Disclaimer: This is a weak take — mostly based on anecdotes and vibes — but I thought it’s worth sharing nonetheless, if only as a means of soliciting better takes. Disclaimer #2: I am very appreciative of everyone who is working tirelessly to pursue farmed animal protection via policy, and I want nothing more than to see it succeed!
Most matter pushes against nearby matter, via a positive “pressure.” That’s why Earth holds its shape, instead of collapsing down to a point mass.
2024 election takes
A wishlist
'Twas a Republican sweep. At least we have funny tweets? A politics update by Jacob Cohen (@Conflux).
TL;DR: EAGxVirtual 2024 (15–17 November) is coming up in less than 2 weeks! This free, online conference is an opportunity to learn from and meet with EAs in 75+ different countries. Applications are open until 14 Nov!. Apply now—. In our announcement post, we explained why we are hosting EAGxVirtual on 15–17 November – to connect the global EA community.
Wednesday, November 6
The case for cautious optimism
This month's Faunalytics Index provides facts and stats about companion animal care costs, the environmental impact of fur, shrimp farming, and more. The post Faunalytics Index – November 2024 appeared first on Faunalytics.
Human intervention in wild animal welfare is a complex issue within animal ethics. Depending on your risk tolerance, certain interventions on behalf of wild animals may be more justifiable. The post Risk Aversion In Wild Animal Welfare appeared first on Faunalytics.
Discuss...
About three hours ago I posted a brief argument about why one of the US presidential candidates is strongly preferable to the other on five criteria of concern to EAs: AI governance, nuclear war prevention, climate change, pandemic preparedness and overall concern for people living outside the United States.
A repeal of last year's executive order, for one thing
EA Forum Digest #214
Hello!. Funding Strategy Week is now underway on the Forum (until 10th Nov), follow the link to see all the posts that have been published so far. We’re particularly interested in hearing from people who have lost funding from Good Ventures, so consider contributing to this thread if this describes you.
This is not advice
Tuesday might have been the last traditional Election Day of my life in Washington, DC, where I’ve been voting for the past 12 years. The ballot included Initiative 83, a measure adopting ranked choice voting (RCV); it passed overwhelmingly. While it’s possible that the DC government could just refuse to implement the measure (they’ve done […]...
Huge US election volumes, Robinhood added presidential prediction markets, Richard Ngo on why he is not a Bayesian.
Microsoft is warning Azure cloud users that a Chinese controlled botnet is engaging in “highly evasive” password spraying. Not sure about the “highly evasive” part; the techniques seem basically what you get in a distributed password-guessing attack:
TLDR: The shortest version of this argument is very simple: your expectations for an organization should be higher where their budget and staff size are higher. In other words, we should have different expectations for a 20-person organization with a $1.5 million budget than a 2-person $150,000 budget organization.
Hi! We're researchers from Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE), a 501(c)(3) non-profit that uses evidence and reason to help people help animals. We conduct charity evaluations to identify the organizations that will likely make the most significant difference for animals.
We share initial findings from 84 global experts who contributed to the first part of our open consultation for France's 2025 AI Action Summit, revealing four key shifts needed in AI governance and concrete recommendations for action. The complete analysis will be presented at The Athens Roundtable on December 9.
People have tweaked the decoder-only Transformer architecture enough in 4 years that we’re apparently now calling the current recipe “ Transformer++”.
i.e. a Transformer but with. a fused attention implementation (the scaled dot-product backend -> FlashAttention). Subquadratic memory complexity in input sequence length. Practically: can double GPU utilization and so halve training time.
In my upbringing there was a deep sectarian division between the neds and the moshers. 1. I was mosherlike (by default, being weird) but had some ned friends.
We would drive around the country lanes doing “circuits”, aimless circles looking for someone else wanting to race. They would blast happy hardcore and trance: “dance” music.
A preview of what Election Night will look like, and my relationship with politics, interspersed. By Jacob Cohen (@Conflux).
The Inter-American Development Bank and J-PAL LAC Launch Collaborative Visiting Program to Foster Evidence-Based Policy in Latin America and the Caribbean
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab Latin America and the Caribbean (J-PAL LAC) have officially launched a new Visiting Researcher Program, marking a new phase in the strategic...
I hear there was some famous guy who was big on the whole loving your neighbor thing
To succeed in a crowded international governance landscape, the AI Summit Series needs a clearly defined niche. Its defining traits should be that it: (a) invites companies and civil society to...
