Evander H. 🔸

@ Independent
86 karmaJoined Working (0-5 years)97072 WĂĽrzburg, Germany
bit.ly/evanderhammer-website

Bio

Participation
7

Find more about me (world views, things I recommend): https://bit.ly/evanderhammer-website

My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evander-hammer

Comments
15

Topic contributions
1

Thanks, great points I find them all convincing. The key for me would be: Is connection intended or important for this post? And if yes, then it gets lost through AI. But if it's mainly about organizing or communicating an idea then declared AI writing is fine in my intuition.

Good catch - I'd say for me it's mainly an efficiency tool, but agree that there are more aspects and indeed there are tradeoffs. I was wrong and influenced by Claude!

General about human connection: I rarely do this via text mostly via audio and in person events. Using AI there would be extremely bad and would lose a lot of connection.

Would I change my position?: Yes a bit, I think it's pretty crucial to decide: "Is it an idea post or a human connection post?" and depending on that decide whether to use AI for writing. Not sure how to update the percentage though, maybe 70 % depending on the content, I'd most posts in the forum are idea posts and only some motivational personal stories etc.

All written by me this time, Cheers ;)

Evander H. 🔸
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60% ➔ 50% agree

How much of a post are you comfortable for AI to write?


80% roughly, AI can write every word. I use voice-to-text and Claude daily and always note the methodology. Two things matter: Ownership (you clicked publish, you own every word, no "the AI wrote that" excuses) and Transparency (state how it was created, let the reader decide). If both are met, it's just an efficiency tool. The ideas and positions are yours, the words are the delivery mechanism. 

(This comment was drafted via voice-to-text and Claude ^^)

Evander H. 🔸
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70% ➔ 90% agree

90% agree

The consciousness argument:

  • Consciousness and qualia are the only things I'm 100% certain exist. Here's the key insight: when you fully describe any conscious state, you must include objective properties - its spatial extent, colors, sounds, and crucially, how much suffering or happiness it contains.
  • This isn't a matter of opinion. Suffering in a conscious experience is as objectively real as the color red in that same experience. It's a fundamental feature of reality, not something that becomes bad because someone judges it to be bad.

The personal identity argument: 

  • Derek Parfit's work on personal identity strengthens this view. If there are no robust, continuous "persons" in the traditional sense - if we're more like streams of consciousness than persistent selves - then subjective preferences become philosophically problematic. Whose preferences? What grounds them?
  • But conscious experiences of suffering and joy remain objectively real features of the universe, independent of any "person" having preferences about them.

Why this supports objective morality:

  • Among contemporary intellectuals, Sam Harris articulates this position best in "The Moral Landscape." Consciousness creates objective facts about well-being. Some conscious states are objectively better or worse than others, based on the suffering or flourishing they contain.

Philosophical honesty:

  • I remain somewhat nihilistic because ultimate justification hits bedrock - we can't justify foundational assumptions infinitely. But for practical purposes, consciousness grounds the only objective moral facts we need.
  • (My rough credences: 99% nihilism about most moral claims, 0.9% hedonistic realism, 0.09% other anti-realism, 0.01% non-hedonistic realism)

AGI by 2028 is more likely than not

I think we should focus on short timelines, still I think there are not the most likely scenario. Most likely is imo a delay of maybe two years.

Consequentialists should be strong longtermists

It just makes theoretically sense. In practice it doesn't matter, e.g. RSI and loss of control is a near term risk.

Bioweapons are an existential risk

Mainly thinking about A(G)I engineered bioweapons.

I assume that the primary goal is to reduce extreme suffering or negative experiences. Based on the evidence I've reviewed, efforts to alleviate suffering in factory farming appear to be far more cost-effective in achieving this goal.

I don't see compelling evidence that improvements in global health significantly enhance worldwide peace and security, which could potentially reduce existential risks from advanced AI. This connection would have been, in my view, the strongest argument for prioritizing global health interventions.

While I believe global health initiatives should never be completely abandoned—as they demonstrate tangible success—I generally consider existential risk mitigation and reducing extreme animal suffering to be significantly higher priorities. In my assessment, these areas are at least 10 times more promising than global health interventions, and potentially far greater.

@peterhartree Feel free to ignore: Are there any updates in your workflow of listening to G Docs or PDFs? The post is now roughly 1 year ago.

- I have been using speechify for a year now. I think it's decent, but the UI and the frequent crashes are a bit annoying for me. So I just wanted to see if there are better products out there :)

I really liked the discussion week on PauseAI. I'd like to see another one on this topic, taking up the new developments in reasons and evidence.

When?
Probably there are other topics that didn't have a week, so they should be prioritized. I think PauseAI is one of the most important topics. So, maybe in the next 3 - 9 months?

Quick note/warning about speechify:

  • I've been using it for about 6 months. 
  • I've had several bugs using the app and customer support couldn't help. I spent a total of about 2 hours trying to fix them, but nothing worked.
  • The main problem was that I could not use it outside my home. Every 2 minutes or so it would detect "poor internet connection" and shut down. This is extremely annoying when you're trying to listen to a newspaper while walking. 
  • Hopefully they will fix this. I still use it, but only occasionally.
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