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client: ea_forum
project_id: curated
narrator: pw
qa: mds
narrator_time: 1h50m
qa_time: 45m
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Key Takeaways

• Our objective: estimate the welfare ranges of 11 farmed species.
• Given hedonism, an individual’s welfare range is the difference between the welfare level associated with the most intense positively valenced state that the individual can realize and the welfare level associated with the most intense negatively valenced state that the individual can realize.
• Given some prominent theories about the functions of valenced states, we identified over 90 empirical proxies that might provide evidence of variation in the potential intensities of those states. 
• There are many unknowns across many species.
• It’s rare to have evidence that animals lack a given trait.
• We know less about the presence or absence of traits as we move from terrestrial vertebrates to most invertebrates.
• Many of the traits about which we know the least are affective traits.
• We do have information about some significant traits for many animals.

Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tnSg6o7crcHFLc395/the-welfare-range-table

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client: ea_forum
project_id: curated
narrator: pw
qa: km
narrator_time: 1h30m
qa_time: 25m
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Hiya folks! I'm Patrick McKenzie, better known on the Internets as patio11. (Proof.) Long-time-listener, first-time-caller; I don't think I would consider myself an EA but I've been reading y'all, and adjacent intellectual spaces, for some time now.

Epistemic status: Arbitrarily high confidence with regards to facts of the VaccinateCA experience (though speaking only for myself), moderately high confidence with respect to inferences made about vaccine policy and mechanisms for impact last year, one geek's opinion with respect to implicit advice to you all going forward.

A Thing That Happened Last Year

As some of the California-based EAs may remember, the rollout of the covid-19 vaccines in California and across the U.S. was... not optimal. I accidentally ended up founding a charity, VaccinateCA, which ran the national shadow vaccine location information infrastructure for 6 months.

The core product at the start of the sprint, which some of you may be familiar with, was a site which listed places to get the vaccine in California, sourced by a volunteer-driven operation to conduct an ongoing census of medical providers by calling them. Importantly, that was not our primary vector for impact, though it was very important to our trajectory.

Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NkPghabDd54nkG3kX/some-observations-from-an-ea-adjacent-charitable-effort

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client: ea_forum
project_id: summaries
narrator: cs
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Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LdEPDqyZvucQkxhWH/ea-and-lw-forums-weekly-summary-28th-nov-4th-dec-22

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: ea_forum
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narrator: pw
qa: km
narrator_time: 2h
qa_time: 35m
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Key Takeaways:

• Several influential EAs have suggested using neuron counts as rough proxies for animals’ relative moral weights. We challenge this suggestion.
• We take the following ideas to be the strongest reasons in favor of a neuron count proxy:
  • neuron counts are correlated with intelligence and intelligence is correlated with moral weight,
  • additional neurons result in “more consciousness” or “more valenced consciousness,” and
  • increasing numbers of neurons are required to reach thresholds of minimal information capacity required for morally relevant cognitive abilities.
• However:
  • in regards to intelligence, we can question both the extent to which more neurons are correlated with intelligence and whether more intelligence in fact predicts greater moral weight; 
  • many ways of arguing that more neurons results in more valenced consciousness seem incompatible with our current understanding of how the brain is likely to work; and
  • there is no straightforward empirical evidence or compelling conceptual arguments indicating that relative differences in neuron counts within or between species reliably predicts welfare relevant functional capacities.
• Overall, we suggest that neuron counts should not be used as a sole proxy for moral weight, but cannot be dismissed entirely. Rather, neuron counts should be combined with other metrics in an overall weighted score that includes information about whether different species have welfare-relevant capacities. 

Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Mfq7KxQRvkeLnJvoB/why-neuron-counts-shouldn-t-be-used-as-proxies-for-moral

This is a linkpost for https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p50vw84-ry2taYmyOIl4B91j7wkCurlB/edit?rtpof=true&sd=true

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client: ea_forum
project_id: red_team
narrator: pw
qa: mds
narrator_time: 4h14m
qa_time: 1h30m
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Long and rough notes on Effective Altruism (EA). Written to help me get to the bottom of several questions: what do I like and think is important about EA? Why do I find the mindset so foreign? Why am I not an EA? And to start me thinking about: what do alternatives to EA look like? The notes are not aimed at effective altruists, though they may perhaps be of interest to EA-adjacent people. Thoughtful, informed comments and corrections welcome (especially detailed, specific corrections!) - see the comment area at the bottom.

