TH

Tobias Häberli

@ Pivotal Research
1773 karmaJoined Bern, Switzerland

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Topic contributions
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Interesting that 80% disagree can mean "depopulation is pretty likely good" (e.g. this seems to be Alfredo Parra's view) or  "depopulation likely hardly matters" (which I think is your view). 

Tobias Häberli
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20% ➔ 10% agree

Morality is Objective

I'm pretty confused about this, but currently I look at it something like this: 

Moral sentences state beliefs whose validity doesn't depend on whether or not anyone approves of them. These beliefs are about facts in the world, the same world that physics describes, just different aspects of it. 

Epistemically, I am a coherentist: a belief is more justified the better it fits within the most explanatorily coherent system of beliefs. I see reflective equilibrium as a useful method for approaching that coherence. 

In physics, we have a dense and well-corroborated network of beliefs, supported by prediction and intervention. Ethics, by contrast, has a thinner and more contested network, and lacks comparably strong validation tools. So, my confidence in particular moral propositions, and in moral realism itself, is correspondingly weaker. 

Still, I treat improvements in moral theory (better explanations, resolution of paradoxes, maybe convergence across cultures) as evidence that we're tracking real features of the world, just as progress in physics suggests we're tracking reality. The quality and coherence of our moral theories should inform how confident we are in moral realism. 

I'd put my credence around 60%. Coherent moral theories face enough external constraints and show some explanatory success that I slightly lean toward thinking they track real features of conscious beings and their interactions.

Not sure if it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but this post seems relevant.

Good reminder that you should red team your Theory of Change!

I’m slightly confused about how they distinguish between ‘the model reached ASL-3’ and ‘treating the model as if it had reached ASL-3’.

We are deploying Claude Opus 4 with our ASL-3 measures as a precautionary and provisional action. To be clear, we have not yet determined whether Claude Opus 4 has definitively passed the Capabilities Threshold that requires ASL-3 protections.

(Activating AI Safety Level 3 Protections)

This doesn’t change anything about your point that they changed their initial commitment, but does it mean that they didn’t (technically) break their initial commitment with this release? 

I don't think that people need to be non-speciecist and enthusiastic about neglected issues to want to donate to shrimp welfare. People might donate because they are opportunistic donors and this seems like a worthy cause, because they found Andrés trustworthy and want to donate to trustworthy projects, or because of memes (the internet is into shrimp), etc.

The best-case scenario for increasing donation volume is probably thoughtful, high-net-worth individuals getting interested in whether this is a thing, deciding that it is, and partially adjusting their donation decisions. I don't think they need to fully buy into effective altruism to do this.

I'd certainly be interested in whether this video leads to a notable uptick in donations (both the number and volume) :) 

The video has 418K youtube views – and I'd guess it will stagnate somewhere between 500k and 1 million views. In a 5-minute search I couldn’t find any other video seriously considering shrimp welfare with over 5k views, and I'd guess there are only 15–40 such videos with more than 1k views. So this video might have increased exposure to shrimp welfare concerns through youtube something like 3–15x. Seems plausible that it will lead to substantially more donations.

But I feel also sad that the ideas have largely not slipped into the public consciousness over the last 14 years. 

I kinda like that we’re back (so back?) to “a new movement called effective altruism”.

An even more neglected problem: low-floating fruit. Seagrass produces fruit[1], some of which (halophila decipiens) has been found hanging at depths of 190 feet (58 meters)[2]. This is an absurdly submerged fruit, not even reachable for giraffes. Somebody should be on this.

  1. ^

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagrass#Sexual_recruitment

  2. ^
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