Bentham's Bulldog

1 Introduction Crosspost of this blog post. My guess is that there will soon be an intelligence explosion. I think the world will witness extremely rapid economic and technological advancement driven by AI progress. I’d put about 60% odds on the kind of growth depicted variously in AI 2027 and...

1 Introduction Crosspost of this blog post. Unlike most books, the thesis of If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies is the title (a parallel case is that the thesis of What We Owe The Future is “What?? We owe the future?). IABIED, by Yudkowsky and Soares (Y&S), argues that if...

Crosspost of this article. 1 Introduction The person-affecting view is the idea that we have no reason to create a person just because their life would go well. In slogan form “make people happy, not happy people.” It’s important to know if the person-affecting view is right because it has...

Crosspost. The core philosophical argument for giving is strikingly simple: charitable donations can prevent lots of death and suffering at a comparatively minor cost. For a few thousand dollars, you can save someone’s life. By taking the Giving What We Can pledge—which I have taken, and I would encourage you...

Crosspost of this blog post. I mostly believe in the possibility of an ongoing moral catastrophe because I believe in the actuality of an ongoing moral catastrophe (e.g. I think the giant animal torture facilities that produce nearly all of our meat qualify). But Evan Williams has a great paper...

(Crosspost of a blog post. I think this is an important article, so I’d appreciate sharing and restacking it.) It’s shrimp welfare week—a period during which various substackers are trying to raise funds for the Shrimp Welfare Project. At this link, donations will be matched 50%. In normal times, a...

(I think this is a pretty important post to get the word out about, so I’d really appreciate you restacking it). The EU is taking input into their farm animal welfare policies until December 12. Animals in the EU are kept confined in a space about the size of a...