RobertWiblin

Karma: 384

RobertWiblin 31 Jan 2018 2:42 UTC
1 point
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on: A LessWrong Crypto Autopsy
1: Our epistemic rationality has probably gotten way ahead of our instrumental rationality
I would defend the instrumental rationality of having a rule of thumb that unless you’re quite wealthy, you don’t bother looking into anything that appears to be a ‘get rich quick’ scheme, or seek to invest in high-risk high-return projects you can’t evaluate.
Yes sometimes it will fail big, if you miss the boat on bitcoin, or Facebook or whatever. Every strategy fails in some scenarios. Sometimes betting it all on 23 red will have been the right call.
But because it i) lowers risk, ii) saves you wasting time looking into lots of dud investments to find the occasional good one, iii) makes you less of a mark for scams and delusions, I think it’s sensible for most.

RobertWiblin 31 Jan 2018 2:23 UTC
11 points
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in reply to: gjm’s comment on: A LessWrong Crypto Autopsy
From a selfish point of view, I don’t think most rationalists would benefit significantly from a bit of extra money, so it doesn’t make much sense to be dedicating their truly precious resource (time and attention) to identifying high-risk high-return investments like bitcoin and in this case figuring out how to buy/store them safely. And I’m someone who bought bitcoin for the sake of entertainment.
From an altruistic point of view, yes I expect hundreds of millions of dollars to be donated, and the current flow is consistent with that—I know of 5 million in the last few months, and there’s probably more than hasn’t been declared.
“then it’s no longer so plausible that “hundreds of millions is a substantial fraction as good as billions”.”
At the full community level the marginal returns on further donations also declines, though more slowly: https://80000hours.org/2017/11/talent-gaps-survey-2017/#how-diminishing-are-returns-in-the-community

RobertWiblin 30 Jan 2018 14:35 UTC
19 points
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on: A LessWrong Crypto Autopsy
Collectively the community has made hundreds of millions from cypto. But it did so by getting a few wealthy people to buy many bitcoin, rather than many people to buy a few bitcoin. This is a more efficient model because it avoids big fixed costs for each individual.
It also avoid everyone in the community having to dedicate some of their attention to thinking about what outstanding investment opportunities might be available today.
Due to declining marginal returns, hundreds of millions is a substantial fraction as good as billions. So I think we did alright.

RobertWiblin 21 Apr 2017 20:01 UTC
14 points
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on: Effective altruism is self-recommending
“After they were launched, I got a marketing email from 80,000 Hours saying something like, “Now, a more effective way to give.” (I’ve lost the exact email, so I might be misremembering the wording.) This is not a response to demand, it is an attempt to create demand by using 80,000 Hours’s authority, telling people that the funds are better than what they’re doing already. ”

I write the 80,000 Hours newsletter and it hasn’t yet mentioned EA Funds. It would be good if you could correct that.

RobertWiblin 29 Jan 2017 0:26 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: 9eB1’s comment on: 80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes
“If we could somehow install Holden Karnofsky as president it would probably improve the lives of a billion people”

Amusingly, our suggestion of these two charities is entirely syndicated from a blog post put up by Holden Karnofsky himself: http://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/suggestions-individual-donors-open-philanthropy-project-staff-2016

RobertWiblin 29 Jan 2017 0:24 UTC
11 points
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on: 80,000 Hours: EA and Highly Political Causes
Thanks for your interest in our work.

As we say in the post, on this and most problem areas 80,000 Hours defers charity recommendations to experts on that particular cause (see: What resources did we draw on?). In this case our suggestion is based entirely on the suggestion of Chloe Cockburn, the Program Officer for Criminal Justice Reform at the Open Philanthropy Project, who works full time on that particular problem area and knows much more than any of us about what is likely to work.

To questions like “does 80,000 Hours have view X that would make sense of this” or “is 80,000 Hours intending to do X”—the answer is that we don’t really have an independent view on any of these things. We’re just syndicating content from someone we perceive to be an authority (just as we do when we include GiveWell’s recommended charities without having independently investigated them). I thought the article was very clear about this, but perhaps we needed to make it even more so in case people skipped down to a particular section without reading the preamble.

If you want to get these charities removed then you’d need to speak with Chloe. If she changes her suggestions—or another similar authority on this topic appears and offers a contrary view—then that would change what we include.

Regarding why we didn’t recommend the Center for Criminal Justice Reform: again, that is entirely because it wasn’t on the Open Philanthropy Project’s list of suggestions for individual donors. Presumably that is because they felt their own grant—which you approve of—had filled their current funding needs.

