OMG why doesn’t every menu do this?

>be me >discover effective altruism >apparently normal charity is inefficient >why donate to random sad thing when spreadsheet can tell you optimal sad thing >fair enough >buy mosquito nets >save lives >numbers look good >feel powerful >couple years later >someone asks an innocent question >why only count people alive today >huh >future people matter too >obviously >my grandchildren shouldn't matter less just because they haven't spawned yet >reasonable.jpg >keep following logic >what about their grandchildren >also yes >what about people in 500 years >sure >5000 years >why not >500 million years >starting to get weird but morality is morality >open calculator >humanity could survive for an astronomically long time >could colonize galaxy >could have trillions upon trillions of descendants >maybe digital people too >maybe simulated civilizations >maybe dyson spheres full of happy uploaded minds >calculator starts smoking >realize currently living humans are rounding error >8 billion people suddenly looking extremely beta >future contains potentially 10^something people >can't even fit beneficiaries in google sheets >new moral priority unlocked >protect the long-term future >stop thinking in units of "people helped" >start thinking in "fraction of cosmic endowment preserved" >malaria? >terrible >but only kills existing humans >AI extinction could delete the entire light cone >nuclear war could permanently derail civilization >bad institutions could lock in terrible values for ten million years >someone invents wrong constitution in 2140 >quadrillions suffer >better fund governance workshop now >friend says maybe we should improve hospitals >explain opportunity cost >friend says hospitals are full of actual sick people >explain scope sensitivity >friend stops inviting me to dinner >need to decide what to fund >easy >expected value >suppose project has one in a million chance of preventing extinction >sounds tiny >but extinction destroys 10^50 future lives >multiply >mother of god >$10 million project has expected value of several galaxies >charity evaluation complete >someone asks where the one-in-a-million number came from >expert judgement >which expert >us >how calibrated >extremely thoughtfully >reduce estimate to one in ten million to be conservative >still beats curing cancer by 38 orders of magnitude >epistemic robustness achieved >someone says maybe project doesn't work >assign 20% chance >still astronomical >maybe project makes problem worse >assign 5% chance >still astronomical >why 5 >because 30 felt pessimistic >publish 46-page report >contains seventeen sensitivity analyses >every sensitivity analysis begins after assuming intervention has positive sign >critic says you're multiplying enormous hypothetical stakes by extremely uncertain probabilities >yes >that's literally why it's important >critic says the uncertainty might be structural rather than numerical >make probability smaller >critic says no, I mean maybe your model is wrong >make probability smaller again >critic begins rubbing temples >discover AI safety >perfect longtermist cause >AI might kill everyone >or create utopia >or seize galaxy >or tile universe with paperclips >or create billions of conscious software minds >finally a problem with numbers big enough for me >start AI safety nonprofit >mission: prevent dangerous AI >hire smartest people available >smartest people immediately start building better AI to understand dangerous AI >interesting >we must understand capabilities to understand safety >we must scale models to study alignment >we must race ahead so less responsible actors don't get there first >we must deploy systems to learn how deployment can go wrong >we must build the thing quickly because building the thing quickly is dangerous >outsider asks why the people most worried about AI apocalypse all work at AI companies >complicated field >company releases stronger model >very concerned >company begins training even stronger model >extremely concerned >company raises $14 billion >concern reaches unprecedented levels >need to influence government >future is at stake >normal democratic process too slow >politicians don't understand exponential curves >public doesn't understand x-risk >experts must guide them >who counts as expert >people who understand x-risk >who understands x-risk >our friends >someone objects that this seems politically convenient >explain we're representing future generations >future generations unavailable for comment >develop concept of value lock-in >terrifying possibility that one ideology controls civilization forever >therefore extremely important that civilization adopts correct values before lock-in >whose values >let's circle back >begin with impartial morality >end with small group of people deciding what quadrillions of hypothetical beings would want >beautiful arc >meanwhile actual humans keep doing annoying things >voting wrong >having parochial attachments >loving family more than strangers >caring about local community >getting upset when told their suffering is cosmically negligible >evolutionary biases everywhere >explain that moral intuition cannot be trusted >except intuition that future digital people count >and intuition that extinction is uniquely bad >and intuition that our probability estimates are sane >and intuition that our institutional choices improve the future >those intuitions survived peer review >someone donates $5k to local homeless shelter >inefficient >could have funded 0.0000000000003% of an AI governance researcher >think of all the simulated people you just killed >okay maybe don't phrase it that way publicly >PR team says "future generations deserve a voice" >much better >journalist asks what longtermism means >say "future people matter" >everyone agrees >great >journalist asks what follows from that >well technically we should redirect enormous resources toward low-probability interventions affecting astronomical futures >journalist raises eyebrow >return to "future people matter" >motte has entered the chat >critic: of course future people matter >me: glad we agree >critic: I don't agree that your institute knows how to help them >me: why do you hate our grandchildren >eventually notice uncomfortable implication >if future value dominates everything >then helping people today mostly matters through effects on future >education matters because future institutions >health matters because future productivity >democracy matters because future trajectory >human beings slowly become instrumental variables in their own moral philosophy >see starving child >feel compassion >check spreadsheet >child's direct welfare contribution negligible >but perhaps childhood nutrition improves national institutional quality >compassion restored >tell myself this is impartial altruism >one day assistant asks obvious question >"how do you know your intervention actually improves the far future?" >silence >open spreadsheet >increase column width >add confidence interval >assistant asks again >"no, I mean how do you know the sign is positive?" >stare into cosmic light cone >10^50 people staring back >none of them exist >none of them can tell me >none of them can falsify my assumptions >realize I have invented the perfect constituency >infinitely important >completely silent >and always represented by me

