Hello!
Our favorite links this month include:
- Announcements ⬇️ including
- Articles ⬇️ on topics like
— Lizka (for the EA Newsletter Team)
P.S. This newsletter comes two weeks late — I’m sorry if that’s caused any inconvenience!
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Articles ⚓
What matters to animals? And how much does it matter? (Shrimp: a case study)
(Why should we care? They’re shrimp!)
Almost all past societies had practices that seemed normal and fine to people at the time but which, from our point of view, seem like moral atrocities. The philosopher Evan G. Williams has used this to argue for the possibility of an ongoing moral catastrophe (here’s a summary) and has suggested some paths forward. One is to research practical fields where we could be critically wrong (like animal consciousness) and connect that to research in moral philosophy (like understanding whether animals are morally important if they’re conscious).
Over 50 billion animals go through factory farms every year, but that doesn’t count most aquatic animals. Shrimp alone are farmed at a rate of between 300 billion and 400 billion every year. Their experience and what we can or should do about it is poorly understood, so it’s really exciting to see work on crucial questions like what significantly affects their well-being.
A recent report on different factors that matter to shrimp claims that “eye ablation” — crushing or cutting off one of the eyestalks of female shrimps to produce more eggs — is harmful for shrimp welfare. Shrimps recoil during the process, flick their tails and rub the area of the wound, and respond to anesthetic, suggesting that ablation causes pain and distress. The authors are confident that besides eye ablation, overcrowding is bad for shrimp welfare (overcrowding led to aggressive behavior and symptoms of stress), water quality matters significantly (lack of oxygen led to reduced feeding and physical discoloration), and several other factors are critical. You can find more, including open questions, in the report from Rethink Priorities.
Thoughts on the FTX collapse
On November 11, the cryptocurrency exchange FTX declared bankruptcy, and its then-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) appears to have made decisions that were seriously harmful. If newspaper reports are accurate, customer deposits that were meant to be safely held by FTX were being improperly used to make risky investments that left FTX owing billions of dollars more than it had. “These reported actions are appalling,” writes Benjamin Hilton for 80,000 Hours. You can see more of their takeaways and thoughts in their newsletter this week.
This news is highly relevant for those involved in effective altruism because SBF had pledged to give 99% of his wealth to charity, and a number of projects had benefited from grants from FTX — or were expecting them. There’s a lot of discussion about this on the EA Forum.
The Centre for Effective Altruism, which runs this newsletter, also released a statement on November 12, which includes: “Effective altruism requires integrity. It has always been a movement committed to tackling the world’s problems through reason, research, evidence and truth. [...] If Sam Bankman-Fried, and other FTX executives, were involved in lying to, or defrauding, customers then they were not acting in accordance with the principles of effective altruism. The alleged activity could not be further from our values as an organisation and has no place within our community.”
AI experts are increasingly afraid of what they’re creating
A Vox article discusses the rapid progress of advanced AI (artificial intelligence) systems at a range of tasks — from translation, to art, to coding and even lying and manipulation — and why this progress is worrying experts. Existing AI systems remain limited, but the financial incentives for improving them are strong, so these limits will likely be surpassed soon (as have past limits); billions of dollars are being poured into the development of even more powerful systems.
Nearly half of the experts who responded to a recent survey said that there’s at least a 1 in 10 chance that AI leads to “an extremely bad outcome” like human extinction. Given this, the Vox article notes, it “might seem bizarre [...] that the industry has been basically left to self-regulate.”
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In other news
For more stories, try these email newsletters and podcasts.
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Resources
Links we share every time — they're just that good!
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Jobs
Boards and resources:
- The 80,000 Hours Job Board features more than 600 positions. We can’t fit them all in the newsletter, so you can check them out there.
- The EA Opportunity Board collects internships, volunteer opportunities, conferences, and more — including part-time and entry-level job opportunities.
- You can see more positions in the EA Job Postings group on Facebook.
- If you’re interested in policy or global development, you may also want to check Tom Wein’s list of social purpose job boards.
Assorted positions
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Announcements ⚓
Giving season has kicked off with Effective Giving Day, a new subforum, and many updated charity recommendations
It’s giving season!
You can…
Take the EA survey
Consider taking 10 minutes to fill out this year’s EA survey — no matter how involved you are with effective altruism (even if you just learned about it).
Take the survey by 31 December.
The EA survey helps us get a clearer picture of what the effective altruism community works on, prioritizes, and cares about — and how it could improve. (You can see the results of past years’ surveys here.)
Winter opportunities for students
- The Good Futures Initiative is a 4.5-week internship that runs in December and January for students who want to upskill, test their fit for career aptitudes, or do impactful work over winter break. There will be a small stipend and funds for running projects. You can apply and see more details here. Apply by 11 December.
- The Cambridge AI Safety Hub is running a winter ML upskilling camp from 2 to 10 January for people interested in working on AI safety. You can apply and see more details here. Apply by 18 December.
As always, more opportunities for students can be found on the EA Opportunity Board.
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Organizational Updates
You can see updates from a wide range of organizations on the EA Forum.
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Timeless classic: Why "scout mindset" is crucial to good judgment
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a soldier in the heat of battle. [...] Your reflexes are rooted in a need to protect yourself and your side and to defeat the enemy. [...] Now I’d like you to imagine playing a very different role: that of the scout. The scout’s job is not to attack or defend, the scout’s job is to understand. [...] The scout may hope to learn, that, say, there’s a bridge in a convenient location across the river. But above all, the scout wants to know what’s really there, as accurate as possible.
In this TEDx talk from 2016, Julia Galef argues that the “scout mindset” is crucial to good judgment. You can also read her book, The Scout Mindset (here’s an outline).
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We hope you found this edition useful!
If you’ve taken action because of the Newsletter and haven’t taken our impact survey, please do — it helps us improve future editions.
Finally, if you have feedback for us, positive or negative, let us know!
– The Effective Altruism Newsletter Team |
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