The Possibility of an Ongoing Moral Catastrophe (Summary)

I considered Evan Williams' paper one of the most important papers in cause prioritization at the time, and I think I still broadly buy this. As I mention in this answer, there are at least 4 points his paper brought up that are nontrivial, interesting, and hard to refute.

If I were to write this summary again, I think I'd be noticeably more opinionated. In particular, a key disagreement I have with him (which I remember having at the time I was making the summary, but this never making it into my notes) is on the importance of the speed of moral progress vs the sustainability of continued moral progress. In "implementation of improved values", the paper focuses a lot on the flexibility of setting up society to be able  to make moral progress quickly, but naively I feel about as worried or more worried that society can make anti-progress and do horrifyingly dumb and new things in the name of good. So I'd be really worried about trajectory changes for the worse, especially longer-lasting ones ("lock-in" is a phrase that's in vogue these days).

I've also updated significantly on both the moral cost and the emprical probability of near-term extinction risks, and of course extinction is the archetypal existential risk that will dramatically curtail the value of the far future.

It feels weird getting my outline into the EA decade review, instead of the original paper, though I wouldn't be very surprised if at this point more EAs have read my outline than the paper itself.

I vaguely feel like Williams should get a lot more credit than he has received for this paper. Like EA should give him a prize or something, maybe help him identify more impactful research areas, etc.

Strong upvoting because I want to incentivize people to write and share more summaries.

Summaries are awesome and allow me to understand the high level of papers that I would not have read otherwise. This summary in particular is well written and well-formatted.

Thanks for writing it and sharing it!

I can highly recommend this mockumentary about how future people might judge our treatment of non-human animals: Carnage - Swallowing the Past

https://vimeo.com/798189243 

We absolutely welcome summaries! People getting more ways to access good material is one of the reasons the Forum exists.

That said, did you consider copying the summary into a Forum post, rather than linking it? That's definitely more work, but my impression is that it usually leads to more discussion when people don't have to click away into another page. I don't have strong evidence to back that up, though.

Also: because the title is long and long titles are cut short in some views of the Forum, I'd recommend that summaries of pieces be something like "The Possibility of an Ongoing Moral Catastrophe (Summary)".

I found this piece on moral catastrophe really insightful. One thought I’d add is that when we look across history, it seems every generation has been blinded not just by particular false beliefs, but by something deeper — our own egoistic nature. In Kabbalistic terms, this is sometimes described as the “will to receive for oneself.”

What strikes me is that this “operating system” quietly drives so many of our choices, even in causes we think of as altruistic. If we don’t become aware of it, we risk repeating the same pattern: creating new systems, norms, or technologies that look like progress, but still end up serving ego-driven ends.

So while I agree with the call for more moral research and flexibility, I also wonder whether a key part of avoiding future catastrophes is learning to recognize and work with this underlying egoism. Otherwise, we might just keep patching symptoms without ever debugging the core code.

Thanks for the summary. I have two takeaways:

1. EA is (in part) claiming that there are several ongoing moral catastrophes caused by inaction against global poverty, animal suffering, x-risk,... (some of them are definitely caused by action, but that does not matter as much on consequentialist grounds). Unknown ongoing moral catastrophes are cause-X.

2. The possibility of working to increase our capability to handle undiscovered ongoing moral catastrophe in the future as a major goal. The idea I saw here was to reserve resources, which is a very interesting argument to invest in economic growth.

Narration is broken. It repeats items multiple times

individuals usually save by investing, and governments save by buying other government’s debt or by investing in the private sector, but it’s unclear how the world “saves” as a whole"

I don't think this is particularly true. Government debt is not solely owned by other governments - otherwise it would be strange that all governments (as far as I know) have positive debt. Generally, I believe government debt is owned by the private sector (individual people, businesses, etc.). If we're talking about all governments having money saved up (because we would trust a government to pay large amounts of money to avert a crisis, whereas we would not normally trust the public to do so voluntarily), then that is possible. A good way of achieving that is having governments ensure their debt doesn't get too high (though austerity measures can have negative consequences too) - in fact this is advice that some give to governments: "don't have too much debt - otherwise if there's a crisis, you won't be able to afford to spend as much extra money". If you believe that it is morally crucial that governments are able to spend large amounts of money to avert a newfound moral crisis, then you might propose that they keep debt low, so they could spend extra large amounts if necessary. If you believe this to a very strong extent (which I do not), then you might even advocate that they have "negative" debt (which could be investing in the private sector).

Even though I hadn't considered this point before, and even though I consider it valid, I don't intuitively think it would have a large effect on the optimal level for debt - my instinctive guess is that this consideration might be worth ~5pp less of debt. I think it is sufficient for governments, when an extremely urgent cause is discovered, to increase taxes, decrease domestic spending, and send this extra money towards this new cause. I believe a more pressing imperative is that (rich) governments significantly increase their international aid payments now. The most effective charities are pretty good, and there's not too much risk of accidentally doing harm (I often argue that political causes are risky, though, because people are notoriously overconfident about their political views). I think it's unjustifiable that e.g. US healthcare expenditure could save many many more lives if partially diverted toward a poorer country.

About the main topic of the article, I do mostly agree, and especially so in cases involving non-human sentient beings. Given how much more time is devoted to human well-being, I think it is more difficult (but still, of course, very possible) for a particular human-centered catastrophe to slip under the radar. I nonetheless think advocating for an increase in "crisis awareness research" is very sensible in either case.

The idea of reparations doesn't have instrinsic value in my utilitarian morality, though I suppose it can often be incidentally relevant (in the same vein as money being more effective if spend on people who are more in need). The main priorities, in my opinion, should be reducing the chance of an ongoing catastrophe, and quickly (but also cautiously) stopping one when it is discovered.

Side Note: this is a linkpost, so maybe I shouldn't have commented here? This is my first non-trivial comment, and I got a bit carried away - apologies.

The statement, "Need marketplace of ideas where true ideas win out", indicates the ineviatable failure to this approach.  There will never be agreement about the identity, or even the existence of, "true ideas".  

You should sit in with some friends of Bill W. Tell them you're visitor, then just sit there and listen. They'll teach you about a pure altruism. It's pretty damn awesome.

In the same way we stock up resources for war preparation, we might want to save up resources for future moral emergencies, so we can eg. pay reparations, or at least quickly make the relevant changes.

1. LZ: Unsure how this is actually possible in practice. Eg, individuals usually save by investing, and governments save by buying other government’s debt or by investing in the private sector, but it’s unclear how the world “saves” as a whole.

We could build up large stockpiles of resources, or capacity for making resources in the future, that could be flexibility used for a wide variety of purposes depending on where moral philosophy lead us. Essentially we are trying to predict what future resources moral philosophy might demand and get the ready. For example, we might spend less on consumption now and invest more effort in getting prepared to produce huge quantities of semiconductors and spaceships.

In short: the world saves by consuming less and investing more.