RT @StephenMorganMP: The RNLI is a charity that exists to save lives at sea. But recent events have generated deliberate misinformation and…

No. Those were parliamentary elections, not votes to leave the UK. Plaid won 35.4% in Wales and Sinn Féin 29% in NI; Scotland’s only actual independence referendum returned 55% No. Winning a plurality does not mean “the people voted for independence.” This is basic democracy.

I won’t stand for Terry Pratchett slander. His books radiate humanity and wisdom; he wrote about society in all its aspects (death, faith, poverty, the post office, the police). He was voraciously curious and seemed to have read and to know everything. And yes, he was hilarious.

And again, much later in adulthood In high school I found it entertaining and philosophically interesting, but didn’t find it really funny until reading it decades later

DEFEND MANKIND. JOIN THE DOMINION. STARCRAFT. 2030.

If you asked people their fears, many would list their top two as (1) dying, (2) being useless. (1) corresponds to AI going badly. (2) corresponds to AI going "well"

I'm proud the RNLI is based in my constituency. I’m disgusted that staff & volunteers are being told not to wear branded uniforms for their own safety. It’s a badge of honour to be part of the RNLI in Poole. A noisy minority won’t change that. Ask your MP to sign my motion.

RT @WeatherheadHigh: ⚠️Stay safe around open water this summer. If you're heading to the beach, a lake, river or reservoir, please take a f…

The facts behind our work in the Channel. In 2024, our crews launched 114 times to Channel crossings – that's just 1.2% of our total launches. Our core purpose is to save lives at sea. Anyone can drown, but no one should.

RT @JackDunc1: Hard to articulate how grim this is really. Brave life-saving volunteers having to hide who they are so the very worst peopl…

This from the RNLI press office today: “We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of donations we have received this week, and we’ve welcomed a number of new supporters to our charity. As always, we’re so grateful for the support we receive from our amazing supporters - without them we would not be able to deliver our vital lifesaving service.   Sadly, we have also been contacted by a number of supporters and members of the public who have informed us that they wish to withdraw their support in recent days.   Everyone at the RNLI remains focused on our core purpose of saving lives at sea.”

Thank you for your support ❤️🛟 We’ve been incredibly grateful for all the kind messages and support for the #RNLI this week. It means so much to everyone who gives their time to help save lives at sea.

𝚃𝙷𝙸𝚂 𝙸𝚂 𝙷𝙾𝚆 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙽𝙸𝙶𝙷𝚃𝙼𝙰𝚁𝙴 𝚂𝚃𝙰𝚁𝚃𝚂 First we build robots to help us. Then we give them cameras, mobility and more autonomy. And suddenly we’re looking at something that feels like it came straight out of a sci-fi horror movie.

The RNLI is a charity. If you would like to support our lifesaving work and make a donation, please visit our website here: rnli.social/ToSaveEveryOne Thank you to everyone who has supported us - we're incredibly grateful.

With the heroes of the @RNLI under attack again, I’m reminded of this passage from Bill Bryson.

The irony is an Argentine of European settler descent telling multi-generational Falkland Islanders—whose ancestors settled previously uninhabited islands—to "go back to London" and denying them any rights or say, while Argentina's own claim rests on inherited colonial titles rather than the clear will of the people who live there.

So it seemed like Google was becoming just a front end search for commerce sites and a handful of forums like Reddit But now it gives you a summary of multiple forum posts and you don’t go to Reddit Hey, Google, explain what killing the goose that lays the golden eggs means