:32) 4.2 Pro-death

(21:36) 5. On objections to suffering-focused views

(23:51) 5.1 Placing too much importance on suffering when choosing outcomes

(26:29) 5.2 World destruction

(29:41) 6. Priorities from a suffering-focused perspective

(30:10) 6.1 Reducing risks of worst-case outcomes

(30:39) 6.2 Reducing the suffering of non-human animals

(31:11) 6.3 Reducing the suffering of the worst-off humans

(31:37) 6.4 Reducing suffering in everyday life

(32:53) 7. Conclusion

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Crossposted from https://williamrsaunders.substack.com/p/principles-for-the-agi-race

Why form principles for the AGI Race?

I worked at OpenAI for 3 years, on the Alignment and Superalignment teams. Our goal was to prepare for the possibility that OpenAI succeeded in its stated mission of building AGI (Artificial General Intelligence, roughly able to do most things a human can do), and then proceed on to make systems smarter than most humans. This will predictably face novel problems in controlling and shaping systems smarter than their supervisors and creators, which we don't currently know how to solve. It's not clear when this will happen, but a number of people would throw around estimates of this happening within a few years.

While there, I would sometimes dream about what would have happened if I’d been a nuclear physicist in the 1940s. I do think that many of the kind of people who get involved in the effective [...]

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Outline:

(00:06) Why form principles for the AGI Race?

(03:32) Bad High Risk Decisions

(04:46) Unnecessary Races to Develop Risky Technology

(05:17) High Risk Decision Principles

(05:21) Principle 1: Seek as broad and legitimate authority for your decisions as is possible under the circumstances

(07:20) Principle 2: Don’t take actions which impose significant risks to others without overwhelming evidence of net benefit

(10:52) Race Principles

(10:56) What is a Race?

(12:18) Principle 3: When racing, have an exit strategy

(13:03) Principle 4: Maintain accurate race intelligence at all times.

(14:23) Principle 5: Evaluate how bad it is for your opponent to win instead of you, and balance this against the risks of racing

(15:07) Principle 6: Seriously attempt alternatives to racing

(16:58) Meta Principles

(17:01) Principle 7: Don’t give power to people or structures that can’t be held accountable.

(18:36) Principle 8: Notice when you can’t uphold your own principles.

(19:17) Application of my Principles

(19:21) Working at OpenAI

(24:19) SB 1047

(28:32) Call to Action

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Meta Charity Funders is a funding circle consisting of ~10 funders, that funds meta initiatives and serves as an alternative to Open Philanthropy and EA funds.

We’re launching the third round of Meta Charity Funders. Apply for funding by September 30th or join the circle as a donor.

We expect all applicants to have read this post's twin post, “Meta Charity Funders: What you need to know when applying” to understand how to write your application.

Focus of this round

• We expect to fund many initiatives not on this list, but some projects that members of our circle have expressed extra interest in funding this round are:
  • Ultra-high-net-worth-individual advising. However, we want to stress that we believe the skillset to do this well is rare, and these types of applications will be extra scrutinized.
  • Effective Giving/Giving multiplier-organizations. For example, the ones incubated by CE's Effective Giving Incubation program.
  • [...]

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Outline:

(00:37) Focus of this round

(01:27) Information for this round

(01:31) Process

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This is a cross-post of our newly updated article with advice on working at frontier AI companies if you want to help with AI safety.

The original article was published in June 2023. We decided to update it in May 2024, as events in the intervening year caused us to be more concerned about working for frontier AI companies, and we also wanted to explain why we still thought it made sense for some people to take roles at AI companies. Our overall view is that “it's complicated”: working at a frontier AI company is sometimes a good idea, and sometimes a bad idea; it depends on the role and type of work, the company, and your individual case.

The new article tries to more clearly lay out the case in favour and against working at frontier AI companies, give tips for mitigating the downsides [...]

