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Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6Ezg8HgHib9bpWCFr/ea-and-lw-forum-weekly-summary-16th-22nd-jan-23

This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.

Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).

Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.

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client: joe_carlsmith
narrator: pw
qa: km
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client: german_ea
service: human_edits_ai_narrates
narrator: nnm
qa: ph
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Ihre Namen werden wir nie kennen.

Das erste Opfer hatte nicht erfasst werden können, denn damals gab es noch keine Schriftsprache, in der man es aufzeichnen konnte. Die Opfer waren jemandes Töchter oder Söhne, ein Freund oder eine Freundin. Sie wurden von den Menschen in ihrem Umfeld geliebt. Und sie hatten Schmerzen, ihre Haut war von Ausschlägen bedeckt, sie waren verwirrt, verängstigt, wussten nicht, warum ihnen das geschah oder was sie dagegen tun konnten – sie waren die Opfer eines zornigen, unmenschlichen Gottes. Es gab nichts, was man tun konnte – die Menschheit war noch nicht stark genug, noch nicht sensibilisiert genug, nicht sachkundig genug, um ein Ungeheuer zu bekämpfen, das man nicht sehen konnte.

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This is an audio narration of the German translation of The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant by Nick Bostrom. The translation was done by Franz Fuchs, edited by Stephan Dalügge and narrated by Uta Reichardt. You can find the original paper at nickbostrom.com. Links and related reading suggestions are in the episode description. 

Es war einmal vor langer, langer Zeit, da wurde unser Planet von einem riesigen Drachen tyrannisiert. Der Drache überragte selbst die höchste Kathedrale und war mit einem dicken Panzer aus schwarzen Schuppen bedeckt. Seine roten Augen glühten vor Hass und aus seinem furchtbaren Maul floss beständig ein übel riechender, gelblich-grüner Schleim. Er verlangte der Menschheit einen Furcht einflößenden Tribut ab: Um seinen gigantischen Appetit zu stillen, mussten jeden Tag beim Einbruch der Dunkelheit zehntausend Männer und Frauen zum Fuß des Berges gebracht werden, wo der tyrannische Drache lebte. Manchmal verschlang der Drache die Unglücklichen sofort; manchmal wiederum kerkerte er sie im Berg ein. Dort mussten sie Monate oder Jahre dahinsiechen, bis sie schließlich verspeist wurden.

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client: ea_forum
project_id: curated
narrator: pw
qa: mds
narrator_time: 2h15m
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• We offer welfare range estimates for 11 farmed species: pigs, chickens, carp, salmon, octopuses, shrimp, crayfish, crabs, bees, black soldier flies, and silkworms.
• These estimates are, essentially, estimates of the differences in the possible intensities of these animals' pleasures and pains relative to humans' pleasures and pains. Then, we add a number of controversial (albeit plausible) philosophical assumptions (including hedonism, valence symmetry, and others discussed here) to reach conclusions about animals' welfare ranges relative to human's welfare range.
• Given hedonism and conditional on sentience, we think (credence: 0.7) that none of the vertebrate nonhuman animals of interest have a welfare range that’s more than double the size of any of the others. While carp and salmon have lower scores than pigs and chickens, we suspect that’s largely due to a lack of research.
• Given hedonism and conditional on sentience, we think (credence: 0.65) that the welfare ranges of humans and the vertebrate animals of interest are within an order of magnitude of one another. 
• Given hedonism and conditional on sentience, we think (credence 0.6) that all the invertebrates of interest have welfare ranges within two orders of magnitude of the vertebrate nonhuman animals of interest. Invertebrates are so diverse and we know so little about them; hence, our caution.
• Our view is that the estimates we’ve provided should be seen as placeholders—albeit, we submit, the best such placeholders available. We’re providing a starting point for more rigorous, empirically-driven research into animals’ welfare ranges. At the same time, we’re offering guidance for decisions that have to be made long before that research is finished

Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Qk3hd6PrFManj8K6o/rethink-priorities-welfare-range-estimates

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client: lesswrong
project_id: curated
narrator: pw
qa: km
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qa_time: 0h40m
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One of the most discussed topics online recently has been friendships and loneliness. Ever since the infamous chart showing more people are not having sex than ever before first made the rounds, there’s been increased interest in the social state of things. Polling has demonstrated a marked decline in all spheres of social life, including close friends, intimate relationships, trust, labor participation, and community involvement. The trend looks to have worsened since the pandemic, although it will take some years before this is clearly established.

