All of Tristan Williams's Comments + Replies

This post didn't do well in the games of LessWrong karma, but it was probably the most personally fruitful use of my time on the site in 2023. It helped me clarify my own views which I had already formed but hadn't put to paper, or cohered properly. 

I also got to think about the movement as a whole, and really enjoyed some of what Elizabeth had to share. Particularly I remember her commentary on the lack of positivity in the movement, and have taken that to heart and really thought about how I can add more positivity in. 

When thinking on this, you seriously do not think that one candidate will be better than the other? Your world view doesn't bring you to a view where one is even a slightly better candidate?

-2lc
I think there's a small expected value difference between the two candidates, but I am simply too disgusted to care. We need to overthrow the government or primary systems and replace it something that manages offer us people who are under the age of 75.

Mmm okay a bit confused by the thrust of the first bit. Is it that you wish to set yourself apart from my view because you see it unavoidably leading to untenable positions (like self-extinguishing)?

Jumping to the rest of it, I liked how you put the latter option for the positioning of the shepard. I'm not sure the feeling out of the "shepard impulse" is something where the full sort of appreciation I think is important has come out.

But I think you're right to point towards a general libertarian viewpoint as a crux here, because I'm relatively willing to r... (read more)

Thanks for the continued dialogue, happy to jump back in :)

I think it's very reasonable to take a "what would they consent to" perspective, and I do think this sort of set up would likely lead you to a world where humane executions and lives off the factory farm were approved of. But I guess I'd turn back to my originial point that this sort of relation seems apt to encourage a certain relation to the animal that I think will be naturally unstable and will naturally undermine a caring relationship with that animal. 

Perhaps I just have a dash too much ... (read more)

8Vaniver
I wrote this post on and off over the course of a morning, and towards the end of it realized: I'm reading you as saying "eating others is inherently not ok" but I would like it to be ok or not contingent on some other facts (like the absence of suffering, or hypothetical net preference, or the ability of people to not have their souls corrupted by carnivorism, or so on) and the generalization of that reasoning to not have terrible consequences elsewhere. (For example, if you think pleasure can't outweigh suffering, then it seems like having kids at all is indefensible, which is a self-extinguishing moral position; if you think something that taken seriously implies it's not even ok to eat plants, then that's even more self-extinguishing.) I'll still post the rest of the comment I wrote, which responds to you in more detail, but that seems like the most important piece. There's a tumblr post where someone talks about immediately feeling the shepherd impulse when interacting with sheep, a bunch of people like the post, someone points out "how many of you eat lamb", and then the original poster responds with "The ancient shepherds I’m referencing also ate lamb lol" My sense is that there's a few ways to take this. One of them is "actually the emotional gymnastics is not that complicated!", and another is "actually those ancient shepherds also probably abused their wives and thought slavery was fine when it happened to someone else and mistreated their animals, according to our standards; parents caring about their children / guardians caring about their wards is really not sufficient to guarantee good outcomes or license those relationships." I infer your position is closer to the latter but it really feels like it should be possible to have gains from trade, here. [And, like, one of the downsides of specialization is that it drives people both unusually interested and unusually disinterested in animal welfare into the 'works with animals' business, which is prob

Garrett responded to the main thrust well, but I will say that watermarking synthetic media seems fairly good as a next step for combating misinformation from AI imo. It's certainly widely applicable (not really even sure what the thrust of this distinction was) because it is meant to apply to nearly all synthetic content. Why exactly do you think it won't be helpful?

1followthesilence
I agree, I was trying to highlight it as one of the most specific, useful policies from the EO. Understand the confusion given my comment was skeptical overall.

Yeah, I think the reference class for me here is other things the executive branch might have done, which leads me to "wow, this was way more than I expected". 

Worth noting is that they at least are trying to address deception by including it in the full bill readout. The type of model they hope to regulate here include those that permit "the evasion of human control or oversight through means of deception or obfuscation". The director of the OMB also has to come up with tests and safeguards for "discriminatory, misleading, inflammatory, unsafe, or deceptive outputs".

3GeneSmith
Wow, that's actually great!

(k)  The term “dual-use foundation model” means an AI model that is trained on broad data; generally uses self-supervision; contains at least tens of billions of parameters; is applicable across a wide range of contexts; and that exhibits, or could be easily modified to exhibit, high levels of performance at tasks that pose a serious risk to security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters, such as by:

          (i)    substantially lowering the barr... (read more)

1M. Y. Zuo
Wouldn't this include most, if not all, uncensored LLMs? And thus any person/organization working on them?

Hmm, I get the idea that people value succinctness a lot with these sorts of things, because there's so much AI information to take in now, so I'm not so sure about the net effect, but I'm wondering maybe if I could get at your concern here by mocking up a percentage (i.e. what percentage of the proposals were risk oriented vs progress oriented)?

