Adam Mastroianni: So you wanna de-bog yourself ("Some problems are like getting a diploma: you work at it for a while, and then you're done forever. Learning how to ride a bike is a classic diploma problem. But most problems aren’t like that. They’re more like toothbrushing problems: you have to work at them forever until you die. You can’t, as far as I know, just brush your teeth really really well and then let ‘em ride forever.")
The vote in the European Parliament took place on October 8, you can see the Procedure File here, the press release with links to further information is here, and this is the result of the roll-call votes. A graphic representation of the vote on the entire legislative proposal, including EP amendments, can be found, for example, here.
Just for your information, if you want to read the legislative proposal. The FAQ links to a document number of amendments with respect to proposal 2024/0319(COD), which seems wrong. The actual proposal seems to be COM(2025) 553 final.
This is an interesting question. Even if the conditions were not fulfilled for almost all cases, I have not yet seen an answer to this question concerning ethical judgements in cases where these conditions are fulfilled.
When considering this question, the more general point is that the way that different animals are farmed should make some difference in ethical judgement. This post is about quantitative comparisons of suffering, but the differences in farming seem to be neglected. In particular, Brian Tomasik's table on which this post is based ranks different animals by "Equivalent days of suffering caused per kg demanded", but this comparison is strongly driven by column 5, "Suffering per day of life (beef cows = 1)":
"Column 5 represents my best-guess estimates for how bad life is per day for each of type of farm animal, relative to that animal's intrinsic ability to suffer. That is, differences in cognitive sophistication aren't part of these numbers because they're already counted in Column 4. Rather, Column 5 represents the "badness of quality of life" of the animals. For instance, since I think the suffering of hens in battery cages is perhaps 4 times as intense per day as the suffering of beef cows, I put a "1" in the beef-cow cell and "4" in the egg cell."
I don't mind using subjective estimates in such calculations, but note that this assumes that an average day in the life of all of these animals is a day of suffering. This may be the case in factory farming, but I doubt that that is a necessary assumption for alpine pasture. However, if life is good on an average day of a cow in alpine pasture, we would need a negative sign.
You can enter a negative sign in the table. However, you'll get an error message, because the whole table is based on the assumption that "Suffering per day of life" is positive. With this assumption, raising the "Average lifespan (days)" (Column 2) increases the "Equivalent days of suffering caused per kg demanded". If this is the case, then it is good that farmed animals are "killed at a fraction of their natural lifespans".
Moreover, Tomasik writes, "Column 6 is a best-guess estimate of the average pain of slaughter for each animal, expressed in terms of an equivalent number of days of regular life for that animal. For instance, I used "10" as an estimate for broiler chickens, which means I assume that on average, slaughter is as painful as 10 days of pre-slaughter life."
If the animals actually enjoy their life (negative number in column 5), you can still use that column by entering a negative number in column 6; these are the days an animal would forgo if it could avoid being slaughtered. So if we take the numbers in the table for beef and assume that column 5 is -1 (I don't know how to interpret this though, as this is all relative to beef cow suffering), we need to enter -395 in column 6 to get to zero in column 7.
I'd be interested if someone has a more general calculator.
"While from an emotional perspective, I care a ton about our kids' wellbeing, from a utilitarian standpoint this is a relatively minor consideration given I hope to positively impact many beings' lives through my career."
I find this distinction a bit confusing. After all, every hour spent with your kid is probably "relatively minor" compared to the counterfactual impact of that hour on "many beings' lives". So it seems to me that your evaluating personal costs and expected experiences and so on at all only makes sense if the kid's wellbeing is very important to you, or do I misunderstand that?
"Thus, we looked at the child's wellbeing on a very high level - guessing that our children have good chances at a net positive life because they will likely grow up with lots of resources and a good social environment."
Out of interest: Do you consider catastrophic risks to be small enough not to matter, and is there a point at which that would change?
"Also - I'm using scare quotes here because I am very confused who these proposals mean when they say EA community. Is it a matter of having read certain books, or attending EAGs, hanging around for a certain amount of time, working at an org, donating a set amount of money, or being in the right Slacks?"
It is of course a relevant question who this community is supposed to consist of, but at the same time, this question could be asked whenever someone refers to the community as a collective agent doing something, having a certain opinion, benefitting from something etc. For example, you write "They may be interested in community input for their funding, via regranting for example, or invest in the Community". If you can't define the community, you cannot clearly say that someone invested in it. You later speak of "managing the relationship between the community and its most generous funder", but it seems hard to say how this relationship is currently managed if the community is so hard to define.
