EA Forum Reader

Hi!

My main personal project for the summer is trying to figure out what I think about AI-risk, so I thought I should engage with the forum more to ask questions/solicit feedback. I'm currently a mathematics undergrad, about to start my 4th year, so part of this is trying to figure out whether or not I should pivot toward working in something closer to AI-risk. 

About me -- I first got interested in EA after reading Reasons and Persons in the summer of 2020. My main secondary academic interest in undergrad has been in political theory, so I'm very interested in questions such as whether naïve utilitarianism endorses political extremism, how that might be mitigated by a proper social epistemology, and what that might entail for consequentialists interested in voting/political process reform. I'm also very interested in the economics of cities and innovation, as well as understanding how we learn mathematics. I'm less sure how those topics fit in an EA framework, but I'm always interested in seeing what insights others might be able to bring to them from an EA standpoint. 

Here's hoping to learning a lot from y'all's!

-- Edgar

Hi, Connected Papers founder here. This is really awesome! It's wonderful to see the tool we developed being used for a cause so dear to our hearts.

We've retweeted your work on our channel to give it (and Effective Altruism in general) more exposure. We'll possibly add it to our newsletter as well.

Thank you for sharing and keep up the exploration!

Gotcha. I don't actually have a strong opinion on the net negative queation. I worded my comment poorly.

Oh sure, without a doubt, if there is a better video to be made with little additional effort, making that video is obviously better, no denying that. 

I asked that question because you said:

I don't think the video is high enough quality for it to be a good thing for more people to see it

And that's way more worrying than "this video could be significantly improved with little effort". At least I would like to start with a "do no harm" policy. Like, if the channel does harm then the channel ought to be nuked if the harm is large enough. If the channel has just room for improvement that's a different kettle of fish entirely.

Some of your criticism is actually about Bostrom's paper

Assuming this is what your comment is in reference to: I looked at Bostrom's paper after and I think his sentence about 1% reduction in x-risk being like a 10M+ year delay before growth is actually intuitive given his context (he mentioned that galaxies exist for billions of years just before), so I actually think the version of this you put in the script is significantly less intuitive. The video viewer also only has the context of the video up to that point whereas thr paper reader has a lot more context from the paper. Also videos should be a lot more comprehensible to laypeople than Bostrom papers.

I think the question of whether the video will be net negative on the margin is complicated. A more relevant question that is easier to answer is "is it reasonable to think that a higher quality video could be made for a reasonable additional amount of effort and would that be clearly better on net to have given the costs and benefits?"

I think the answer to this is "yes" and if we use that as the counterfactual rather than no video at all, it seems clear that you should target producing that video, even if your existing video is positive on net relative to no video.

I refrained from liking the video on YouTube and don't expect to share it with people not famililar with longtermism as a means of introducing them to it because I don't think the video is high enough quality for it to be a good thing for more people to see it

I think your feedback in the other comment is mostly correct, but... aren't those relatively minor concerns? Do you think the video actually has net negative impact in its present form? Some of your criticism is actually about Bostrom's paper, and that seems like it had a fairly positive impact.

Oh yeah I'm already talking with Jeroen :)

Thanks so much for writing this up!  I'm super interested in this topic, too. :) 

I'd like to add one thing to check: Free testosterone levels. I once had a phase of very low energy (including brain fog). A former colleague of mine suggested getting my testosterone levels checked since our symptoms were very similar. A simple saliva test confirmed our suspicions: The levels were critically low. In their case, it had been so severe that they had to undergo testosterone replacement therapy, which solved the issue almost immediately. For both of us, the period of low energy coincided with us going vegan, and that's still our primary suspicion for the cause. I'm no nutrition expert, but my basic understanding is that the body converts cholesterol into testosterone, and vegan diets tend to be very low in cholesterol. (There are other factors that may contribute to low testosterone, such as stress, lack of good sleep, etc., but these weren't really an issue for us.)  A couple of months after changing my diet to include more foods with cholesterol, the problem was gone and my free testosterone levels were back to high. My colleague stopped replacement therapy and keeps their levels high through their diet (plus good sleep, exercise, etc.). Testosterone tests are usually very cheap and easy to carry out, so it could be very well worth it to check.

In case you're not already familiar, it may be useful for you to talk with and collaborate with the people behind the A Happier World YouTube channel: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MtbXzAh5SZxRJiHnH/i-made-a-video-on-engineered-pandemics [EA · GW]

I left two other comments with some feedback, but want to note:

• I strong-upvoted this EA Forum post because I really like that you are sharing the script and video with the community to gather feedback

• I refrained from liking the video on YouTube and don't expect to share it with people not famililar with longtermism as a means of introducing them to it because I don't think the video is high enough quality for it to be a good thing for more people to see it. I'd like to see you gather more feedback on the scripts of future videos related to EA before creating the videos.