It wouldn't tell you the type of stuff the Biden administration is pushing, but it would tell you the ratio which is what you seem perhaps most concerned with.

[Edit] this is included now

What alternative would you propose? I don't really like mundane risk but agree that an alternative would be better. For now I'll just change to "non-existential risk actions" 

This is where I'd like to insert a meme with some text like "did you even read the post?" You:

  • Make a bunch of claims that you fail to support, like at all
  • Generally go in for being inflammatory by saying "it's not a priority in any meaningful value system" i.e. "if you value this then your system of meaning in the world is in fact shit and not meaningful"
  • Pull the classic "what I'm saying is THE truth and whatever comes (the downvotes) will be a product of peoples denial of THE truth" which means anyone who responds you'll likely just point to and say someth
... (read more)

I don't think we can rush to judgement on your character so quick. My ability to become a vegan, or rather to at least take this step in trying to be that sort of person, was heavily intertwined with some environmental factors. I grew up on a farm, so I experienced some of what people talk about first hand. Even though I didn't process it as something overall bad at the time, a part of me was unsettled, and I think I drew pretty heavily on that memory and being there in my vegan transition period. 

I guess the point is something like you can't just bec... (read more)

Have no idea what it entails but I enjoy conversing and learning more about the world, so I'd happy do a dialogue! Happy to keep it in the clouds too.

But yeah you make a good point. I mean, I'm not convinced what the proper schelling point is, and would eagerly eat up any research on this. Maybe what I think is that for a specific group of people like me (no idea what exactly defines that group) it makes sense, but that generally what's going to make sense for a person has to be quite tailored to their own situation and traits. 

I would push back on th... (read more)

Thanks for such an in depth and wonderful response, I have a couple of questions.

On 1. Perhaps the biggest reason I've stayed away from Pomodors is the question of how much time for breaks you can take before you need to start logging it as a reduction in time worked. Where have you come out on that debate? I.e. maybe you've found increased productivity makes the breaks totally worth it and this hasn't really been an issue for you.

On 3. How are you strict with your weekends? The vibe I get from the rest is that normally you make sure what you're doing is r... (read more)

Sure, sure. I'm not saying there isn't perhaps an extreme wing, I just think it's quite important to say this isn't the average, and highlight that the majority of vegans have a view more like the one I mentioned above.

I think this is a distinction worth making, because when you collapse everyone into one camp, you begin to alienate the majority that actually more or less agrees with you. I don't know what the term for the group you're talking about is, but maybe evangelical vegans isn't a bad term to use for now.

First thanks for your kind words, they were nice to receive :) 

But I also think this is wonderfully put, and I think you're right to point to your feelings on truth as similar. As truth for you, life to me is sacred, and I think I generally build a lot of my world out of that basic fact. I would note that I think one another's values are likely important for us to, as truth is also really important to me and I value honestly and not lying more than most people I know. And on the flipside I imagine that you value life quite a bit. 

But looking at t... (read more)

9Elizabeth
LessWrong is launching Dialogues pretty soon, would you be interested in doing one together? I'm most interested in high level "how do you navigate when two good principles conflict?" than object level vegan questions, but probably that would come up. An unnuanced teaser for this would be "I don't think a world where humans are Bad as a whole makes sense".  On a practical level: * I think you speak of veganism as the sustainable shelling point with more certainty than is warranted. How do you know it's less sustainable, for everyone, than ameliatarianism or reducitarianism? How do you know that the highest EV is pushing veganism-as-ideal harder, rather than socially coordinate around "medical meat"? * I think "no animal products via the mouth" is a much more arbitrary line than is commonly considered, especially if you look at it on purely utilitarian grounds. What about sugar sifted through bones? Why isn't "no vertebrates" sustainable?  What about glue in shoes? What about products produced in factories that use rat poison? * Vegetarianism seems like a terrible compromise shelling point. My understanding is that most eggs are more suffering per calorie or nutrient than beef. But vegetarian is (currently) an easier line than milk-and-beef-but-not-eggs-or-chickens.  * I knew a guy who went vegetarian for ethical reasons before learning all of the math. He chose to stay vegetarian after learning how bad eggs were, because he was worried that he couldn't reconfigure himself a second time and if he tried he'd slide all the way back into eating meat. * When I've asked other people about this they answer based on the vegans they knew. But that's inherently a biased group. It includes current vegans who socialize in animal-focused spaces. Assuming that's true, why should that apply to vegans who don't hang out in those spaces, much less omnivores considering reducitarianism? * It's not obvious to me our protect-at-all-costs attitude towards young childre

I think the first paragraph is well put, and do agree that my camp is likely more apt to be evangelical. But I also want to say that I don't think the second paragraph is quite representative. I know approximately 0 vegans that support the "cross the line once" philosophy. I think the current status quo is something much closer to what you imagine in the second to last sentence, where the recommendation that's most often come to me is "look, as long as you are really thinking about it and trying to do what's best not just for you but for the animals as wel... (read more)

2Elizabeth
I have seen a lot of stones cast about this. I'd believe that the 50th percentile vegan doesn't, but in practice the ones who care a lot are the ones potential reducitarians hear from. 

