FCCC

(This post has been strongly downvoted by Jiro. All other votes appear to have been positive.) I recently made a post titled Far-Future Commitments as a Policy Consensus Strategy. Read that first if you'd like. But the basic idea is that we can pass otherwise unpassable policies by agreeing today...

In government, it’s not just a matter of having the best policy; it’s about getting enough votes. This creates a problem when the self-interests of individual voters don’t match the best interests of the country. For instance, voting researchers widely consider the presidential voting system in America to be inferior...

Read Part 1 for more background. Let’s get on track If we’re going to understand what constitutes good policy, we need to understand what constitutes a good moral theory. We can gain some insights from looking at the practices of moral philosophy. Yes, you knew damn well that when we...

(Note that while I’ll frame everything in terms of government policy, all of this theory really applies to any form of decision-making, including that of an artificial intelligence. So if government is not your jam, please don’t get turned off by all the policy talk. The theory I’ve laid out...

Anecdotes can be weak evidence We all know that a lot of people overvalue their N=1 self-study: “I started eating only meat and my arthritis was cured!” Unfortunately, the weakness of this data is often attributed to the fact that it is an anecdote, and so, anecdotes are wrongly vilified...

If someone knows the best way for an Australian to buy US Put options, please let me know. This post is somewhat unfinished, unedited, and much less detailed than I wanted it to be due me changing jobs. Empirical prediction My credence that the S&P 500 index will drop below...

Crosspost from the EA Forum. Why think about goalsets? Societies need many distinct systems: a transport system, a school system, etc. These systems cannot be justified if they are amoral, so they must serve morality. Each system cannot, however, achieve the best moral outcome on its own: If your transport...