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Has a good personality 'fit' with Bostrom
It would probably make sense to be more specific, so that potential applicants can decide whether they fit the role.
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Could you be Prof Nick Bostrom's sidekick?
I think it'll be faster to get a sense of that from a personal conversation.
The point of writing an ad like that is to be appealing to people who would fit the job and not be appealing to people who wouldn't.
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.
Could you be Prof Nick Bostrom's sidekick?
If funding were available, the Centre for Effective Altruism would consider hiring someone to work closely with Prof Nick Bostrom to provide anything and everything he needs to be more productive. Bostrom is obviously the Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, and author of Superintelligence, the best guide yet to the possible risks posed by artificial intelligence.
Nobody has yet confirmed they will fund this role, but we are nevertheless interested in getting expressions of interest from suitable candidates.
The list of required characteristics is hefty, and the position would be a challenging one:
- Willing to commit to the role for at least a year, and preferably several
- Able to live and work in Oxford during this time
- Conscientious and discreet
- Trustworthy
- Able to keep flexible hours (some days a lot of work, others not much)
- Highly competent at almost everything in life (for example, organising travel, media appearances, choosing good products, and so on)
- Will not screw up and look bad when dealing with external parties (e.g. media, event organisers, the university)
- Has a good personality 'fit' with Bostrom
- Willing to do some tasks that are not high-status
- Willing to help Bostrom with both his professional and personal life (to free up his attention)
- Can speak English well
- Knowledge of rationality, philosophy and artificial intelligence would also be helpful, and would allow you to also do more work as a research assistant.
The research Bostrom can do is unique; to my knowledge we don't have anyone who has made such significant strides clarifying the biggest risks facing humanity as a whole. As a result, helping increase Bostrom's output by say, 20%, would be a major contribution. This person's work would also help the rest of the Future of Humanity Institute run smoothly.
The role would offer significant skill development in operations, some skill development in communications and research, and the chance to build extensive relationships with the people and organisations working on existential risks.
If you would like to know more, or be added to the list of potential candidates, please email me: robert [dot] wiblin [at] centreforeffectivealtruism [dot] org. Feel free to share this post around.
Note that we are also hiring for a bunch of other roles, with applications closing Friday the 12th December.
Well, not quite. If you think being dead has positive utility for this creature, this positive utility is not necessarily small. If so, you need to weight the issues in killing against that positive utility.
For example, let's take "death is painless" -- actually, if the negative utility of the painful death is not as great as the positive utility of dying, you would still be justified and obligated to impose that painful death upon the creature as the net result is positive utility.
I was just giving what would be sufficient conditions, but they aren't all necessarily necessary.
Isn't a direct consequence of (2) is that those animals are better off dead than alive and so, if the opportunity to (relatively costlessly) kill some of them arises, one should do so?
If you can't otherwise improve their lives, the death is painless, and murder isn't independently bad.
Is farm chicken life is worth living?
I have no idea what that question even means. I don't want to save the Bengal tiger because I think it has a "life worth living" but because I want the species to flourish.
But to the extent that you are concerned that battery chickens have negative lives, why become a vegetarian? Eat free range meat. Or eat only hunted meat. And why make a fuss about trace amounts of meat products in your cheese or whatever? 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 and also cash out that concern by a dietary purity ritual? Were I a cynic, I might even think that the religious-seeming ritual were the whole point, and the elaborate epicyclical theology built around it a mere after-the-fact justification.
"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.
I found attempts to follow a vegetarian or vegan diet dramatically reduced my quality of life. Especially veganism was almost unbearable. I couldn't even have a slice of pizza or an ice cream cone! given my experience unless I was 100% convinced I was absolutely obligated to become a vegetarian/vegan I would not do so.
I do however donate 10% of my pre-tax income to developing nations. Which works out to a very large (imo) percentage of my take home pay. I also find this rather unpleasant and distressing but arguments on lesswrong convinced me I was basically obligated to do it. And losing 10% of my pre-tax income is far less painful then giving up meat and vastly less painful than giving up meat + dairy.
It is interesting people have such different internal reactions.
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).
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The Centre for Effective Altruism is hiring to fill five roles in research, operations and outreach
If I'm unsure what position I would be most suited for can I apply for several?
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The Centre for Effective Altruism is hiring to fill five roles in research, operations and outreach
Yes, you can apply for whatever combination of positions you like.
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The Centre for Effective Altruism is hiring to fill five roles in research, operations and outreach
Presumably, it's necessary to be able to move to Oxford?
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The Centre for Effective Altruism is hiring to fill five roles in research, operations and outreach
If not immediately, then at some point, yes.
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(Also - general question: why do people not always put this information on Worker Wanted ads, in a visible fashion? Not putting up this info seems to be the standard thing for non-hourly job postings, and I'm not sure why. It seems like one of the most important things.)
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.