This is a crosspost from the new Animal Welfare Alignment Newsletter by Anima International. You can subscribe on Substack if you are interested in following these efforts. Audio reading also available on Substack.
The goals of this post are to:
1. Raise a question I see as crucially important to the goal of aligning AI to animal welfare...
Hello! I'm Justin Portela. I got hired by GWWC to make YouTube videos after AI in Context did such a kickass job.
My channel is using that same cinematic, high-production value beauty to talk about everything in the EA universe that isn't AI.
...
“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...
There is a short piece on longtermism in Spiegel Online, which is probably the biggest news site in Germany:
Longtermism: Was ist das - Rettung oder Gefahr? - Kolumne - DER SPIEGEL
Google Translate:
Longtermism: Was ist das - Rettung oder Gefahr? - Kolumne - DER SPIEGEL (www-spiegel-de.translate.goog)
As far as I know, this is the first time that longtermism is mentioned in a mayor German news outlet. The author mentions some key ideas and acknowledges that shorttime thinking is a big problem in society, but he is rather critical of the longtermist movement. For example, he thinks that climate change is neglected within longtermism and he cites Phil Torres article on Aeon.
I probably will not find the time to comment each of the points in the article and I do not know if this would be the most productive thing to do, but maybe some of you find the article interesting.