"Using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis": that's the idea at the foundation of the Effective Altruism (EA) ideology and movement. Over the past two decades it has gone from being an idea batted about by a few moral philosophers to being a core part of the life philosophy of thousands or tens of thousands of people, including several of the world's most powerful and wealthy individuals. These are my rough working notes on EA. The notes are long and quickly written: disorganized rough thinking, not a polished essay.

Original article:
https://michaelnotebook.com/eanotes/

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client: ea_forum
project_id: red_team
narrator: pw
qa: mds
narrator_time: 4h15m
qa_time: 2h
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This post introduces a framework for thinking about population ethics: “population ethics without axiology.” In its last section, I sketch the implications of adopting my framework for evaluating the thesis of longtermism. Before explaining what’s different about my proposal, I’ll describe what I understand to be the standard approach it seeks to replace, which I call “axiology-focused.”

Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dQvDxDMyueLyydHw4/population-ethics-without-axiology-a-framework

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client: ea_forum
project_id: curated
narrator: pw
qa: mds
narrator_time: 4h
qa_time: 30m
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In “How Likely is World War III?”, Stephen suggested the chance of an extinction-level war occurring sometime this century is just under 1%. This was a simple, rough estimate, made in the following steps:

1. Assume that wars, i.e. conflicts that cause at least 1000 battle deaths, continue to break out at their historical average rate of one about every two years. 
2. Assume that the distribution of battle deaths in wars follows a power law. 
3. Use parameters for the power law distribution estimated by Bear Braumoeller in Only the Dead to calculate the chance that any given war escalates to 8 billion battle deaths
4. Work out the likelihood of such a war given the expected number of wars between now and 2100.

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client: ea_forum
project_id: red_team
feed_id: ai_safety
narrator: pw
qa: km
narrator_time: 3h30m
qa_time: 1h
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In both the 1940s and 1950s, well-meaning and good people – the brightest of their generation – were convinced they were in an existential race with an expansionary, totalitarian regime. Because of this belief, they advocated for and participated in a ‘sprint’ race: the Manhattan Project to develop a US atomic bomb (1939-1945); and the ‘missile gap’ project to build up a US ICBM capability (1957-1962). These were both based on a mistake, however - the Nazis decided against a Manhattan Project in 1942, and the Soviets decided against an ICBM build-up in 1958. The main consequence of both was to unilaterally speed up dangerous developments and increase existential risk. Key participants, such as Albert Einstein and Daniel Ellsberg, described their involvement as the greatest mistake of their life.

Our current situation with AGI shares certain striking similarities and certain lessons suggest themselves: make sure you’re actually in a race (information on whether you are is very valuable), be careful when secrecy is emphasised, and don’t give up your power as an expert too easily.

Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cXBznkfoPJAjacFoT/are-you-really-in-a-race-the-cautionary-tales-of-szilard-and

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narrator_time: 4h
qa_time: 1h30m
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What We Owe The Future (WWOTF) by Will MacAskill has recently been released with much fanfare. While I strongly agree that future people matter morally and we should act based on this, I think the book isn’t clear enough about MacAskill’s views on longtermist priorities, and to the extent it is it presents a mistaken view of the most promising longtermist interventions.

I argue that MacAskill:

1. Underestimates risk of misaligned AI takeover. 
2. Overestimates risk from stagnation. 
3. Isn’t clear enough about longtermist priorities. 

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client: 80000_hours
project_id: articles
narrator: pw
qa: mds
narrator_time: 3h 13m
qa_time: 2h
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Could climate change lead to the end of civilisation?

Across the world, over half of young people worry that, as a result of climate change, humanity is doomed. They feel angry, powerless, and — above all — afraid about what the future may hold.

Climate change matters so much, to so many, not just because of the suffering and injustice it’s already causing, but also because it’s one of the few issues that has obvious potential to affect our world over many future generations. We think safeguarding future generations is a key moral priority, and should be a crucial consideration in prioritising problems on which to work.
If climate change could lead to the end of civilisation, then that would mean future generations might never get to exist – or they could live in a permanently worse world. If so, then preventing climate change, and adapting to its effects, might be more important than working on almost any other issue.
So – what does the science say?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report is, to our knowledge, the most authoritative and comprehensive source on climate change. The report is clear: climate change will be hugely destructive. We’ll see floods, famines, fires, and droughts — and the world’s poorest people will be affected the most.

But even when we try to account for unknown unknowns, nothing in the IPCC’s report suggests that civilisation will be destroyed.

This isn’t to say society shouldn’t do far more to tackle climate change.

Original article:
https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/climate-change/

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