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Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?

economist.com

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Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?

#121

Post by mkirklions »

tlb wrote: post #71
monadgonad wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fine for private individuals to do it (though I disagree with their choice), but not to claim that it's evidence-based Effective Altruism while doing so - it is an emotionally-led value judgment, just like donating to my local dog shelter would be (which I understand others may disgree with). That said, I do recognise now that effectivealtruism.org does not represent the entirety of the movement; I have…

Of course, there'll never be evidence about the effectiveness of research into existential risks until it's too late. So there's no way to objectively allocate funding between, say, AI safety and disease pandemics. While I think it's important to fund such research, it's a good point that funding orgs should either be evidence-based or not. Funding some things based on evidence and other things based on hunches might…

You could probably calculate this.

Since AI can kill 7,000,000,000 people, You could probably toss a non-zero probability on it. Any math people know how to model this?

Even with a bunch of different variations for the probability, you could understand why AI is so dangerous. potentially.

There are probably lots of non zero probability events like getting hit by a rogue quasar. The difference is we cannot stop the quasar and that humans are required to discover AI.

I dont give money to other charities, I spend money on mine. We dont have any employees, just volunteers. I spent a total of 50$ on the LLC paperwork and 8$/mo for a website host. Everything else has went directly to the kids/families we are teaching.

Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?

#122

Post by mkirklions »

nordsieck wrote: post #114
mkirklions wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't think we should commit the fallacy of assuming that because their position seems absurd to us that it comes from a place of bias or ignorance. I had a really smart person talk about AI and how to deal with it. His conclusion was a gigantic let down. He was out of his element, hes an economist, but his conclusion was- Either AI is going to be peaceful, or its going to kill us and there is nothing we can do to…

> Either AI is going to be peaceful, or its going to kill us and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Have you heard of the AI Box experiments? http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/aibox/ The problem of containing a hostile AI does not seem to be particularly tractable to me.

This could be really cool, but the conversation was impossible to read. The links/website is designed badly.

Howd he let the AI out both times?

Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?

#123

Post by nordsieck »

mkirklions wrote: post #122
nordsieck wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either AI is going to be peaceful, or its going to kill us and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Have you heard of the AI Box experiments? http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/aibox/ The problem of containing a hostile AI does not seem to be particularly tractable to me.

This could be really cool, but the conversation was impossible to read. The links/website is designed badly. Howd he let the AI out both times?

> Howd he let the AI out both times?

No one knows. That's the point.

An AI will eventually be much smarter than a human, so it doesn't matter how the human succeeds - it's enough to know that a human has succeeded even once.

Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?

#124

Post by greenshackle2 »

gowld wrote: post #98
brownbat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If something goes wrong with an entity dealing with over a hundred million dollars, the CEO is expected to respond relatively immediately, as in, on call 24/7, because a hundred million represents the interests of a lot of people most likely. The variety of things that can go wrong is large, and the necessary responses are nuanced, potentially requiring sophisticated knowledge in several domains, from legal, accounti…

For charities, a pertinent question is: Why should I donate money to someone who takes home more money than I do? Why isn't he donating?

GiveWell is not the top-ranked GiveWell charity. Typically if you use GiveWell you don't donate to GiveWell, you give to AMF or whatever directly.

And he does donate:

https://blog.givewell.org/2016/12/22/front-loading-personal-...

Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?

#125

Post by mjw1007 »

gowld wrote: post #98
brownbat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If something goes wrong with an entity dealing with over a hundred million dollars, the CEO is expected to respond relatively immediately, as in, on call 24/7, because a hundred million represents the interests of a lot of people most likely. The variety of things that can go wrong is large, and the necessary responses are nuanced, potentially requiring sophisticated knowledge in several domains, from legal, accounti…

For charities, a pertinent question is: Why should I donate money to someone who takes home more money than I do? Why isn't he donating?

It seems rather likely that he is donating.

Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?

#126

Post by mkirklions »

nordsieck wrote: post #123
mkirklions wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be really cool, but the conversation was impossible to read. The links/website is designed badly. Howd he let the AI out both times?

