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The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

economist.com

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Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#571

Post by lurker616 »

polygamous_bat wrote: post #407
lurker616 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a simple example - train a model on outputting code which: - scans open network ports through google dns - copies itself and the model to that location - whenever it detects a sigkill or file delete, scan again and save itself somewhere else Now you've got an autonomous virus that will never die. Add any other power-seeking and self-replicating strategies using AI modules - the task could be "generate code…

Can I tell you something secret? The "AGI" of the form you are describing is already here! Not only that, it's been here since 1988! Crazy right? Just check out this link if you don't believe me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm (Snark aside, I've realized this type of interactions have always resulted in a very low perception of EA for me. I don't come out of these conversations thinking "what a clueless th…

I've heard of some of the famous viruses which are obviously more complicated than what I mentioned. But that's the difference - they are hardcoded to perform these particular steps. I'm not saying AGI is the code that does this. AGI is one level higher - a more meta objective - given the objective of "accumulating power", it will learn lower level objectives like "replicating and spreading", which leads to the final output like this code.

Basically, AGI could unleash a thousand "morris worms" - and that would only be for the objective of replicating and spreading. There could be other objectives as well.

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#572

Post by agent008t »

didibus wrote: post #538
agent008t wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let us make the example more extreme. Let's make it spending 100 billion on building a supermassive yacht, that you then proceed to sink for your own entertainment. Which is not dissimilar from 10 million people spending $10k each on luxury consumption for themselves. Would you still argue that it still does no harm? You have just squandered 100b worth of society's resources - people's time, physical materials, engin…

That's a bit of an extreme made up example, which wouldn't be very representative of the common case, but I'll entertain it. Just keep in mind what's true of an extreme edge case, is not necessarily true of the common case, and you can't extrapolate like that. Say there was a 100 billion yacht, it still served as a means to redistribute flow of funds to others. Those engineers, material extractors, workers, staff, al…

The point of my example was to draw attention to what actually happens to the real resources, how they get used. They get wasted, which is a terrible outcome.

I believe your focus on money obscures that fact. Money is just a mechanism for a (good, efficient, fair?) way of using the resources available. Money is not real wealth.

What lifts people out of poverty is not money, it is ultimately useful stuff - food, shelter etc. produced so efficiently that people also are able to specialise and spend time on teaching, medicating, investing into producing not just the bare necessities but things that make them even more efficient and productive etc. In the yacht example, such scarce resources are squandered! The 'economy' created is quite literally destructive - it is geared towards consumption (i.e. destruction) of many resources - materials to build the yacht, countless peoples' time - for the mere entertainment of the person who then sinks the yacht.

Yes, the people that were involved in building the yacht now have bigger claims on a shrinking share of resources. They personally win; the person who enjoyed sinking the yacht wins; overall society greatly looses and is now much poorer.

So overall, society would be better off if that person just hoarded the money, buried it in their back yard, and preserved the scarce resources. That outcome is better than personal luxury consumption. Even better, of course, if they used it to get other people to do something productive that benefits wider society.

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#573

Post by didibus »

agent008t wrote: post #572
didibus wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of an extreme made up example, which wouldn't be very representative of the common case, but I'll entertain it. Just keep in mind what's true of an extreme edge case, is not necessarily true of the common case, and you can't extrapolate like that. Say there was a 100 billion yacht, it still served as a means to redistribute flow of funds to others. Those engineers, material extractors, workers, staff, al…

The point of my example was to draw attention to what actually happens to the real resources, how they get used. They get wasted, which is a terrible outcome. I believe your focus on money obscures that fact. Money is just a mechanism for a (good, efficient, fair?) way of using the resources available. Money is not real wealth. What lifts people out of poverty is not money, it is ultimately useful stuff - food, shelt…

> So overall, society would be better off if that person just hoarded the money, buried it in their back yard, and preserved the scarce resources. That outcome is better than personal luxury consumption. Even better, of course, if they used it to get other people to do something productive that benefits wider society

Ok, so your argument is in the actual materials consumed? The water, metal, and all that being "wasted" for a yacht, as opposed to used for life critical purposes instead?

So, that's kind of the environmental aspect I mentioned, I'm not opposed here, sustainable resource use is important.

But donating to a charity can similarly be a temporary waste of resources with no sustainability improvements made.

Just feeding people food for an extra week for example, is very different from investing in sustainable farming methods that can guarantee us renewable and long lasting sources of food.

And on that topic, it's surprising how in practice discoveries that can help us with sustainability and production methods are discovered through various other ventures, often military for example, but it can happen anywhere.

The person who invented ammonia was researching chemical warfare, now it's used for fertilizer and dramatically helped boost our food production efficiency.

These second order effects I think are hard to predict, similarly hard to predict what the workers that got money from building the yacht than go on to use that money for themselves, maybe they spend it investing in food production efficiencies.

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#574

Post by tptacek »

naasking wrote: post #569
tptacek wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See above.

