Why do you prefer to contribute (in part) towards humankind-wide X-risk problems rather than more narrow but personally important issues?
As I’ve mentioned before, I consider my donations to existential risk to be a subtractive process brought on by depression. I care very little for my own life, but that lack of caring seems to enable actions which are selfless. On the other hand, it also tends to cause wild swings in spending. The easier it is for me to do, the quicker it gets over my action-threshold and becomes reality. Clicking a button on a website to donate a bunch of money is very easy. Much easier than going to the store. Setting up a recurring transaction with one button click which then translates to thousands of dollars over months or years is easier still. This mindset becomes dangerous when something shiny but low-utility catches my attention, like “style and fashion” or “expert wine tasting”.
How do you determine the time- and risk- tradeoffs between things like saving money for healthcare, and investing money in preventing an unfriendly AI FOOM?
I use my internal Bayesometer after hundreds of hours of immersion in a topic. I do a quick mental check, “How do I feel about X?” and it spits out a response. From the results, it appears less biased in general than most of the methods used by other people, especially with regards to its self-reported confidence levels. This community may have more rigorous methods, but they’re likely much more difficult to apply, and therefore unlikely to pass my action-threshold. Sitting and reading websites and books and research papers requires virtually zero action by my count.
How do you decide what portion of income to donate to SIAI, which to SENS, and which to keep as money for purely personal problems that others won’t invest in?
I perform a quick and easy computation to see how much to donate to SIAI: how much money do I have in my bank account? It’s typically a lot (more than 23% of my gross income last year), since I have a very low cost of living lifestyle and a good job. I donated a pittance to SENS so I could get the free book they were offering at the time. Personal problems get the minimal amount to keep me comfortable. I’ve often thought that if I got cancer with low odds of survival, I’d want to donate as much as I can, including all of my savings, to get it out of my hands. Stupid doctors take way too much of our money for a terrible return in QALY at the end. I’ve also thought about naming a charity as my beneficiary in a will or just on my savings accounts. Working on legal documents takes a lot of effort though.
As I’ve mentioned before, I consider my donations to existential risk to be a subtractive process brought on by depression. I care very little for my own life, but that lack of caring seems to enable actions which are selfless. On the other hand, it also tends to cause wild swings in spending. The easier it is for me to do, the quicker it gets over my action-threshold and becomes reality. Clicking a button on a website to donate a bunch of money is very easy. Much easier than going to the store. Setting up a recurring transaction with one button click which then translates to thousands of dollars over months or years is easier still. This mindset becomes dangerous when something shiny but low-utility catches my attention, like “style and fashion” or “expert wine tasting”.
I use my internal Bayesometer after hundreds of hours of immersion in a topic. I do a quick mental check, “How do I feel about X?” and it spits out a response. From the results, it appears less biased in general than most of the methods used by other people, especially with regards to its self-reported confidence levels. This community may have more rigorous methods, but they’re likely much more difficult to apply, and therefore unlikely to pass my action-threshold. Sitting and reading websites and books and research papers requires virtually zero action by my count.
I perform a quick and easy computation to see how much to donate to SIAI: how much money do I have in my bank account? It’s typically a lot (more than 23% of my gross income last year), since I have a very low cost of living lifestyle and a good job. I donated a pittance to SENS so I could get the free book they were offering at the time. Personal problems get the minimal amount to keep me comfortable. I’ve often thought that if I got cancer with low odds of survival, I’d want to donate as much as I can, including all of my savings, to get it out of my hands. Stupid doctors take way too much of our money for a terrible return in QALY at the end. I’ve also thought about naming a charity as my beneficiary in a will or just on my savings accounts. Working on legal documents takes a lot of effort though.