All the best,

Rob

RobertWiblin 20 Jul 2015 1:57 UTC
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in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: 4 days left in Giving What We Can’s 2015 fundraiser - £34k to go
Yes, thanks so much to everyone who contributed! :)

RobertWiblin 27 Jun 2015 0:09 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: ESRogs’s comment on: Giving What We Can needs your help!
Hi Eric—no they don’t!

RobertWiblin 29 May 2015 16:32 UTC
7 points
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on: Giving What We Can needs your help!
This fundraiser has been promoted on the Effective Altruism Forum already, so you may find your questions answered on the thread:

http://effective-altruism.com/ea/hz/please_support_giving_what_we_can_this_spring/

http://effective-altruism.com/ea/j9/giving_what_we_can_needs_your_help/

RobertWiblin 27 May 2015 12:38 UTC
7 points
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on: Six Ways To Get Along With People Who Are Totally Wrong*
I’ll re-post this comment as well:

“If I was going to add another I think it would be
1. Have fun
Talking to people who really disagree with you can represent a very enjoyable intellectual exploration if you approach it the right way. Detach yourself from your own opinions, circumstances and feelings and instead view the conversation as a neutral observer who was just encountering the debate for the first time. Appreciate the time the other person is putting into expressing their points. Reflect on how wrong most people have been throughout history and how hard it is to be confident about anything. Don’t focus just yet on the consequences or social desirability of the different views being expressed—just evaluate how true they seem to be on their merits. Sometimes this perspective is described as ‘being philosophical’.”

RobertWiblin 18 Jan 2015 22:05 UTC
15 points
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in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: [Link] An argument on colds
When someone has an incurable and lethal respiratory illness, I think we do require them to stay in quarantine and this is broadly accepted. The reason this doesn’t apply to HIV and other such diseases is that they are barely contagious.

RobertWiblin 18 Jan 2015 21:15 UTC
10 points
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in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: [Link] An argument on colds
Well I wasn’t proposing a strict quarantine or limits on travel. Merely preventing people from coming into close contact with colleagues at work where the risk of contagion is highest, and requiring them to have the option to reschedule their (expensive) travel. People are already familiar and comfortable with regulations in workplaces and aviation.

If I were proposing a thoroughgoing quarantine, I expect people wouldn’t be nearly as enthusiastic.

RobertWiblin 13 Dec 2014 12:24 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: seez’s comment on: Could you be Prof Nick Bostrom’s sidekick?
Thanks for the feedback.

Note it was also the most popular post on the Facebook group (as measured by likes) in almost two weeks, so clearly some other members thought this was a sensible proposal.

I can see how it could come across as ‘hero worship’, except that Bostrom is indeed a widely-recognised world-leading academic at the highest ranked philosophy department in the world. There are sound reasons to be respectful of his work.

“sexual innuendo”

I can assure you the intended level of sexual innuendo in this ad is less than zero.

RobertWiblin 8 Dec 2014 15:31 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: someonewrongonthenet’s comment on: Could you be Prof Nick Bostrom’s sidekick?
As we have not secured funding yet it would be premature to do either of these things. We can negotiate a salary later on in the process depending on the person’s qualifications.

RobertWiblin 5 Dec 2014 14:57 UTC
7 points
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in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Could you be Prof Nick Bostrom’s sidekick?
I think it’ll be faster to get a sense of that from a personal conversation.

RobertWiblin 5 Dec 2014 13:02 UTC
13 points
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in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Could you be Prof Nick Bostrom’s sidekick?
Exactly—if anything I am trying to make the job seem less appealing than it will be, so we attract only the right kind of person.

RobertWiblin 24 Nov 2014 22:27 UTC
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in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: When should an Effective Altruist be vegetarian?
I was just giving what would be sufficient conditions, but they aren’t all necessarily necessary.

RobertWiblin 24 Nov 2014 20:24 UTC
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in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: When should an Effective Altruist be vegetarian?
If you can’t otherwise improve their lives, the death is painless, and murder isn’t independently bad.

RobertWiblin 24 Nov 2014 18:58 UTC
10 points
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in reply to: Salemicus’s comment on: When should an Effective Altruist be vegetarian?
“Isn’t it suspicious that people who make the strange claim that animals count as objects of moral concern also make the strange claim that animal lives aren’t worth living”

No, this makes perfect sense. 1. They decide animals are objects of moral concern. 2. Look into the conditions they live in, and decide that in some cases they are worse than not being alive. 3. Decide it’s wrong to fund expansion of a system that holds animals in conditions that are worse than not being alive at all.

RobertWiblin 24 Nov 2014 18:44 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Princess_Stargirl’s comment on: When should an Effective Altruist be vegetarian?
For what it’s worth, I’ve found being vegetarian almost no effort at all. Being vegan is a noticeable inconvenience, especially cutting out the last bits of dairy (and that shows up in your examples, which are both about dairy).