Blows my mind that anyone would actually accept such a conclusion, but you do you I guess. Seriously undermines your criticisms of EA, IMO.

I'm pretty happy with what it says about my critique, too. For instance, my side of this "debate", such as it is, will never spend $100,000 funding a tabletop role playing game aiming to educate people on the dangers of asteroids.

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#575

Post by throwboi123 »

Devasta wrote: post #349
throwboi123 wrote: post #43

EA is basically Judas Iscariot's method.

Judas got 30 pieces of silver, and with Jesus being crucified he lived a life free of sin on humanities behalf, opening the gates of heaven for us all. Who knew Judas was the good guy this whole time?

I was referring to the alabastar flask.

But yeah it applied to 30 pieces of silver as well.

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#576

Post by Viliam1234 »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #486
tptacek wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"How can we be most effective with our giving" is a good thought. It's what I thought EA was, like, two weeks ago. "The movement can literally compute the optimal pattern of giving, such that to be most effective with our giving means donating money to people to ride around on bicycles thinking about how to prevent future AGIs from killing us" is not a good thought, but it turns out to be a description of what EA is…

Rationalists brought us Roko’s Basilisk after all. A lot of the leaders don’t seem to have basic sanity checks in their brains that stop their ideas from getting wildly out of control, which can lead to stupid shit like the Basilisk on a small scale but end up justifying fraud on a much larger scale. It’s like fundamentalist religion

> Rationalists brought us Roko’s Basilisk after all.

This reminds me of the Zen story about two monks and a woman (one helped her cross a river, and the other couldn't stop thinking about her for the whole day).

The "Roko's Basilisk" was an edgy comment that was written on a rationalist web forum, and then deleted by the admin. A decade later, some people outside the rationalist community still keep discussing it, which is the only reason why anyone cares.

> A lot of the leaders don’t seem to have basic sanity checks in their brains that stop their ideas from getting wildly out of control

Only in this story, the admin was the one who deleted that comment, not the one who wrote it. Still gets blamed for it.

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#577

Post by Viliam1234 »

tptacek wrote: post #440
Tenoke wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, scientology? This comes off as pretty bad faith. Most EAs are people like me who read some essays, setup some recurring donations to GiveWell and call it a day. If that's how being a scientology member goes then it must be milder than I've been led to believe.

I wouldn't be surprised if that's, like, the modal experience people have with the movement. But that, too, is how Scientology works! I'm reacting to messages circulating about the whisper campaign among EA higher-ups, many of which are explicit about the fact that they didn't warn the public about Sam Bankman-Fried because EA-the-movement would ostracize them, not just from their community but also from their jobs.…

> I'm not making those messages up.

You are also not providing evidence.

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#578

Post by OJFord »

blitzar wrote: post #289
OJFord wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem (and I think roughly the point being made) is that if you follow that logic through, then surely almost everyone here should have the vast majority of their possessions & wealth taken, to fund the equalising up-lifting of others. Charity and world aid is in a continual discussion & discovery of what we collectively think is 'good enough', helping people get to something that is perhaps 'not disaster', but…

> The problem (and I think roughly the point being made) is that if you follow that logic through, then surely almost everyone here should have the vast majority of their possessions & wealth taken, to fund the equalising up-lifting of others. And if not software developers why not? Who gets to chose which grift is a grift and which is an honest living? > I find it really weird that people are so glib about the "hund…

> > I find it really weird that people are so glib about the "hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths" part.

> So you agree -

You're quoting someone else there, not me (GP).

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#579

Post by Viliam1234 »

ineedasername wrote: post #368
Tenoke wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can reduce everything to being religion if you do it this way to the point of the comparison being useless. HN? Religion. Weight lifting? Religion. Dental hygiene? Religion. Voting? Religion. Functional Programming? Religion. Punk? Religion.

I’m not sure that you know how the “thought leaders” in the upper social tiers of EA are operating. I mean that honestly and not as a slight, because if you do know we can (to the extent that I have the attention span) discuss it if we disagree and productively explore the topic: There appears to be an upper eschelon, perhaps more of a social group, who are guiding the resources of this movement along philosophical/i…

For starters, it would be interesting to know who are those mysterious thought leaders.

Peter Singer, the philosopher whose book inspired the movement? People at GiveWell, the charity evaluation organization? Authors of the Giving What We Can pledge?

Or are these all merely puppets in the hands of the true manipulators hiding in the shadows, whose names no one dares to mention, even anonymously? Spooky...

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#580

Post by Viliam1234 »

simonh wrote: post #306
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been saying the same thing. EA functionally is the same pattern I grew up around among evangelical extremists. It's an all purpose source of self righteous authority based on theoretical virtue erasing actual harm.

Ah yes, but if there's an even 1% chance the good they do outweighs the harm and saves some portion of some humans in some amount of time... er... or something.

Currently the #1 charity recommended by GiveWell is medicine to prevent malaria. I think it has more than 1% chance to help people.

Perhaps some people should read https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities before expressing strong opinions on how EA is all about robots.

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