In favor of minimally competent utopia design
Some marine animals were historically feared but are now more favored and protected. Is it possible to also improve the social standing of sharks, who currently face significant bias?. The post Effective Messaging For Sharks appeared first on Faunalytics.
Plus: New tunnels, monorails, canals, small modular reactors, and horseless carriages
Joseph Rotblat was born in Warsaw on November 4, 1908. He is one of the advisors I’d like to have on my shoulder, so on his birthday, I want to share a bit about his life and reflect on it. As a brief overview, Rotblat: Was the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project on moral grounds.
Tuesday, November 5
I’ve been writing about the possibility of AIs automatically discovering code vulnerabilities since at least 2018. This is an ongoing area of research: AIs doing source code scanning, AIs finding zero-days in the wild, and everything in between. The AIs aren’t very good at it yet, but they’re getting better.
Here’s some anecdotal data from this summer:
EAGx Virtual and EA conferences around the world
Since stepping into the role of CEO at PxD in April, the past six months have been a whirlwind – challenging, rewarding and full of momentum. As I reflect on all the things we’ve accomplished.... Read more. The post CEO Diaries: Six Months of Wins, Challenges, and Growth appeared first on Precision Development.
In June this year, Good Ventures announced that it would stop supporting certain sub-causes, and not expand into new cause areas by default. Neither Good Ventures nor Open Philanthropy included a public list of the sub-causes or organisations they were no longer supporting.
The US presidential election is imminent. Given the amount of polarization and partisan sorting of political issues in the US, you might...
Probably the most impactful thing you can do about the presidential election right now
Helping Children and Families Live Healthier Helen Keller Intl believes in a world where no one is deprived of the opportunity to live a healthy life and reach their true potential. Working with our global community, we’re supporting millions of families across Africa, Asia, and the United States to overcome barriers to good health, sound nutrition, […].
This analysis summarizes and reflects on the following research: Citation: Piazza, J. A. (2023). Political polarization and political violence. Security Studies, 32(3), 476-504. https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2023.2225780 Talking Points Political polarization makes support for and the occurrence of political violence more likely.
For democracy, against AIDS, lead, and factory farming
Effective altruism, happiness, writing, social justice, science, short stories, fun.
The idea of responsible scaling policies is now over a year old. Anthropic, OpenAI, and DeepMind each have something like an RSP, and several other relevant companies have committed to publish RSPs by February.
Welcome to the November 4, 2024 Main edition of The Homework, the official newsletter of California YIMBY — legislative updates, news clips, housing research and analysis, and the latest writings from the California YIMBY team. News from Sacramento We are…. The post The HomeWork: November <span class="dewidow">4, 2024</span> appeared first on California YIMBY.
This paper introduces a method to monetize animal welfare, allowing animal lives to be considered alongside human interests in policy analyses. The post The Price Of Welfare: Monetizing Animal Lives For Better Policies appeared first on Faunalytics.
TL;DR: I think funding diversification is an easy thing to pitch as positive, but it comes with real tradeoffs to growth and time spent fundraising. In this post, I go into why I think these trades are not obvious but still end up thinking they are worth making.
Rethink Priorities' Worldview Investigations Team is sharing research agendas that provide overviews of some key research areas as well as projects in those areas that we would be keen to pursue. This is the first of three such agendas to be posted in November 2024. If we want to do the most good per dollar, then we need to measure the value of various outcomes on a common scale.
On doing well from doing good
Looking back from 2041
Monday, November 4
Do you believe AI will hit a wall?
The Chinese AI chip firm goes public
Really interesting story of Sophos’s five-year war against Chinese hackers.
Election Day Update: For anyone who’s still undecided (?!? ), I can’t beat this from Sam Harris. When I think of Harris winning the presidency this week, it’s like watching a film of a car crash run in reverse: the windshield unshatters; stray objects and bits of metal converge; and defenseless human bodies are hurled into […]...
HPV vaccines offer a rare opportunity to effectively eliminate one type of cancer. By taking this opportunity, it’s possible to save hundreds of thousands of women each year.
Tuberculosis still kills over 1.2 million people a year. In a two-part essay by Kamal Nahas for Asimov Press, we explore why and how to change that. In the 1924 novel, The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann describes a sanatorium patient named Anton Ferge as he undergoes a painful tuberculosis (TB) treatment. “I lie there with my face covered, so I can’t see anything,” Anton says.
