Magnus Vinding's Blog, page 3

Radical uncertainty about outcomes need not imply (similarly) radical uncertainty about strategies

Our uncertainty about how the future will unfold is vast, especially on long timescales. In light of this uncertainty, it may be natural to think that our uncertainty about strategies must be equally vast and intractable. My aim in this brief post is to argue that this is not the case.

Contents

Analogies to games, competitions, and projectsDisanalogy in scope?Three robust strategies for reducing sufferingThe golden middle way: Avoiding overconfidence and passivityAnalogies to g...

What does a future dominated by AI imply?

Among altruists working to reduce risks of bad outcomes due to AI, I sometimes get the impression that there is a rather quick step from the premise “the future will be dominated by AI” to a practical position that roughly holds that “technical AI safety research aimed at reducing risks associated with fast takeoff scenarios is the best way to prevent bad AI outcomes”.

I am not saying that this is the most common view among those who work to prevent bad outcomes due to AI. Nor am I saying tha...

Reasons to include insects in animal advocacy

I have seen some people claim that animal activists should primarily be concerned with certain groups of numerous vertebrates, such as chickens and fish, whereas we should not be concerned much, if at all, with insects and other small invertebrates. (See e.g. here.) I think there are indeed good arguments in favor of emphasizing chickens and fish in animal advocacy, yet I think those same arguments tend to support a strong emphasis on helping insects as well. My aim in this post is to argue that...

We Should Expect to Be Extremely Biased About Speciesism

The following is a slightly edited excerpt from my book Effective Altruism: How Can We Best Help Others? (2018/2022).

If ever there were a bias that we evolved not to transcend, it is surely our speciesist bias. After all, we evolved in a context in which our survival depended on our killing and eating non-human beings. For most of our evolutionary history, the questioning of such a practice, and the belief that non-human beings should be taken seriously in moral terms, meant a radically ...

Far From Omelas

The following is a slightly edited excerpt from my book Effective Altruism: How Can We Best Help Others? (2018/2022).

I should like to re-emphasize a tragic fact that is all too easily forgotten by our wishful and optimistic minds, that fact being that the world we inhabit is hopelessly far from Omelas. For our world is unfortunately nothing like a near-paradisiacal city predicated on the misery of a single child. Rather, in our world, there are millions of starving children, and millions...

Why I don’t prioritize consciousness research

For altruists trying to reduce suffering, there is much to be said in favor of gaining a better understanding of consciousness. Not only may it lead to therapies that can mitigate suffering in the near term, but it may also help us in our large-scale prioritization efforts. For instance, clarifying which beings can feel pain is important for determining which causes and interventions we should be working on to best reduce suffering.

These points notwithstanding, my own view is that advancing ...

The dismal dismissal of suffering-focused views

Ethical views that give a foremost priority to the reduction of suffering are often dismissed out of hand. More than that, it is quite common to see such views discussed in highly uncharitable ways, and to even see them described with pejorative terms.

My aim in this post is to call attention to this phenomenon, as I believe it can distort public discourse and individual thinking about the issue. That is, if certain influential people consistently dismiss certain views without proper argument...

Research vs. non-research work to improve the world: In defense of more research and reflection

When trying to improve the world, we can either pursue direct interventions, such as directly helping beings in need and doing activism on their behalf, or we can pursue research on how we can best improve the world, as well as on what improving the world even means in the first place.

Of course, the distinction between direct work and research is not a sharp one. We can, after all, learn a lot about the “how” question by pursuing direct interventions, testing out what works and what does not...

“Team victory” as a key hidden motive

Simler and Hanson’s The Elephant in the Brain has been hugely influential on me. The core claim of the book is that our beliefs and behaviors often serve hidden motives, and that these motives are commonly less pretty than the more noble motives that we usually proclaim.

A key point that is mentioned in the book is the significance of coalitions and coalitional conflicts in human life and human evolution. Specifically, the authors note how, in small-scale coalition politics, “coalitions compe...

Reasoned Politics

How can we do politics better?

In Reasoned Politics, Magnus Vinding lays out a path toward politics based on ethical reasoning and empirical evidence. He argues that a better approach to politics is both conceivable and realistic. Modern discoveries in political psychology hint at new, improved norms for political discourse and cooperation, while also pointing to concrete ways in which such improvements can gradually be realized.

Having outlined a general framework for reasoned politics, V...