Sure, people are dying now and will continue to die until systemic
change is enacted, but the absolute best use of your money is to donate
to AI think tanks. It’s an objective fact, all the experts say so. Don’t
sweat the small stuff. You don’t want your altruism to be ineffective,
do you?
And the singularity will benefit all peoples equally regardless of class, race, sex, etc! Okay, maybe the people who made it happen will get some more reward, and we'll need some people to run power plants outside the computing complex still, and we have to make a profit somehow, and of course within the singularity it will all be anarcho-capitalist, but surely racial disparities of wealth accumulation won't make their way into our meritocratic society then! Surely!
Why not both? [~~Machine learning~~ AI is already learning racism from us](https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/aug/08/rise-of-the-racist-robots-how-ai-is-learning-all-our-worst-impulses) so surely they could focus on how to stop that right now.
You should read up on how the nets are used for fishing which causes worries due to the toxins on them, the whole 'effictive'part isnt as effective as they would like. (Helping to fight malaria is still good btw, but people never talk about the failures of the net project).
Even advocates aren't saying it's 100% perfect, just that malaria nets are super cheap and effective *overall*. If all EA was doing was convincing rich people to shell out for malaria relief i'd be completely in favour of it.
Unfortunately, there are is all this superpower AI shit tacked on, and it seems to be tied to a neoliberal ideology where systemic change is completely impossible.
They are super effective if you discount the downsides yes. If you ignore that people are not using them to sleep under but just to fish, then it is effective. But iirc there needs to be more money spend on education, and as people are using them to fish and not sleep, more money also needs to be spend on getting people access to affordable food. It is all connected.
But yes fighting malaria is a good cause considering how many billions (iirc) it affects.
See also https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191111100910.htm
Yeah, with every intervention you have to weigh up the benefits and risks. The malaria net people seem to do a better job than most, they have [checked up on](https://www.givewell.org/charities/amf#followup) previous distributions and generally found around 80% of the nets still hanging after a year, which is pretty good.
If you're saying the distribution method could be improved, I completely agree, but that's independent of whether it's a worthwhile cause or not. It's not the only thing that matters, but it looks pretty damn good.
Ow yeah i agree it is a good cause, but my point is more it isnt as easy of an succes as they are making it to be, there still are a lot of issues.
And there will probably be less money available to fix any secondary issues which pop up (the plastic waste, people getting poisoned by the toxins, ecological stuff). Because that is more expensive and less 'effective sexy' than 'for only 1 dollar you can save x people from malaria'.
But i agree it is a good cause and the ea movement (if we disregard the ai stuff and the self enrichment via the ea movement) is doing good on that.
But i dont think this lifts them above any other charity. Esp when we take the robot apocs people into account.
EAs worry about a hypothetical AI takeover scenario
AI takeover could literally destroy the world. If you cannot see
that, I’d argue you are not into EA just like your friends are not into
EA. It’s a numbers game. More people will die from run away AI than
police killings.
Feel like the real effective way to make the world better would be to
give this nerd a swirlie so they shut the fuck up.
This is quite literally like arguing that we shouldn't care about any political issues because the most important thing that's going to happen in the future is the death of our sun, the prevention of which should occupy all of our time and resources.
> This is quite literally like arguing that we shouldn't care about any political issues because the most important thing that's going to happen in the future is the death of our sun
No, the death of our sun is something we have good reason to think will happen.
This is like arguing that we shouldn't care about any political issues because what if Zardox exists, a being of unknown nature who will invade earth some day and has the power to cause the most conceivable suffering for everyone.
"I'm not saying the anti-Zardox researchers have a reliable plan for defeating Zardox, but they're literally the only ones working on it, and Zardox poses such a grave threat that we have to prioritize any chance at all we have at stopping him."
Oh yeah, [just like climate change!](https://www.factcheck.org/2019/10/factchecking-the-october-democratic-debate/)
> Sanders referred to climate change as an “existential threat.” Scientists agree climate change does pose a threat to humans and ecosystems, but they do not envision that climate change will obliterate all people from the planet.
The real effective way to make the world better is AI takeover so I torture the dumbass rationalists and everybody else can just get blasted on pina coladas 24/7 while coming up with some dope new contributions to number theory.
Solve a big enough open conjecture and you get to personally torture a few copies of rationalists!
Ooh ooh, I can tie this to *h*-index, because everybody will be superintelligent and publishing all the time in the singularity. Also I will have fixed all those obvious flaws in citation metrics.
ah, the classic “if we can’t graph it then it isn’t important”
gotcha. tbt to the EA who would smugly ask me for “my data” every time
I’d argue with her as if I was supposed to pull a spreadsheet out of my
asshole
u/ChrisA2389 holds their own really, really well though
chris come join us
edit; EA’s single biggest problem is that they don’t take “systemic
change” as a serious answer to the questions they purport to solve.
faced with rogue planet-eating AI, they opt for planetary surveillance
instead of moving toward a society that doesn’t rely on technological
servitude. faced with third world poverty, they opt for sweatshop cities
instead of moving toward a world that doesn’t require people to
sacrifice their basic human dignity or die. faced with ecological
collapse, they opt for meaningless concessions instead of moving toward
a society without fossil fuels. with all their “take the long view!” and
“existential risk” handwringing, they’ve chosen to align themselves with
ideologies and people who are dead set on keeping the world just as it
is — but maybe with more sweatshops and malaria nets — even if “just as
it is” is leading us to complete collapse
Isn’t a lot of EA focused on existential threats to humanity? It’s
reasonable to say the United States collapsing into a race war (or more
likely a communist revolution) wouldn’t quite be an existential risk to
humanity though it certainly can lead to that.
Sure, people are dying now and will continue to die until systemic change is enacted, but the absolute best use of your money is to donate to AI think tanks. It’s an objective fact, all the experts say so. Don’t sweat the small stuff. You don’t want your altruism to be ineffective, do you?
Feel like the real effective way to make the world better would be to give this nerd a swirlie so they shut the fuck up.
ah, the classic “if we can’t graph it then it isn’t important” gotcha. tbt to the EA who would smugly ask me for “my data” every time I’d argue with her as if I was supposed to pull a spreadsheet out of my asshole
u/ChrisA2389 holds their own really, really well though
chris come join us
edit; EA’s single biggest problem is that they don’t take “systemic change” as a serious answer to the questions they purport to solve. faced with rogue planet-eating AI, they opt for planetary surveillance instead of moving toward a society that doesn’t rely on technological servitude. faced with third world poverty, they opt for sweatshop cities instead of moving toward a world that doesn’t require people to sacrifice their basic human dignity or die. faced with ecological collapse, they opt for meaningless concessions instead of moving toward a society without fossil fuels. with all their “take the long view!” and “existential risk” handwringing, they’ve chosen to align themselves with ideologies and people who are dead set on keeping the world just as it is — but maybe with more sweatshops and malaria nets — even if “just as it is” is leading us to complete collapse
User cuntfacemcgoober sure has opinions.
Isn’t a lot of EA focused on existential threats to humanity? It’s reasonable to say the United States collapsing into a race war (or more likely a communist revolution) wouldn’t quite be an existential risk to humanity though it certainly can lead to that.
Some EA stuff seems obscure and circlejerky.