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Outline:

(01:00) Summary

(01:31) Pros

(01:46) Cons

(02:05) Recommendation: it's complicated

(02:35) Review status: Based on an in-depth investigation

(03:18) Introduction

(04:00) Why might it be high impact to work for a frontier AI company?

(04:06) Some roles at these companies might be among the best for reducing risks

(06:25) A frontier AI company could be a huge force for good

(10:21) It could be very good career capital (though there may also be career capital downsides)

(14:48) Whats the case against working at a frontier AI company?

(14:53) You might increase the risk of an AI-related catastrophe

(22:14) There are great alternatives that lack many of the downsides

(23:14) Things to consider for your particular case

(23:49) There are very different kinds of roles

(24:47) Some companies are probably much more responsible than others

(29:29) It matters who you are

(30:36) How can you reduce the downsides of working at a frontier AI company?

(32:56) Where might you work instead?

(35:04) Explore jobs

(35:16) Learn more about working at AI companies

(36:13) Acknowledgements

The original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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We just published an interview: Meghan Barrett on challenging our assumptions about insects. Listen on Spotify, watch on Youtube, or click through for other audio options, the transcript, and related links. Below are the episode summary and some key excerpts.

Episode summary

This is a group of animals I think people are particularly unfamiliar with. They are especially poorly covered in our science curriculum; they are especially poorly understood, because people don’t spend as much time learning about them at museums; and they’re just harder to spend time with in a lot of ways, I think, for people.

So people have pets that are vertebrates that they take care of across the taxonomic groups, and people get familiar with those from going to zoos and watching their behaviours there, and watching nature documentaries and more. But I think the insects are still really underappreciated, and that means that our [...]

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Outline:

(00:28) Episode summary

(02:10) Highlights

(02:13) Size diversity

(05:32) Offspring, parental investment, and lifespan

(08:49) Headless cockroaches

(11:13) Is self-protective behaviour a reflex?

(14:29) If insects feel pain, is it mild or severe?

(19:40) Evolutionary perspective on insect sentience

(23:39) How likely is insect sentience?

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(Yes, yet another funding circle. Thank Ambitious Impact.)

I’m excited to announce the launch of the Strategic Animal Funding Circle, a new group of donors looking to support cost-effective and high-impact farmed animal welfare nonprofits during a critical growth phase where targeted funding can have an immense impact.

We’ve just launched our first Request For Proposals which you can see in this document, as well as being outlined below.

Apply here by September 20th to be considered for our first funding round. We aim for applicants to hear back on a decision by early November.

If there are any donors (either currently giving or willing to give upwards of $100-250k to farmed animals per year) interested in joining, feel free to email me at jozden[at]mobius.life. We expect the funding circle will expose donors to more high-impact opportunities, create the space for important discussions and reduce vetting inefficiencies.

[...]

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Outline:

(01:04) Request for Proposals

(01:08) About this Funding Opportunity

(01:39) Eligibility Criteria:

(02:30) Selection Criteria: What Makes a Competitive Application?

(03:52) How to Apply:

(04:06) Future Rounds:

(04:16) About the Strategic Animal Funding Circle:

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Audio note: this article contains 119 uses of latex notation, so the narration may be difficult to follow. There's a link to the original text in the episode description.

Note: this has been in my drafts for a long time, and I just decided to let it go without getting too hung up on details, so this is much rougher than it should be.

Alexander Berger: ...the central idea of worldview diversification is that the internal logic of a lot of these causes might be really compelling and a little bit totalizing, and you might want to step back and say, “Okay, I’m not ready to go all in on that internal logic.” So one example would be just comparing farm animal welfare to human causes within the remit of global health and wellbeing. One perspective on farm animal welfare would say, “Okay, we’re going to [...]

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Outline:

(05:27) Statistical decision theory

(09:30) Bayes risk minimization

(11:40) Minimax risk minimization

(15:12) Expected utility maximization

(18:59) Conclusion

(19:26) Appendix: deriving risk

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