Tl;dr: doebem’s latest research identifies the distribution of portable micromembrane water filters as a top donation opportunity in Brazil. This solution demonstrates a cost of USD 306 per DALY and USD 12.5k per life saved, making it 5-10 times more cost-effective than other evaluated options and achieving 40% of the cost-effectiveness of GiveWell’s top charities. Context.
Sunday, November 3
The sheer scale of factory farming can feel overwhelming. Billions of animals suffer every year in unimaginable conditions. It's easy to feel like our efforts are just a drop in the ocean. But what if I told you that we have a realistic chance of ending this system within our lifetimes? This isn't wishful thinking.
Let's NOT get physical
this week in security — november 3 edition
Sophos reveals years-long Chinese hacks, DOJ takes down Redline, Okta's new auth bypass bug, and more. ~this week in security~. a cybersecurity newsletter by @zackwhittaker
🗳️ volume 7, issue 40 🗳️
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Ahh, it's good to be back! There's an autumnal crisp in the air.
Your Mileage May Vary is an advice column offering you a new framework for thinking through your ethical dilemmas and philosophical questions. This unconventional column is based on value pluralism — the idea that each of us has multiple values that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other. Here is a Vox reader’s question, […]...
I was sure my next post would be about the election—the sword of Damocles hanging over the United States and civilization as a whole. Instead, I have sad news, but also news that brings memories of warmth, humor, and complexity-theoretic insight. Steven Rudich—professor at Carnegie Mellon, central figure of theoretical computer science since the 1990s, […]...
The Donation Election Fund is now open! Donate now to make the donation election a bigger deal, promote effective giving conversations, or simply to get your hands on our rewards. Click to donateThe CEA Online Team will match the first $5,000 in donations. Money in the Donation Election Fund will be disbursed to the three winners of the Donation Election (proportionate to their vote).
Saturday, November 2
Hollywood is good at producing entertainment, especially the kind that involves sex, car chases, and explosions.
No-- you move
Starbucks announced this week that starting November 7, its US and Canada stores will drop extra charges for plant-based milks — including oat, soy, almond, and coconut — that add 70 to 80 cents to a drink’s cost. It’s a change that plant-based food advocates have long campaigned for, citing the dairy industry’s grave animal […]...
If the world is destroyed, it won’t be our fault and there may have been nothing we could do about it. It will take a lot of people contributing their small part to avert AI danger, and they might not all do it, and we could all end up dead. I work against this outcome because I don’t want it to happen, and I believe I can do some small part to reduce the danger.
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One of the reasons I got into chaos theory as a model paradigm shift was the famous Gleick book on chaos. One of the reasons I believed the Gleick book was trustworthy was that its description of chaos in ecology and population biology matched what I learned in college, 25 years later. Recently I learned … Continue reading "Chaos Theory in Ecology"...
Introduction
Warning: This post discusses statistics about extreme pain that may be distressing. While cluster headaches are a neglected, high-impact issue, understanding their true burden requires appreciating the intensity of suffering involved. The pain often reaches levels far beyond typical human experience, making subjective accounts a valuable datapoint until we have robust methods for quantifying...
A new idea machine. Humanity needs to incentivize better incentives. We need infrastructure to beat Moloch. We still live in a society with poor outcomes. We spend time, money, and energy on nostrums—ideas that promise to solve problems but have no real impact. Why? Because we fix surface-level.
Subhash and Josh are co-first authors. Work done as part of the two week research sprint in Neel Nanda’s MATS stream. TLDR: We show that dense probes trained on SAE encodings are competitive with traditional activation probing over 60 diverse binary classification datasets. Specifically, we find that SAE probes have advantages with:Low data regimes (~ < 100 training examples).
Great blow-up sculpture.
Blog moderation policy.
Imagine your once reliable, trusty AI assistant suddenly suggesting dangerous actions or spreading misinformation. This is a growing threat as large language models (LLMs) become more capable and pervasive. The culprit? Data poisoning, where LLMs are trained on corrupted or harmful data, potentially turning powerful tools into dangerous liabilities. Our new jailbreak-tuning data poisoning...
The practice of inviting the public to comment on proposed projects in long, often-contentious meetings is a hallmark of American urban planning practice in the post urban renewal age. However, recent research out of Boston suggests that the public that….
Image from Video: Cruel Musical Chairs (or Why Is Rent So High? ), by Dan Bertolet, Copyright 2017 Sightline Institute; used with permission. Despite the expert consensus that building more homes reduces housing prices, a significant portion of the public remains….
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