What Elizabeth had to say here is broadly right. See my comment above, for some more in depth reasoning as to why I think the opposite may be true, but basically I think that the sort of loving relationship formed with other animals that I imagine as the thing that holds together commitment over a long period of time, over a large range of hard circumstances, is tricky to create when you don't go full on. I have no idea what's sustainable for you though, and want to emphasize that whatever works to reduce is something I'm happy with, so I'm quite glad for ... (read more)

While I think the environmental sustainability angle is also an active thing to think about here (because beef potentially involves less suffering for the animals, but relatively more harm to the environment), I did actually intend sustainability in the spirit of "able to stick with it for a long period of time" or something like that. Probably could have been clearer. 

Just posted a comment in part in response to you (but not enough to post it as a response) and would love to have your thoughts!

[Forum Repost] Didn't catch this until just now, but happy to see the idea expanded a bit more! I'll have to sit down and think on it longer, but I did have some immediate thoughts. 

I guess at its core I'm unsure what exactly a proper balance of thinking about folk ethics[1] (or commonsense good) and reasoned ethics[2] (or creative good) is, when exactly you should engage in each. You highlight the content, that reasoned ethics should be brought in for the big decisions, those with longevity generally. And Ana starts to map this out a bit fu... (read more)

Thanks for this response; I find it helpful.

Reading it over, I want to distinguish between:

  • a) Relatively thoughtless application of heuristics; (system-1integrated + fast)
  • b) Taking time to reflect and notice how things seem to you once you've had more space for reflection, for taking in other peoples' experiences, for noticing what still seems to matter once you've fallen out of the day-to-day urgencies, and for tuning into the "still, quiet voice" of conscience; (system-1-integrated + slow, after a pause)
  • c) Ethical reasoning (system-2-heavy, medium-paced
... (read more)

See below if you'd like an in depth look at my way of thinking, but I defiantly see the analogy and suppose I just think of it a bit differently myself. Can I ask how long you've been vegetarian? And how you've come to the decision as to which animals lives you think are net positive?

5jacquesthibs
5 and half years. Didn’t do it sooner because I was concerned about nutrition and don’t trust vegans/vegetarians to give truthful advice. I used various statistics on number of deaths, adjusted for sentience, and more. Looked at articles like this: https://www.vox.com/2015/7/31/9067651/eggs-chicken-effective-altruism

Yeah sure. I would need a full post to explain myself, but basically I think that what seems to be really important when going vegan is standing in a certain sort of loving relationship to animals, one that isn't grounded in utility but instead a strong (but basic) appreciation and valuing of the other. But let me step back for a minute.

I guess the first time I thought about this was with my university EA group. We had a couple of hardcore utilitarians, and one of them brought up an interesting idea one night. He was a vegan, but he'd been offered some mac... (read more)

Elizabeth*163

Thank you. This was educational for me, and also just beautifully put.

I have two responses, one on practicalities and one on moral philosophy. My guess is the practical issues aren't your cruxes, so I'm going to put those aside for now to focus on the moral issue. 

you say:
 

one that isn't grounded in utility but instead a strong (but basic) appreciation and valuing of the other. But let me step back for a minute.

[...]

what I'd love to see one day is a posturing towards eating animals like our posturing towards child abuse, a very basic, loving expr

... (read more)

Are there any hopes to get this updated again or is this on the backburner now?

Are there any hopes to get this updated again or is this on the backburner now?

Ah okay cool, so you have a certain threshold for harm and just don't consume anything above that. I've found this approach really interesting and have recommended others against because I've worried about it's sustainability, but do you think it's been a good path for you?

4Pee Doom
Cutting out bird and seafood products (ameliatarianism) is definitely more sustainable for me. I'm very confused why you would think it's less sustainable than, uh, 'cold turkey' veganism. "Just avoid chicken/eggs" (since I don't like seafood or the other types of bird meat products) is way easier than "avoid all meat, also milk, also cheese".
6Elizabeth
  This argument came up a lot during the facebook debate days, could you say more about why you believe it?

