A simple litmus test for self-described utilitarians: would you trade places with someone much worse off if it increased the net supply of human happiness?

doctorow.medium.com/rich-peoples-g…

#utilitarianism

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Alex Gopoian

@HumblyAlex

A Thread-
=Good Faith Communication Requires 3 Things:

1. Good faith requires fairly considering as many possible interpretations as possible before responding, giving the benefit of the doubt, and, if none or more than one interpretation makes sense, asking for clarification.

2. Good faith requires a willingness to be corrected and the forthcomingness to acknowledge when and where you were.

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Émile P. Torres 🏳️‍⚧️

@xriskology

Here's Robin Hanson, a colleague of the longtermist William MacAskill at the Future of Humanity Institute, imagining what a world full of simulated people (or "ems" for "brain emulations") would be like. The word "elite ethnicities" is striking: $Today, Jews comprise a disproportionate fraction of extreme$

Citing Nick Bostrom, the Father of Longtermism, Hanson adds that biotech may enable us to create super-smart designer babies, who would be good candidates to have their brains scanned and uploaded to computers (to live in a virtual reality world full of ems).

Indeed, Hanson claims that ems would be highly intelligent, reflecting the entrepreneurial spirit, freedom, etc. of what he describes as the "smarter nations" (you know which ones he's talking about).

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Sigal Samuel

@SigalSamuel

Effective altruism’s most controversial idea is called “longtermism.”

It says we should focus on protecting FUTURE people (potentially more than present people).

It’s a deeply political idea, so the main question is: Who gets the POWER to decide?

🧵
vox.com/future-perfect…

The first thing to realize is that there isn't 1 longtermism. There's longtermisms. Think of this worldview as a train that can drop you off at different stations.

Effective altruists sometimes talk about this by asking each other: “Where do you get off the train to Crazy Town?”

I like to picture a rail line with 3 stations:
🚂weak longtermism
🚂strong longtermism
🚂galaxy-brain longtermism

Weak longtermism = “the long-term future matters more than we’re giving it credit for & we should do more to help it.”

Care about climate? This one's probably you

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Janne M. Korhonen 🇫🇮🇪🇺🇺🇳🐟🇺🇦🇵🇸

@jmkorhonen

Re #longtermism: I had an epiphany in 2002. Given that everything we do will eventually crumble into dust, the only really meaningful thing to do would be to do what we can to ensure that life and beings capable of transmitting a culture survive for as long as possible. 1/

All that striving for wealth, power, and social status are going to be meaningless within years of your death if not much earlier. After a century, very few people will even be remembered at all. After millennia, still less. And these are very short timespans. 2/

Especially if you use your limited time to maximize your personal gain, inevitably causing problems for someone else, what's the point of living at all? At best, if you succeed (a big if), some very temporary feeling of you being important? 3/

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Janne M. Korhonen 🇫🇮🇪🇺🇺🇳🐟🇺🇦🇵🇸

@jmkorhonen

One of the concerns I have with #longtermism as it is currently practiced is that it tends to devalue non-human life. It does not seem plausible that the life of fish, for example, is so terrible that extinction would be good for them.

bostonreview.net/articles/the-n…

I think we need to learn how to share this world equitably with non-human life, if for no other reason than because our life support systems depend on them, and this means that more humans or AGIs aren't automatically a Good Thing. (Neither are fewer humans, though.)

In general, I find the goals of #longtermism commendable, but the blind spots are annoying.

For example, calling people to give what they can - why not just campaign for more equitable taxation?

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GAVNet

@GAValueNetwork

"We may need to develop techniques to ensure deep learning models won’t have dangerous goals, before they are powerful enough to be transformative." -- Ajeya Cotra greeneracresvaluenetwork.wordpress.com/2022/05/19/dai…

What COVID Hospitalization Numbers Are Missing - The Atlantic
theatlantic.com/health/archive…
#COVID19, #CaseCount, #HealthcareWorkers, #JobBurnout, #HospitalizationCount

Serengeti Squeeze - Interactive maps
rug.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries…
#SerengetiMara, #EcosystemStress, #HumanActivity, #ResearchResults

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Zopolan

@zopolan

1/n @ChrisStoecker schreibt oft tolle Kolumnen. Dabei bereitet er z.B. Diskussionen aus der amerikanischen Netzwelt für den deutschen Medienmainstream auf. Gelingt dies in der aktuellen Kolumne über die #longtermism-Denkweise? Ein Thread. spiegel.de/wissenschaft/l…

2/n Stöcker stellt einen Teil der #effectivealtruism-Bewegung dar, nämlich #longtermism. Bei "EA" geht es darum, möglichst viel Gutes zu tun. Dabei wird oft festgestellt, dass beispielsweise Spenden bei bestimmten Organisationen deutlich effektiver sind als bei anderen.

@effektivspenden

3/n Es ist dabei nicht unmöglich, dass Spenden bei manchen Organisationen 100x effektiver sind als bei anderen. Wer dazu mehr lesen möchte, kann z.B. bei effektiv-spenden.org anfangen. @effektivspenden #effektiveraltruismus

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Sri Event

@SriEvent