> Howd he let the AI out both times? No one knows. That's the point. An AI will eventually be much smarter than a human, so it doesn't matter how the human succeeds - it's enough to know that a human has succeeded even once.

Hmm, would like a different human to try it.

I read some of the dialog and the user being the gatekeeper talks openly about his inability to socialize that caused him to receive special social treatment until 10th grade.

What if there were 2 gatekeepers, north korean style?

Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?

#127

Post by rhaps0dy »

mkirklions wrote: post #122
nordsieck wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either AI is going to be peaceful, or its going to kill us and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Have you heard of the AI Box experiments? http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/aibox/ The problem of containing a hostile AI does not seem to be particularly tractable to me.

This could be really cool, but the conversation was impossible to read. The links/website is designed badly. Howd he let the AI out both times?

There have been other instances of the AI box experiment where the dialog is public. Like this one https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fbekxBfgvfc7pmnzB/how-to-win... .

Yudkowsky's original intention to not release the dialog was to prevent people from saying "I wouldn't have been swayed by that, therefore AI escaping is impossible!". Even if we grant the first part of the sentence, that an AI escaping is impossible doesn't follow. It's very much possible, and strong evidence is that only human-level intelligences have escaped the same situation.

Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?

#128

Post by joe_the_user »

kbenson wrote: post #79
joe_the_user wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one thing to walk past homeless people in my city and not give them money, because I know that money could much more easily and effectively safe a life in malaria-ridden parts of the world. The homeless in America live a life that's close to as miserable as the poor anywhere. One of the problem of most charities is bureaucracy eating up funds. Despite a lot of claims by bureaucracy, people who are homeless can o…

Not to defend not giving money to the homeless, but isn't the calculation more complex than that? It's not just about how much money the bureaucracy eats, it's also how effectively the remaining portion is used, and I would think that would include actual resources delivered to people. More simply put, which helps more people and in a larger amount, $10 in the US or $5 in some extremely poor part of the world, where…

Not to defend not giving money to the homeless, but isn't the calculation more complex than that? It's not just about how much money the bureaucracy eats, it's also how effectively the remaining portion is used, and I would think that would include actual resources delivered to people.

Certainly, altogether the calculations are extremely complicated. There's whether a given organization knows what resources to provide, whether the provided resources are going to be used even if they are otherwise "right", etc.

With all the complexity and uncertainty, directly giving to people seems like one entirely legitimate approach since it guarantees that people get resources, not that other necessary are problematic but certainly other approaches deserve certainty. Direct giving at least has "what you see is what you get".

Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?

#129

Post by tlb »

mkirklions wrote: post #121
tlb wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, there'll never be evidence about the effectiveness of research into existential risks until it's too late. So there's no way to objectively allocate funding between, say, AI safety and disease pandemics. While I think it's important to fund such research, it's a good point that funding orgs should either be evidence-based or not. Funding some things based on evidence and other things based on hunches might…

You could probably calculate this. Since AI can kill 7,000,000,000 people, You could probably toss a non-zero probability on it. Any math people know how to model this? Even with a bunch of different variations for the probability, you could understand why AI is so dangerous. potentially. There are probably lots of non zero probability events like getting hit by a rogue quasar. The difference is we cannot stop the qu…

The Center for Existential Risk does solid work on this. https://www.cser.ac.uk/

For estimating the likelihood of AGI, you can start with estimates from people in the field. Some say 0%, others say 80% chance in 50 years. Any way averaging of these produces a risk high enough to justify serious funding into safety research.

Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?

#130

Post by tomcam »

monadgonad wrote: post #45

I think the Effective Altruism movement really belies its own values and cause with the fact that one of its own funds is for supporting: > organizations that work on improving long-term outcomes for humanity. Grants will likely go to organizations that seek to reduce global catastrophic risks, especially those relating to advanced artificial intelligence. [1] Yes, an argument can be made that it's important to fund…

The painful truth is that it is morally repugnant to donate. I hate saying this, by the way. If you had any experience with outreach, You would understand it is actually quite destructive to give them money, and it is much better to donate to, for example, Union Gospel Mission, a place in Seattle that does excellent homeless outreach. The city in fact contracts out to them for their services.
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