I’m not sure why you’d think it’s less sustainable than veganism. In my mind, it’s effective because it is sustainable and reduces most of the suffering. Just like how EA tries to be effective (and sustainable) by not telling people to donate massive amounts of their income (just a small-ish percentage that works for them to the most effective charities), I see my approach as the same. It’s the sweet-spot between reducing suffering and sustainability (for me).

Did you go vegetarian because you thought it was specifically healthier than going vegan?

7jacquesthibs
Yes and no. No because I figured most of the reduction in suffering came from not eating meat and eggs (I stopped eating eggs even tho most vegetarians do). So I felt it was a good spot to land and not be too much effort for me.

What do you feel like your plan is now moving forward? Like do you have a specific subsect of this you hope to try out?

4Chi Nguyen
First of all:  Thanks for asking. I was being lazy with this and your questions forced me to come up with a response which forced me to actually think about my plan. Concrete changes 1) I'm currently doing week-daily in-person Pomodoro co-working with a friend, but I had planned that before this post IIRC, and definitely know for a while that that's a huge boost for me. In-person co-working and the type of work I do seem somewhat situational/hard to sustain/hard to quickly change sometimes. For some reason, (perhaps because I feel a bit meh about virtual co-working) I've never tried Focusmate and this made me more likely to try it in the future if and when my in-person co-working fizzled out. 2) The things that were a high mix of resonating with me and new were "Identifying as hard-working" and "Finding ways of reframing work as non-work" (I was previously aware that often things would be fun if I didn't think of them as work and are "Ugh" as soon as there are work, but just knowing that there is another person who is successfully managing this property of theirs is really encouraging and helpful for thinking about solutions to this.) Over the last few months, I've introduced the habit of checking in with myself at various times during the day and especially when I'm struggling with something (kind of spontaneous mini meditations). I'm hoping that I can piggy-back on that to try out the identity and reframing thing. (Although this comment just prompted be to actually go and write those down on post-its and hang them where I can see them, so I don't forget, so thanks for asking!) 3) I am currently testing out having a productive hobby for my weekends. (This ties into not reframing work things as "not work".  Also, I am often strict with my weekends in a way that I wanna experiment with relaxing given one of the responses I got.  Also prompted by the concept of doing something enjoyable and rewarding to regenerate instead of resting.) I'll monitor the effects on

How exactly do you come to "up to and including acts of war"? His writing here was concise due to it being TIME, which meant he probably couldn't caveat things in the way that protects him against EAs/Rationalists picking apart his individual claims bit by bit. But from what I understand of Yudkowsky, he doesn't seem to in spirit necessarily support an act of war here, largely I think for similar reasons as you mention below for individual violence, as the negative effects of this action may be larger than the positive and thus make it somewhat ineffective. 

2. What is Overton's window? Otherwise I think I probably agree, but one question is, once this non-x-risk campaign is underway, how to you keep it on track and prevent value drift? Or do you not see that as a pressing worry?

3. Cool, will have to check that out.

4. Completely agree, and just wonder what the best way to promote less distancing is. 

Yeah, I suppose I'm just trying to put myself in the shoes of the FHI people here that coordinated this and feel like many comments here are a bit more lacking in compassion than I'd like, especially for more ... (read more)

The LessWrong comments here are generally (quite) (brutal), and I think I disagree, which I'll try to outline very briefly below. But I think it may be generally more fruitful here to ask some questions I had to break down the possible subpoints of disagreement as to the goodness of this letter. 

I expected some negative reaction because I know that Elon is generally looked down upon by the EAs that I know, with some solid backing to those claims when it comes to AI given that he cofounded OpenAI, but with the (immediate) (press) (attention) it's getti... (read more)

8Qumeric
2. I think non-x-risk focused messages are a good idea because: * It is much easier to reach a wide audience this way. * It is clear that there are significant and important risks even if we completely exclude x-risk. We should have this discussion even in a world where for some reason we could be certain that humanity will survive for the next 100 years. * It widens Overton's window. x-risk is still mostly considered to be a fringe position among the general public, although the situation has improved somewhat. 3. There were cases when it worked well. For example, the Letter of three hundred. 4. I don't know much about EA's concerns about Elon. Intuitively, he seems to be fine. But I think that in general, people are more biased towards too much distancing which often hinders coordination a lot.   5. I think more signatures cannot make things worse if authors are handling them properly. Just rough sorting by credentials (as FLI does) may be already good enough. But it's possible and easy to be more aggressive here.   I agree that it's unlikely that this letter will be net bad and that it's possible it can make a significant positive impact. However, I don't think people argued that it can be bad. Instead, people argued it could be better. It's clearly not possible to do something like this every month, so it's better to put a lot of attention to details and think really carefully about content and timing.