AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix.
Cross-posted from Good Structures.
Executive Summary
* Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal...
“How long have you been v*g*n?”
This is one of the most common icebreakers at animal protection events. It’s a baseline assumption, and it mostly holds true: if you’re out advocating for animals not to be tortured or abused, realistically these days you are v**n, or close. And it makes for good conversation. It seems fairly safe to assume when you meet strangers.
But this assumption is hurting the movement in a way which we don’t always notice: someone new comes into the sp...
Summary
Back in November 2023 I posted here to launch Spiro and raise our first $198k. Two and a half years later this is an update and a fundraiser for the next step.
The short version: we've now reached over-5,900 people with TB preventive medicine, including over 3,000 children under five years old. Our early results have held up well an...
Timeline Swapping
Alice, a highly experienced ML researcher, thinks crunch time for AI will come in 20-30 years. She spends quite a bit of her time community-building for AI safety, i.e. maximizing her impact if crunch time is in 20-30 years rather than if it is now.
Bob, a newer researcher with less skills, thinks we’re in crunch time now. He might try to take a role at a current AI org that maximizes his current impact but isn’t spectacular for developing career capital.
It seems like if Alice and Bob could coordinate properly, Alice would operate under Bob’s timelines, Bob under Alice’s, and both would be better off.
Has anyone written more about this idea?
See: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/moral-trade
I also had a tentative thing that argued for something similar to the OP (epistemic rather than moral trade).
It's technically trade, rather than moral trade, but yes, that's likely a useful resource.