The decline comes alongside a documented rise in mental illness, diseases of despair, and poor health more generally. In August 2022, the CDC announced that U.S. life expectancy has fallen further and is now where it was in 1996. Contrast this to Western Europe, where it has largely rebounded to pre-pandemic numbers. Still, even before the pandemic, the years 2015-2017 saw the longest sustained decline in U.S. life expectancy since 1915-18. While my intended angle here is not health-related, general sociability is closely linked to health. The ongoing shift has been called the “friendship recession” or the “social recession.”

My intention here is not to present a list of miserable points, but to group them together in a meaningful context whose consequences are far-reaching. While most of what I will outline here focuses on the United States, many of these same trends are present elsewhere because its catalyst is primarily the internet itself. With no signs of abating, a new kind of sociability has only started to affect what people ask of the world through the prism of themselves.

Original article:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Xo7qmDakxiizG7B9c/the-social-recession-by-the-numbers

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client: ea_forum
project_id: curated
narrator: pw
qa: km
narrator_time: 0h45m
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For many years, I've actively lived in avoidance of idolizing behavior and in pursuit of a nuanced view of even those I respect most deeply. I think this has helped me in numerous ways and has been of particular help in weathering the past few months within the EA community. Below, I discuss how I think about the act of idolizing behavior, some of my personal experiences, and how this mentality can be of use to others.

Note: I want more people to post on the EA Forum and have their ideas taken seriously regardless of whether they conform to Forum stylistic norms. I'm perfectly capable of writing a version of this post in the style typical to the Forum, but this post is written the way I actually like to write. If this style doesn’t work for you, you might want to read the first section “Anarchists have no idols” and then skip ahead to the section “Living without idols, Pt. 1” toward the end. You’ll lose some of the insights contained in my anecdotes, but still get most of the core ideas I want to convey here.

Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jgspXC8GKA7RtxMRE/on-living-without-idols

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client: 80000_hours
project_id: articles
narrator: pw
qa: mds
narrator_time: 3h00m
qa_time: 1h00m
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For the right person, becoming a journalist could be very impactful. Good journalists help keep people informed, positively shape public discourse on important topics, and can provide a platform for people and ideas that the public might not otherwise hear about.

But the most influential positions in the field are highly competitive, and journalists face a lot of mixed incentives that may detract from their ability to have a positive impact.

Original article:
https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/journalism/

Narrated for 80,000 Hours by TYPE III AUDIO.

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client: lesswrong
project_id: curated
narrator: pw
qa: km
narrator_time: 1h45m
qa_time: 0h30m
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I think Zvi's Immoral Mazes sequence is really important, but comes with more worldview-assumptions than are necessary to make the points actionable. I conceptualize Zvi as arguing for multiple hypotheses. In this post I want to articulate one sub-hypothesis, which I call "Recursive Middle Manager Hell". I'm deliberately not covering some other components of his model[1].

tl;dr:

Something weird and kinda horrifying happens when you add layers of middle-management.  This has ramifications on when/how to scale organizations, and where you might want to work, and maybe general models of what's going on in the world.

You could summarize the effect as "the org gets more deceptive, less connected to its original goals, more focused on office politics, less able to communicate clearly within itself, and selected for more for sociopathy in upper management."

You might read that list of things and say "sure, seems a bit true", but one of the main points here is "Actually, this happens in a deeper and more insidious way than you're probably realizing, with much higher costs than you're acknowledging. If you're scaling your organization, this should be one of your primary worries."

Original article:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pHfPvb4JMhGDr4B7n/recursive-middle-manager-hell

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https://archive.ph/8fUo2

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