Linksammlung zum heutigen Workshop
Themenblock Forecasting
Anderes
The vote in the European Parliament took place on October 8, you can see the Procedure File here, the press release with links to further information is here, and this is the result of the roll-call votes. A graphic representation of the vote on the entire legislative proposal, including EP amendments, can be found, for example, here.
Just for your information, if you want to read the legislative proposal. The FAQ links to a document number of amendments with respect to proposal 2024/0319(COD), which seems wrong. The actual proposal seems to be COM(2025) 553 final.
This is an interesting question. Even if the conditions were not fulfilled for almost all cases, I have not yet seen an answer to this question concerning ethical judgements in cases where these conditions are fulfilled.
When considering this question, the more general point is that the way that different animals are farmed should make some difference in ethical judgement. This post is about quantitative comparisons of suffering, but the differences in farming seem to be neglected. In particular, Brian Tomasik's table on which this post is based ranks different animals by "Equivalent days of suffering caused per kg demanded", but this comparison is strongly driven by column 5, "Suffering per day of life (beef cows = 1)":
I don't mind using subjective estimates in such calculations, but note that this assumes that an average day in the life of all of these animals is a day of suffering. This may be the case in factory farming, but I doubt that that is a necessary assumption for alpine pasture. However, if life is good on an average day of a cow in alpine pasture, we would need a negative sign.
You can enter a negative sign in the table. However, you'll get an error message, because the whole table is based on the assumption that "Suffering per day of life" is positive. With this assumption, raising the "Average lifespan (days)" (Column 2) increases the "Equivalent days of suffering caused per kg demanded". If this is the case, then it is good that farmed animals are "killed at a fraction of their natural lifespans".
Moreover, Tomasik writes, "Column 6 is a best-guess estimate of the average pain of slaughter for each animal, expressed in terms of an equivalent number of days of regular life for that animal. For instance, I used "10" as an estimate for broiler chickens, which means I assume that on average, slaughter is as painful as 10 days of pre-slaughter life."
If the animals actually enjoy their life (negative number in column 5), you can still use that column by entering a negative number in column 6; these are the days an animal would forgo if it could avoid being slaughtered. So if we take the numbers in the table for beef and assume that column 5 is -1 (I don't know how to interpret this though, as this is all relative to beef cow suffering), we need to enter -395 in column 6 to get to zero in column 7.
I'd be interested if someone has a more general calculator.
"While from an emotional perspective, I care a ton about our kids' wellbeing, from a utilitarian standpoint this is a relatively minor consideration given I hope to positively impact many beings' lives through my career."
I find this distinction a bit confusing. After all, every hour spent with your kid is probably "relatively minor" compared to the counterfactual impact of that hour on "many beings' lives". So it seems to me that your evaluating personal costs and expected experiences and so on at all only makes sense if the kid's wellbeing is very important to you, or do I misunderstand that?
"Thus, we looked at the child's wellbeing on a very high level - guessing that our children have good chances at a net positive life because they will likely grow up with lots of resources and a good social environment."
Out of interest: Do you consider catastrophic risks to be small enough not to matter, and is there a point at which that would change?
Thanks for the article.
Did aspects of the child's wellbeing, expected life satisfaction, life expectation etc enter your considerations?
Thanks! I read it, it's an interesting post, but it's not "about reasons for his Ai skepticism ". Browsing the blog, I assume I should read this?
Which of David's posts would you recommend as a particularly good example and starting point?
"Also - I'm using scare quotes here because I am very confused who these proposals mean when they say EA community. Is it a matter of having read certain books, or attending EAGs, hanging around for a certain amount of time, working at an org, donating a set amount of money, or being in the right Slacks?"
It is of course a relevant question who this community is supposed to consist of, but at the same time, this question could be asked whenever someone refers to the community as a collective agent doing something, having a certain opinion, benefitting from something etc. For example, you write "They may be interested in community input for their funding, via regranting for example, or invest in the Community". If you can't define the community, you cannot clearly say that someone invested in it. You later speak of "managing the relationship between the community and its most generous funder", but it seems hard to say how this relationship is currently managed if the community is so hard to define.
Which global, technological, political etc developments do you currently find most relevant with regards to parenting choices?